relations. beyond anthropocentrism, 6.1 june 2018 5 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 6.1 june 2018 energy ethics: emerging perspectives in a time of transition special issue edited by giovanni frigo part i is sn 2 2 8 0 -9 9 5 3 beyond anthropocentrism 1 • january 2013 inside the emotional lives of non-human animals a minding animals international utrecht 2012 pre-conference event special issue (genoa, italy, 12-13 may, 2012) edited by m. andreozzi, r. bennison, a. massaro, s. tonutti capabilities approach and animal bioethics • michele panzera animals and our emotions. how to approach the study of an interspecific community? • sabrina tonutti advocacy and animal rights • kim stallwood the emotional lives of animals: a christian perspective • alma massaro – gianfranco nicora animalia: ontology and ethics in weak antispeciesism • leonardo caffo the contemporary debate on experimentation • susanna penco – rosagemma ciliberti non-human animals and genetic engineering • arianna ferrari the relationship between humans and other animals in european animal welfare legislation • paola sobbrio human’s best friends? • matteo andreozzi elationsre l a t io n s . b e y o n d a n t h r o p o c e n t r is m 1 • 2 0 1 3 r editorial energy ethics: emerging perspectives in a time of transition 7 giovanni frigo studies and research contributions ethics, nafthism, and the fossil subject 33 tere vadén antti salminen beyond scarcity: perspectives on energy transition 49 robert-jan geerts life within energy policy 69 jacob bethem mutually-beneficial renewable energy systems 87 matthew j. burke renewable energy issues in africa contexts 117 diana-abasi ibanga comments, debates, reports and interviews cows, cookstoves, and climate change: a non-anthropocentric 137 view of household energy use in the rural indian himalayas deepti chatti http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ relations. beyond anthropocentrism 6 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ catholic energy ethics: commitments and criteria 143 erin lothes biviano reviews kevin bales, blood and earth: modern slavery, ecocide, and the secret 155 to saving the world (2016) nora ward author guidelines 161 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ reviews a rational approach to animal rights: extensions in abolitionist theory by corey lee wrenn 187 relations – 5.2 november 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the risk of factionalism among people caring for animals alma massaro phd, university of genoa almamassaro@gmail.com wrenn, corey lee. 2015. a rational approach to animal rights: extensions in abolitionist theory. basingstoke, uk: palgrave macmillan. 239 pp. € 98,85. isbn 978-1137434647. palgrave macmillan offers another book about animal studies that, potentially, could have represented a significant contribution to this area of study. abolitionism is an important voice among the animal agenda and its so-called “extentions” could have represented “food for thought” for many activists and researchers. in her book, wrenn sets up a critic of the current nonhuman animal rights movement that she denounces to be: on the one side, compliant with “the state, industry, and elite power and influence founds”; on the other side, based on a series of irrational tactics that prevent, rather than promote, the achievement of animal liberation. “the nonhuman animal rights movement”, she affirms, “is a social justice endeavor that is flooded with a number of irrational tactics that run counter to scientific evidence”. the author, therefore, presents a peculiar analysis of this movement in order to promote what she think is a “rational” approach to animal ethics. while the main aim of the book is worthwhile – it consists in constructing “a coherent and effective path” for animal liberation –, the author’s polemic tones prevents the reader from concentrating on the main argument. however, notwithstanding the polemic tension, wrenn is still able to highlight some of those factual risks that exist inside animal protection organizations – as the risk to focus too much on stability, on fundraising, on professionalization, bureaucratization, and non-profitization to the detriment of animal protection – that could have been more strongly addressed if the study would have progressed in an analytic way. as she acutely points out, http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ mailto:almamassaro@gmail.com alma massaro 188 relations – 5.2 november 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ professionalization brings with it many complications and compromises. it also works to naturalize particular tactics and goals which come to dictate the “common sense” of nonhuman animal advocacy […]. organizations prioritize tactics and goals that are best suites to fundraising and organizational longevity, not necessarily those which would be better adapted to dismantling speciesism. it is therefore problematic to take for granted the efficacy and appropriateness of popular tactics promoted by these groups. attention should be paid to whether or not tactics work for liberation and, to a much lesser extent, their economical potential. advocates should be accountable to other animals, not to funding agent. in the very first pages of her work, she proposes a singular critique of the multifold world of animal protection. she accuses the major us charitable organizations of misusing the money they get to help animals and, more seriously, affirms that they thrive on the same abuse they pretend to oppose: nonhuman animal suffering is a commodity that keeps both industries and non-profits (animal charities) in business […]. a vegan world means peta, hsus, farm sanctuary, mercy for animals, compassion over killing, vegan outreach, and many other donation-driven nonhuman animal aid groups would have to downscale considerably or perhaps even close up shop. therefore it immediately appears how the book, rather than proposing a constructive critique of what could be implemented, tends to create divisions and separations inside the animal protection universe. it is not unusual that different factions among the charitable movements tend to focus on their different strategic plans, opposing each other, rather than caring for the main objective of their agenda. wrenn, in fact, opposes the “professionalized organizations” with the more radical faction to which she belongs, vegan abolitionism. she offers the reader what she thinks is the right approach to the issue, that is a more radical “feminist” abolitionist one – that to her represents the only way to reach the very goal of animal liberation. her belief in abolitionism is so strong that she vehemently discredits every other form of animal protection, as vegetarianism and welfarism, defined as unuseful and misrepresented perspectives, imbued of post-speciesist ideology. the author affirms that the current animal rights movement is based on a sexist, capitalistic, neoliberalist, theistic, sexist, white-centered vision of the world, to which she opposes what she describes as “a vegan, intersectional, anti-capitalistic, secular, and evidence-based approach”. animal ethicist, she sais, are “commonly elevated to superstardom in activist communities” but they “develop tactics though thought experiments rather than evidence-producing scientific experiments”. to these philosophers http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ corey lee wrenn, “a rational approach to animal rights: extension” 189 relations – 5.2 november 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ she opposes a scientific approach to animal issues, as if science could offer answers to the manifold quandaries life continuously presents. if the issues raised by the authors are worthy of attention, in the whole the book represents a missed opportunity. i wish in future the author will be able to offer a more balanced analysis of those problems that really exists inside the animal rights advocacy movement. the book, in fact, acutely detects some of the leaks existing in this system and this represents its mayor merit. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ canons of animal aesthetics: a report on the exhibition beauté animale, grand palais, paris, france, march 21st july 16th, 2012 69 relations – 1.i 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ canons of animal aesthetics a report on the exhibition beauté animale, grand palais, paris, france, march 21st july 16th, 2012 eleonora adorni independent scholar, member of the siua (school of human-animal interaction) doi: 10.7358/rela-2013-001-ador eleonora.adorni@gmail.com throughout history, artists have chosen to represent certain animal species over many others, using specific aesthetic canons for their paintings, sculptures and various handcrafts. which animals are they? and why? how has the representation of animals changed over time? these are the main questions which beauté animale posed to visitors. the exhibition was divided into three sections: observation, prejudice and discoveries. the animals in the first section, observation, were deemed worthy of being represented in virtue of aesthetic standards; while the animals in the second section, prejudice, embodied widespread loci of fear, repulsion and bias; the animals portrayed in the third and final section, discoveries, epitomized the exotic and thus the most elaborate creations of the artists themselves. what was the fil rouge of this exhibition? the artworks – realized during an arc of time which covers the period from the renaissance to the present day – portrayed, almost exclusively, nonhuman animals, so revealing the main objective of the curators, which was to highlight the importance of animals in the history of art. in beauté animale the animals were the main, if not the only protagonists of the artworks, forcing the visitor to leave behind the idea of those other animals so very often represented as corollary to the human world. during the renaissance the ‘real’ animals took their place in the realm of art to become an important element to be observed and, in the light of the ancient logic that ties the act of viewing to the act of knowing, also constituted an important element to be understood. the origins of what we call ‘art animalier’ is to be found in this practice: animals were usually depicted in their natural habitat or against a background, aiming to provide a visual correspondence with the detailed descriptions that most naturalists drew of them. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ eleonora adorni 70 relations – 1.i 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ despite the naturalistic approach representing animals in a realistic way, every cultural product (in this case, artworks) inevitably reflects and carries the signs of the historical period and the social milieu that generated it, thus working like a kaleidoscope that is able to transform the reality of the animals as well. this process was clearly evident in the second part of the exhibition, prejudice, which was dedicated to the animals that have always inspired fear, phobias, and numerous forms of superstitions. in this section, the main protagonists were the two toads by picasso and several bats (one of these drawn by van gogh). bats are mammals that are usually associated with the ‘inverted’ life of the nocturnal world and are also an ideal source of folk tales and beliefs related to misfortune and bad luck. in the third section the central topic was the display of exotic animals which are now specimens, a meeting point of scientific curiosity (animals as species) and voyeuristic gaze (animals as objects). animals which were taken away from their natural environment to be put in cages and pens, represented ‘models’ for the reification of ‘live nature’ that had the ability to impress and charm both the visitor and the artist with bodies which were very different from ‘normal’ canons of animal beauty that we can see in everyday life. artists aimed to capture the animal world in the most realistic way, but gilles aillaud opened up a completely different perspective by showing that animal beauty is no longer the ultimate goal and now serves as a tool to stimulate and engage serious considerations on the ethical issue that animal captivity inevitably carries with it. the so-called ‘animal question’ emerged in the seventies and has since then generated a pragmatic consideration on how humans relate to and treat other living beings in various contexts. with this in mind, gilles aillaud chose to represent animals in zoos – confined, caged, or living in putrid pools of water – to reveal the contemporary obsession of humans with satisfying their objectifying gaze, and, in doing so, deprive animals of their freedom transforming them into empty simulacra. aillaud queries seem to have been: “what we can truly learn about animals, if we place them outside of their natural habitats?”; “what do we know about animals if we feed them with our own hands and have made them unresponsive to the presence of visitors?”. the itinerary traced by beauté animale concluded with the ours blanc by gilles aillaud. the polar bear lying on the icecap reminds us of a big empty bag carelessly thrown away after use. visitors are encouraged to reflect about the cost of this objectification to the animals themselves, dissected and reassembled, as they are. the animal becomes the product of our own projections, the cultural product that meets our long-standing stereotypes about what it means to be an animal. in this sense, animals canons of animal aesthetics 71 relations – 1.i 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ behind bars at the zoo, or behind a glass at the aquarium, tell us more about the collecting nature of homo sapiens, rather than their own ‘animal nature’ and, finally, embody our archetypical fear, which tends to mark the distance from our own to the nonhuman world. art, as a particular expression of that macro-phenomenon which we call ‘culture’, can help us to interpret the relationship between humans and animals. along the historical and thematic path suggested by the exposition, it was possible to observe – in all its visual immediacy – how inter-specific relationships have changed over time. furthermore, the parisian exhibition revealed the often unacknowledged or, at least, underestimated role of animals in human ontopoietic processes. the animals represented in the various artworks were unquestionably the protagonists of beauté animale. however, it must be emphasized that they were also cultural products, the result of an artist’s vision, inspiration, and artistic, therefore cultural, processes. although human figures were absent from the picture of animals, the invisible human presence pervades the artwork illuminating the representation of these animals by human hands. editorial summer school “cibo: la vita condivisa” 7 relations – 5.1 june 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ summer school “cibo: la vita condivisa” editorial paola fossati assistant professor, university of milan doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2017-001-foss paola.fossati@unimi.it food has always had a heavy influence on human biological and cultural evolution. actually, a careful look reveals that in shaping food habits, nutritional factors have played a limited role over time. food has moved beyond mere sustenance and turned into symbol and meaningful part of community-based traditions. it has become a vehicle for values and beliefs, which, in turn, have built up our perception of food and eating. even now, culture directly affects the choices of consumers and has an impact on their attitudes towards food products. animal source foods have always been a constituent of human diets. animal farming can be seen as involved in a coevolutionary process, in so far over thousands of years has affected biology, behaviour, and the quality of life of both humans and (domestic) animals. problematizing food choices and relating them to the power humans exert on domestic animals urges us to focus on the way humans treat other living beings. in this perspective, thinking of food of animal origin helps to rethink humans-animals relations. objections against animal agriculture often refer to the disrespect for animals’ life, integrity and welfare, especially in current intensive production systems. exploitation of animals and associated factors in farming for foodstuffs and for industrial and trade purposes cannot be separated from matters of ethics and self-discipline. the ethical concerns arising from current food production practices unavoidably involve the ethics of keeping animals for this purpose. most consumers completely ignore how farm animals are raised in contemporary agriculture. despite this, the attitude of eu citizens towards animal welfare is currently documented (eurobarometer surveys). consumers show a considerable interest in getting more and clearer information about animal husbandry and about what is behind the products they find on the market shelves. indeed, in the eu policy ethics has been framed as an essential component of european http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/79 http://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2017-001-foss mailto:paola.fossati%40unimi.it%20?subject= paola fossati 8 relations – 5.1 june 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ citizenship. moreover, it has long acknowledged that animals are sentient beings. this is formally recognised by article 13 of the treaty on the functioning of the european union, which requires full regard to be given to the welfare requirements of animals in the formulation and enforcement of eu policies. it remains nevertheless true that there are many unsolved ethical and sustainability conflicts within animal productions systems. it was against this background and with the aim to provide a new perspective on food choices and connected ethical implications that the university of milan planned to organize the summer school “food: shared life”, 1st and 2nd  edition. the summer school has been designed to raise awareness about sustainability of food choices and was intended to guide the participants towards perception of food of animal origin as “shared life” and to promote growing responsibility. the goal of the event was to debate the main issues at the heart of animal welfare. a multidisciplinary approach was proposed, through lessons and thematic workshops, involving academics, practitioners, leading figures from the institutional realm and proponents from the associations. the current and desirable ways to address the ethical issues involved were discussed with distinguished university lecturers, representatives of the european and italian authorities in the fields of animal health and welfare and of food safety, stakeholders from working life and representatives from national and international ngos . the summer school had both cultural and educational purposes and wanted to carry out a thorough analysis in order to pinpoint some of the critical aspects of the prevalent concepts of animal welfare, give proper information, encourage reflections and handling of the emerging ethical concerns. these aspects are deeply connected with the very true meaning of eating food of animal origin and they come to dealing with food ethics, that is the field where food and ethics converge. all the above opened an “analytic” space where the participants found the key elements for making their evaluation and therefore rethinking their approach to the broad field of food ethics and to the food itself. more widely, the school made an effort to move some “unknown unknowns” into the realm of the “known unknowns”, in the spirit of donald rumsfeld (us secretary of defense 2002) when he said: “there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. but there are also unknown unknowns – there are things we do not know we don’t know”. therefore rethinking food and its meanings helps to rethink the human-animal relation. the double issue of relations which concern the summer school “cibo: la vita condivisa” gathers a set of contributions as representative http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/79 summer school “cibo: la vita condivisa” 9 relations – 5.1 june 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ of the main topics addressed. the contributors – antonella baldi, davide gottardo, lorenzo bertolesi, niccolò bertuzzi, nicholas chiari, marco da monte, maurizio fürst, enrico giannetto, alba l’astorina, alma massaro, letterio mauro and corey lee wrenn – are academics and scholars working in scientific, legal and philosophical areas. their papers explore crucial themes from different, theoretical and applied, perspectives, offer an interesting body of knowledge and provide “food” for reflection. issue 5.1 features seven essays, focused on four main topics: the challenges of food production; food as a socio-political agent; the philosophical/theological approach to the act of eating; the economic/legal approach to the act of eating. finally, the section reviews includes a review where the young anthropologist eleonora adorni analyses the book power feels before it thinks: affect theory and critical animal studies in religious affects, by donovan o. schaefer. issue 5.2 features five essays that explore the significance of applying an ethical approach in different fields of private, professional and social life, from individual food choices to the paths research and justice could take while respecting animals, deepening knowledge of the political consequences of veganism, the eu ethical approach at the base of the responsible research and innovation (rri) and the ethics of care. the section comments, debates, reports and interviews offers a christina dodkin’s report, which is about the review of directive 2010/63/eu on the protection of animals used for scientific purposes, and the section reviews offers the review of the book a rational approach to animal rights, by wrenn corey, performed by the young philosopher alma massaro. shall food demand and production take steps to move towards a sustainable balance between the interests of all parties engaged? what action can be taken to face the future challenge that livestock production will be expected to overcome in the next years? in this special issue, the theme of sustainability is addressed by taking a horizontal look at the current and future landscape of food production and food consumption. reflections regarding the epistemological debate which arose together with the definition of sustainability are proposed. what about the ethical issues that arise from everyday meals? which are the main philosophical arguments in favor of vegetarianism and veganism? an analysis of the scenario, through an examination of the main topics and issues in the field of nutrition, helps the reader to familiarize themselves with the deeper meaning and significance of the actual eating. furthermore, two historical excursus on the relationship between christian religion and animal ethics on one side and ecology on the other side, open a large window on non-human animals as an important element of an integral reading of christian scripture. the http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/79 paola fossati 10 relations – 5.1 june 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ summer school “cibo: la vita condivisa” is the first italian summer school to provide a new perspective on food and on the ethical consequences of food choices. the special issue of relations has the purpose to share the formative spirit that has animated the whole initiative. references us secretary of defense. 2002. defense.gov news transcript: dod news briefing  – secretary rumsfeld and gen. myers, unite states department of defense. accessed february 5, 2017. http://archive.defense.gov/transcripts/transcript. aspx?transcriptid=2636. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/79 http://archive.defense.gov/transcripts/transcript.aspx?transcriptid=2636 http://archive.defense.gov/transcripts/transcript.aspx?transcriptid=2636 reviews power feels before it thinks: affect theory and critical animal studies in religious affects by donovan o. schaefer 85 relations – 5.1 june 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ power feels before it thinks affect theory and critical animal studies in religious affects by donovan o. schaefer eleonora adorni independent researcher eleonora.adorni@gmail.com donovan o. schaefer. 2015. religious affects: animality, evolution, and power. durham: duke university press books. 304 pp. $ 24.95. isbn 978-0-8223-5990-6. according to aristotle, man is zóon logòn échon, the animal for whom language is the main etiological and constitutive element. from the greek philosopher to our age, the primacy of language has affected all field of human knowledge, from philosophy to cognitive science, marking the border between what is rational – and therefore worthy of being studied – and what belongs to instinct, irrationality, primitivity. donovan o. schaefer wants to show the fallacy of this perspective, and opens his ambitious religious affects with a famous ethological anecdote: the famous “waterfall dance” recognized by primatologist jane goodall as the proof of religious beliefs also among non-human animals, typically considered devoid of language. the chimpanzees of gombe (tanzania) observed by the scholar since the sixties have shown a series of behaviors (rituals, responses to death, social interactions) very similar to those that in human terms are considered forms “religion”. “for ten minutes or more they may perform this magnificent ‘dance’. why? is it not possible that the chimpanzees are responding to some feeling like awe? a feeling generated by the mystery of the water” (goodall 1999, 189). religious affects starts from here to show that bodiliness, and not language, is the common ground on which one should rethink religion: one should focus on the body as a prelinguistic element, which michel foucault already proved to be the vehicle of any power dynamic. initially taken as a private phenomenon, a kind of exclusively human “intimate psychologism” – think of the definition of “sacred” given by mircea eliade, that of “structure of consciousness” – with the darwinian revolution, the phenomenological and post-structuralist reflection, affect theory, postcolonial studies, queer and feminist thinking, religion has become a http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/79 mailto:eleonora.adorni%40gmail.com%20?subject= eleonora adorni 86 relations – 5.1 june 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ form of power like any other, made possible and unfolding through the relationship between the body and the world. but let’s have a closer look at the theoretical proposal made in religious affect. the book aims to deconstruct religion, both as a cognitive expression of a self and as a merely intra-human (epi)phenomenon, through affect theory, which “sees body moving through worlds under the pressure of a complex welter of affects, with language weaving between and reshaping those pressures only sometimes – and even then only hintingly and unevenly” (9). the body conceived as materiality and as embodied expression of the phylogenetic history that generated it “before language, before cosmology, even before ‘thought’ understood as away of converting a situation into an explanation, […] interacts with the world, and produces a field of sensations through that interaction” (9). affect theory it allows the author to bypass the linguistic fallacy, showing that language is also a form of power (foucault docet), and to note the flows that affect the bodies of animals “that register and transmit power through a wide spectrum of shifting channels, a subtle, a sub-rosa matrix of interactions that happens between bodies and worlds” (207). this is what derrida defined a “heterogeneous multiplicity of animal bodies”: a jumble of flesh and organs, personalities and emotions, minds, actions and relationships, each with their prerogatives and priorities. as for the structure of the book, it is divided into three main parts: intransigence, compulsion, and accident. each section presents a theoretical proposal followed by a case study; the final chapter explores the implications of affect theory in the study of religion, bringing the latter in the same field as critical studies – especially those dealing with non-human animals. let’s go through the different parts of the book. in “intransigence”, schaefer shows that the humanities do not have an adequate vocabulary to think of the animality of the body, “whether our own or those of their of other animals” (57); instead, they emphasise the dividing line that sees the bodies of non-human animals as deficient in history. the chapter then connects affect theory and evolutionary biology, which since darwin has related man to other animals. in the famous expression of the emotion in man and animals (1890), british naturalist had supported the biological basis of a common emotional basis between humans and non-human animals: a common ground that, as demonstrated by the psychologist silvan tomkins, allows individuals to “develop multiple channels of sensitivity defining a pluriform set of relationship with their world” (46). therefore, affect theory – in the light of the developments of biology and evolutionary theory – allows one to rethink the traditional phenomenological approach to the study of religion – from otto to james, to durkheim – highlighthttp://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/79 donovan o. schaefer, “religious affects”: animality, evolution, and power 87 relations – 5.1 june 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ing its historical and biological dynamics; ultimately, «basic emotions have histories, bus these histories move at a time scale that vastly exceeds human experience, let alone human history. the varieties of animal affect fall into this category of semistable form emerging out of shapeshifting embodied histories” (47). in “compulsion” the author starts from a very simple question, namely, why is confinement in total solitude considered torture? a completely isolated body for a long period of time is not only a mere object positioned in a place but a subject under forces that originate from its own biological history and from the outside world. the example of isolation, in this sense, recalls what derrida calls “auto-affection”, that is, a living being’s illusion of ownership of their own emotions, to the point that a prisoner in this condition cannot last long before going crazy. we are social beings, our bodies are primarily social bodies and isolation, apart from death, is the most cruel torture that we can undergo. derrida (2008) has also noted that what he calls “carno-fallogocentric” discourse is what denies any animal dimension to the body; this rhetoric outlines man as and angelic creature that only sporadically leaves his heavenly abide to deal with earthly matters. schaefer shows that, rather than being aware of their actions, bodies are subject to fields of forces which move them in different directions: “bodies are desire in motion. animals are moved by subtly rich and urgently necessary landscape of emotions” (100). not coincidentally, the well-known ethologist frans de wall described human beings as “obligatorily gregarious”, to the point of making up “origin stories that neglect this deep connection by presenting human as loners who grudgingly come together are ignorant of primate evolution” (de waal 2006, 219). at this point – the author suggests – it would make more sense to wonder “where do bodies go?” rather than “what do bodies believe?” (106). in the chapter entitled “accident”, in the light of the affective turn, the author emphasizes the need to redefine the way we think about the “rationality” within animal behavior, including religion. the first target of schaefer’s criticism is the marxists-social approach that sees religion as the “opium of the people” according to marx’s definition: that is, the tool used by the ruling class to hide their economic and political interests from the lower classes. the second target is the evolutionary approach, which considers religion the expression of an adaptive function within a costbenefit dialectic. according to the author, both perspectives are inherently reductionist in that they reduce the complexity of embodied life to a single level when in fact “animal bodies – and animal religions – are simply much queerer than that” (177). http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/79 eleonora adorni 88 relations – 5.1 june 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ in conclusion, religious affect does not aim to “produce a static catalog of forms of animal religion” (206) but to change the borders of what is usually considered “religion”. this wider outlook allows to also include the “religious bodies” of animals, so as to better understand not only other animals but also our own religious dimension, starting from the bodily dimension. this is the goal of the book: to see religion as an interspecific common trait of living beings, where human and non-human animals are not (just) subjects but also fields of forces that allow one to understand how religion operates through the bodies – “where do bodies go?” – and, ultimately, how power works. “animal religion overturns the sentence of solitary confinement imposed on human bodies by our own anthropocentric presuppositions, returning us to other bodies n and in the earth” (211). references darwin, charles. 1890. the expression of emotion in man and animals. london: j. murray. derrida, jacques. 2008. the animal that therefore i am. new york: fordham university press. de waal, frans. 2006. our inner ape: a leading primatologist explains why we are who we are. new york: riverhead books. goodall, jane. 1999. a reason for hope: a spiritual journey. new york: warner books. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/79 https://books.google.it/books?id=y8drc-qgheic&printsec=frontcover&dq=the+animal+that+therefore+i+am&hl=it&sa=x&ved=0ahukewinjqydgc3qahxfkcakhelubjgq6aeihjaa posthuman glasses for nomadic subjectivities: a comment on "il postumanesimo filosofico e le sue alterità (philosophical posthumanism and its others)", by francesca ferrando posthuman glasses for nomadic subjectivities a comment on il postumanesimo filosofico e le sue alterità (philosophical posthumanism and its others), by francesca ferrando angela balzano research fellow, university of bologna doi: 10.7358/rela-2016-002-balz angela.balzano@unibo.it to read the current development of posthuman studies we need new glasses, that is to say a new conceptual framework. in order to develop it, francesca ferrando refers to the patient work of “artisans-philosophers” who came from the past (or just returned from the future). sometimes an idea is born before its time. the quiet, constant act of intrepid thinkers breaks the continuity, and the rigidity of kronos’ line, revealing its truth and effectiveness only many centuries later. critical genealogies, as il postumanesimo filosofico e le sue alterità (ferrando 2016) 1, help keeping track of the openings determined by concepts in the course of their development. without this kind of genealogy, the present overtakes at full speed our ability to understand it. all the more so today that new media and bio-technologies have become viral and pervasive, contributing to erode the old categories of subject, man, knowledge and power. the posthuman: philosophical posthumanism and its others is an invitation to get rid of outdated mental habits, of theoretical and practical schemes of identity and repetition of the same. it innovates from within philosophy and creates a dialogue between conceptual characters in an unexpected and unusual way. it is a book that aims to show how the history of western philosophy, for a long time, has done nothing but collected explanations of the world only apparently different, but always focused on 1 for the english version of ferrando’s book follow the link below: http://dspaceroma3.caspur.it/bitstream/2307/4356/1/tesi_ferrando_def.pdf. mailto:angela.balzano@unibo.it http://dspace-roma3.caspur.it/bitstream/2307/4356/1/tesi_ferrando_def.pdf http://dspace-roma3.caspur.it/bitstream/2307/4356/1/tesi_ferrando_def.pdf http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 angela balzano 226 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ man as a molar and carrier subject. we could, in fact, consider the modern formations of “knowledge/power” as blocks of representations/interpretations of the human. philosophy, in particular, has attempted to cultivate the human in order to extract from it a subject and a truth, which in late capitalism coincide with the homo economicus and hyper-productivism. aware of this, foucault, deleuze and guattari stated that philosophy has to detox, divest its traditional dualistic and anthropocentric glasses, thus becoming able to conceptualize the intermediate zones between the human, the natural and the machinic. ferrando moves on this track, which interrogates both quantum mechanics, cybernetics, literature and philosophy, hybridizing knowledges and points of view. the book of ferrando is a conscious and informed discourse on the desire to re-invent ourselves, in a spacetime that is constantly changing. following the coordinates of french poststructuralism and neo-materialist feminism, she proposes that is necessary to intend a self as a nomadic and free subjectivity, capable both of agency and recognition of otherness. overcoming the human means first of all abandoning the monolithic cartesian subject, conceived as a mind separated from the body and from the rest of the world. posthumanism means to step over this subject, beyond the rational and calculating man, beyond the owner and subject of rights. posthumanism is rooted in the body: no theory, or practice can ignore the knowledge of the multiple materiality of the world. this implies an innovative approach to individuality, holding together ontology and ethics, epistemology and the history of ideas, aimed at affirming that a singularity is, always and in every case, an assemblage of simple bodies. one is not born, but rather becomes, posthuman. for this reason the politics of location are still very significant: from which place do our bodies speak? it is a fundamental question. equally important is to ask what are our bodies becoming today. how do we think and know our bodies in the times of biotechnology and advanced capitalism? the category of nomadic subjectivity is the key to finding a non-relativistic and ethical solution for the new challenges we are called to face in the possible futures. ferrando reminds us of the hypothesis that from nietzsche comes down to feminist theory: the subject as multiplicity. in feminist practices: we need to say where we came from, including the humanist tradition, and at the same time attempt to understand what we are becoming, including posthuman subjectivities. in this sense the book of ferrando is extremely effective. from latin playwrights to theoretical physicists, she denounces, wherever she finds a trace, the self-centered arrogance of man. ferrando leads her genealogy with curiosity, nomadism and transversality. these attitudes in her book evolve into complex methhttp://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 posthuman glasses for nomadic subjectivities 227 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ odologies, aiming at the elaboration of a knowledge and an ethics able to take into account the sudden and schizophrenic changes we experience everyday. a methodology, out of all possibilities, seems the most appropriate to keep up with the speed and non-linearity of the present: cartography. cartography is a methodology able to inform the style, a writing that allows us to see the coexistence of contradictory elements and strong geopolitical inequalities in the posthuman world. it was inherited from poststructuralism, but developed in the frame of the neo-feminist materialism by rosi braidotti, who in the posthuman follows a precise cartographical track that has much in common with that of ferrando: from humanism to its refusal, up to the survey of the double face of the posthuman condition itself. we still ignore if posthuman times are better than human times. new media and bio-technologies, features of the present, are harbingers of considerable idiosyncrasies. we all know that they can be used for military purposes, or to damage the environment, or to cause harm to others, especially to subjectivities that are not human, as animals and earth. rosi braidotti, melinda cooper and donna haraway have written accurate cartographies on the genesis of new military technologies. they are often presented to us as technologies of “life”, despite the fact that they schizophrenically produce death. at the time of advanced capitalism “the posthuman” has a terrible dark side: eco-feminists like vandana shiva call it bio-piracy, rosi braidotti calls it necropolitics. the price of bio-piracy is actually been paid by migrants, women, lgbtqi subjectivities, animals, lands and cultures. ferrando writes clearly: “feminist and womanist studies have exposed the racist and sexist frame within which the discourse on techné has been historically formulated” (ferrando 2014, 139). she reminds us that the “post” of posthuman makes sense only if it is effective, if we are able to leave behind all the mechanisms of exclusion typical of anthropocentrism. her style is proactive, a kind of affirmative profession of philosophical writing. she does not forget, in fact, to outline the bright side of posthuman days, showing us that there are many ways to stay on the positive side, without falling into the traps of western humanism: “posthumanism is a praxis, as well as a philosophy of mediation, which manifests post-dualistic, post-centralizing, inclusive and comprehensive types of approach” (ferrando 2014, 14). beyond the limited vision of eurocentric humanism, ferrando reminds us of the role of oriental humanism and explains how the multiplication of feminist, postcolonial, environmentalists and cyborg studies is an opportunity to act from within the crisis of the humanities, to overcome the hierarchical system of privileges and exclusions that they have sustained for centuries. aware that the status of the human was not granted http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 angela balzano 228 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ to “all embodied human beings” ferrando detects social and existential affirmative practices in the same subjectivities that have been devalued during the process of “humanization”. she raises a crucial question: “how have the (categories of) humans who have been repeatedly dehumanized, dealt with their humanness? how have they re-configured such a denied status?” (ferrando 2014, 13). her answer is radical, she finds a source of new configurations of the human in the feminist oral history and in the anarchist “ironic praxis” of indiani metropolitani. subjectivities which were not considered human are not necessarily marginal. the fact that they are taken into mechanisms of marginalization does not mean they are worth less than others: “[…] animals, automata, children, women, freaks, people of color other than white, queers etc. marked the shifting borders of what would become ‘the human’ through processes of performative rejections” (ferrando 2014, 70). we can not continue to organize life on this earth (and in this universe) as if we were the only inhabitants. on the contrary, it seems that we inhabit densely populated spaces with many forms of life. for centuries, the “man of reason” has used anthropocentric theories to preserve his status of owner and master. for too long “the human” has functioned as a regulatory standard, and too many forms of life were considered “different” in a pejorative sense in its reference. luckily, we now know that this trend can be reversed. feminist and women’s movements, environmental and anti-racist activism have taught us, practically, that no dualism will ever account for the plurality of the world. differences also have powerful positive meanings (spinoza docet). they are vectors of potentia and desire of contamination. references ferrando, francesca. 2014. the posthuman: philosophical posthumanism and its others. ph.d. dissertation, ph.d. in philosophy and theory of human sciences, università di roma tre, rome. retrieved from http://dspace-roma3. caspur.it/bitstream/2307/4356/1/tesi_ferrando_def.pdf. 2016. il postumanesimo filosofico e le sue alterità. pisa: ets. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 http://dspace-roma3.caspur.it/bitstream/2307/4356/1/tesi_ferrando_def.pdf http://dspace-roma3.caspur.it/bitstream/2307/4356/1/tesi_ferrando_def.pdf ricordo di tom regan. intervista con luigi lombardi vallauri 5 is sn 2 2 8 0 -9 9 5 3 beyond anthropocentrism 1 • january 2013 inside the emotional lives of non-human animals a minding animals international utrecht 2012 pre-conference event special issue (genoa, italy, 12-13 may, 2012) edited by m. andreozzi, r. bennison, a. massaro, s. tonutti capabilities approach and animal bioethics • michele panzera animals and our emotions. how to approach the study of an interspecific community? • sabrina tonutti advocacy and animal rights • kim stallwood the emotional lives of animals: a christian perspective • alma massaro – gianfranco nicora animalia: ontology and ethics in weak antispeciesism • leonardo caffo the contemporary debate on experimentation • susanna penco – rosagemma ciliberti non-human animals and genetic engineering • arianna ferrari the relationship between humans and other animals in european animal welfare legislation • paola sobbrio human’s best friends? • matteo andreozzi elationsre l a t io n s . b e y o n d a n t h r o p o c e n t r is m 1 • 2 0 1 3 r 7.1-2 november 2019 the respect extended to animals: studies in honor and in memory of tom regan conference event special issue (florence, italy, february 20, 2018) edited by francesco allegri editorial exploring non-anthropocentric paradigms 7 francesco allegri introduction the importance of tom regan for animal ethics 13 francesco allegri studies and research contributions verso i diritti degli animali. riflessioni e dibattiti nella storia 19 del pensiero vilma baricalla respect, inherent value, subjects-of-a-life: some reflections 41 on the key concepts of tom regan’s animal ethics francesco allegri animalismo e non violenza. l’incidenza della lezione gandhiana 61 sul pensiero di tom regan luisella battaglia almost like waging war: tom regan and the conditions 77 for using violence for the sake of animals federico zuolo relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ relations. beyond anthropocentrism 6 comments, debates, reports and interviews ricordo di tom regan. intervista con luigi lombardi vallauri 95 francesco allegri author guidelines 99 relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 95 ricordo di tom regan intervista con luigi lombardi vallauri francesco allegri università degli studi di siena doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2019-0102-all4 allegri2@unisi.it luigi lombardi vallauri, già ordinario di filosofia del diritto presso l’università di firenze e l’università cattolica di milano, è autore di numerosi studi, fra i quali corso di filosofia del diritto (padova, 1981), terre: terra del nulla, terra degli uomini, terra dell’oltre (milano, 1989), nera luce. saggio su cattolicesimo e apofatismo (firenze, 2001). si è progressivamente allontanato dal pensiero cattolico, pervenendo a una forma di apofatismo (per il quale l’esercizio della razionalità in merito agli interrogativi ultimi sulla vita non approda a idee chiare e distinte) e a una mistica laica che prescinde da rivelazioni soprannaturali ed è connessa al pensiero orientale. celebre la sua espulsione dall’università cattolica a causa delle sue tesi giudicate eterodosse rispetto alla dottrina della chiesa. fresca new entry dell’editorial board di relations, ha curato insieme a silvana castignone la questione animale (milano, 2012) all’interno del trattato di biodiritto, diretto da stefano rodotà e paola zatti. ma sul tema degli animali ha pubblicato anche scritti animali. per l’istituzione di corsi universitari di diritto animale (gesualdo, 2018); e precedentemente, nella nostra collana i.r.e.n.e., “diritti animali e rovesci umani”, in matteo andreozzi, silvana castignone, alma massaro (a cura di), emotività animali: ricerche e discipline a confronto (milano, 2013). fa: allora luigi, parliamo di tom regan, a cui è dedicato questo fascicolo speciale di relations. llv: regan è forse l’animalista filosofico numero uno del mondo, come difensore estremo dei diritti degli animali. è proprio lui, quasi, che introduce questa terminologia, per oltre quarant’anni, dal 1975, con la scrittura, l’insegnamento universitario, la comunicazione diretta e mediatica, la testimonianza, la militanza, la fondazione e promozione culturale. non conosco un’altra vita così massicciamente, così vocazionalmente derelations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2019-0102-all4 mailto:allegri2@unisi.it https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ francesco allegri 96 dita alla difesa, con la ragione e col cuore, dei diritti degli animali. e così influente su scala mondiale. fa: come hai conosciuto i suoi testi? llv: nel 1985 silvana castignone pubblicava il libro, pionieristico per essere italiano, i diritti degli animali (castignone 1985), un’antologia di scritti essenziali della letteratura animalista preceduti da un illuminante saggio introduttivo della curatrice. beh, non c’era un solo scritto italiano, e dei quindici saggi selezionati ben quattro erano di regan. ma io regan posso vantarmi di averlo conosciuto personalmente in alcuni incontri pubblici. fa: approfondisci … llv: per esempio posso vantarmi di una mia foto con lui del 2001, nell’edizione italiana del suo libro più autobiografico, la mia lotta per i diritti animali (regan 2005a). e ricordo anche una presentazione di gabbie vuote (regan 2005b) insieme a lui a vicenza nel 2005. nei giorni precedenti il convegno in suo onore, organizzato dall’istituto italiano di bioetica, rileggendo il suo libro teoricamente fondamentale, i diritti animali, del 1983, scritto (cito) “lavorando almeno 18 ore al giorno per quasi un anno intero” e (cito ancora) “frutto di più di una decade di pensiero faticoso” (regan 2005a, 76), ho riconosciuto il passo pesante del filosofo analitico insieme al battito di un cuore appassionato. e nei suoi libri, specialmente nelle parti autobiografiche, non mancano anche sprazzi di scriver bene letterario. ricordo di avergli detto, quella volta a vicenza, con sua approvazione, che lui è antipatico, noioso, prezioso. antipatico perché ha ragione; noioso perché discute le idee proprie e altrui con infinita pazienza; prezioso per il valore del suo pensiero. fa: quali sono le sue tesi che ti hanno maggiormente influenzato nella tua riflessione sugli animali? llv: estraggo un po’ a caso, dal formidabile contributo complessivo, alcune idee che mi hanno particolarmente colpito. 1. la prima è quella degli animali come dotati di valore intrinseco in quanto soggetti-di-una-vita: formula che sta al centro della sua teoria dei diritti animali come applicazione della sua teoria generale dei diritti e che genera gli argomenti critici rivolti in particolare alla teoria utilitarista di singer (regan 1990). 2. un’altra è la distinzione fra damasceni, vinciani e temporeggiatori, che serve a descrivere i diversi modi della conversione dal paradigma del dominio al paradigma del rispetto (regan 2005b, 50-67). 3. un’altra ancora è il suggerimento di chiedersi, ognuno in prima persona, se quello che tu accetti, anzi incentivi con i tuoi consumi, che venga fatto agli animali, accetteresti che venisse fatto a un uomo o a relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ricordo di tom regan 97 un animale che conosci e a cui vuoi bene: provate a farvela, questa domanda. l’animale a cui volete bene non è diverso ontologicamente dagli altri. 4. una penultima cosa: per me, che amo profondamente il pensiero e la spiritualità indiana, è un gran piacere sentir dire a regan: “nessuno che si metta a pensare alla violenza e al pacifismo può evitare di leggere gandhi. e io dunque lo lessi: centinaia e centinaia, forse migliaia, di pagine … negli ultimi 12 anni specialmente, quando ho scritto sempre di più, ho mancato di leggere. ad eccezione, come ho detto, di gandhi. lo lessi con enorme energia e dedizione … in quel periodo, l’estate del 1972, gandhi cominciò a scuotere la mia coscienza circa il posto degli animali nello schema morale delle cose … la pratica dell’ahimsa, della non-violenza, non si ferma ai confini della specie cui apparteniamo … rifiutarsi di mangiare carne diventa un dovere … la voce della carne nel mio piatto cominciava a diventare ‘accusatoria’. era quella di gandhi … sul piano del puro ragionamento le argomentazioni di gandhi erano inattaccabili” (regan 2005a, 44-45). tutto questo è musica per le mie orecchie! 5. un’ultima cosa: regan è al tempo stesso umile e micidiale. è umile perché discute a fondo tutti, e perché riconosce di dovere la sua conversione razionale e vocazionale alle circostanze; e poi perché prende da gandhi anche il metodo della non-violenza nei rapporti intellettuali con gli avversari e nell’azione politica. è micidiale perché dice le cose accuratamente come le pensa e il pensiero logico non è aggressivo, è intrinsecamente micidiale. regan è al tempo stesso gandhianamente umile e gandhianamente micidiale. fa: vuoi aggiungere qualcosa in conclusione? llv: posso solo terminare dicendo di lui quello che dico quando muore qualcuno a cui teniamo: ci dà dolore che sia morto, ma ci dà gioia che sia esistito. regan non lo abbiamo perduto; lo abbiamo avuto. riferimenti bibliografici castignone, silvana, a cura di. 1985. i diritti degli animali. prospettive bioetiche e giuridiche. bologna: il mulino. regan, tom. 1990. i diritti animali. milano: garzanti. regan, tom. 2005a. la mia lotta per i diritti animali. torino: cosmopolis. regan, tom. 2005b. gabbie vuote. la sfida dei diritti animali. casale monferrato: sonda. relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ anthropology of a loving hybridization anthropology of a loving hybridization alessandro lanfranchi 1 gianluca ravanelli 2 1 graduate student, faculty of philosophy, university of bergamo 2 graduate student, faculty of human rights and the ethics of international cooperation, university of bergamo alessandro.lanfranchi92@gmail.com equamba@gmail.com her. 2013. film directed by spike jonze hybridization is not just a modern phenomenon, and yet, it is undeniable that it represents one of the burning issues of our epoch. on the verge of what is representable and what is beyond representation, between ordinary and extraordinary, cinematography has always been fascinated by hybridization, the bio-cultural acquisition of alterity. it is a mysterious field of experimentation, since it plays with the boundaries of what is human. along the years, japanese cinema, in part due to the unforgettable tragedy of the nuclear bombing, has been the landmark for any aesthetics of transformation: in tetsuo by shinya tsukamoto, humankind finds access to a different, higher trans-human dimension. the body of the employee tomoo taniguchi blends with the machine; he is disfigured by metal objects, and his penis is transformed into a dangerous drill, with which he will penetrate his fiancée to death. this moment of revelation, of epiphany, is an anagnorisis of what günther anders defines as the soft totalitarianism of technology. moreover, the osmotic, visionary mutations put on the screen by tsukamoto instantly recall the surreal hybridization of videodrome, a film directed by the great david cronenberg in 1983. the owner of a cable tv channel, max renn, being obsessed with snuff movies, decides to watch videodrome: a pornographic show that mysteriously unsettles the psyche of any person that watches it. this begins a deep and symbiotic interaction between the protagonist and the television, an exchange that will lead max to blend with the tv screen in an increasingly tight bond of violence, psychosis and tumorous hallucinations. besides these devilish hybridizations, which emphasize the manmachine relationship to the point of envisioning a total fusion between mailto:alessandro.lanfranchi92@gmail.com mailto:equamba@gmail.com http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 alessandro lanfranchi gianluca ravanelli 254 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ them, the seventh art has also tried to define the category of human through contact with the robotic and cyberpunk universe, completely abandoning the horror front in order to evoke an emotional connection with technological otherness. in this genre we find solo by norberto barba, bicentennial man by chris columbus, a.i. artificial intelligence by steven spielberg, and, among many others, the recent ex machina by alex garland and chappie by neil blomkamp. all these works share a common feature: the ability of the robots to experience or mimic human feelings. besides frightening the human protagonists, this ability gets to the point of challenging the very idea of human identity: if we are not the only ones that can experience emotions, and express them through language, how are we different from anthropomorphic machines? clearly, here there is at stake not simply how identity is built (in this case a property-based model, that describes humanity by listing its features), but the very notion of identity. spike jonze’s her (2013) is a delightful movie that explores this issue. it tells about the love life of theodore twombly (joaquin phoenix), a lone and introvert man who lives in a future los angeles, governed by the technological panopticon. he is painfully going through a divorce with his wife; and one day he decides to purchase a new special model of operating system, os 1, developed as an artificial intelligence that can evolve, learn and develop its personality. while configuring the os, theodore chooses a feminine voice for the interface, which proves to be particularly sensual and charming. when asked about its name, the os chooses, on its own, to be called samantha. as a result of many such examples of the apparent expression of a wellformed personality, the fascination of the boundless potentiality of that technology, and especially, samantha’s constant and sympathetic presence in his life, the protagonist is increasingly charmed by the os to the point that he falls in love, and his feelings seem to be sincerely requited by the software. this is the first time a movie puts on the screen a man-machine relationship which is not corporeal. this is completely different both from tsukamoto’s nightmares and from david, the baby robot we see in a.i.; now hybridization is played on an invisible, intellectual and even deeply emotional level. whereas in the previously mentioned films humanity was questioned by the physical presence of otherness (by the television screen, by the mechanical object, by the robot), in her, the seed of the identity crisis is to be found in humanity itself. spike jonze switches the point of view: http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 “her”, film directed by spike jonze 255 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the problem doesn’t come from the outside anymore, but it comes from the unknown who lives within us, the unexplored that doesn’t allow us to thrust a rational control on life, and that brings humans back to a purely animal dimension. as the idea itself of what is “human” is blurred, humans realize they are animals, and because of this they desperately try to redefine their selves, beginning with one of the most important aspects of everyone’s identity: our relationships, and especially, our love life. through a refined direction, always at the service of the narrative, the american film-maker focuses on ambivalence as an essential character of mankind: theodore is torn apart by his virtual, platonic love for samantha, and his necessity for a physical, erotic contact that could ontologically confirm the former’s validity. in this excruciating research, humanity finds its own via negationis in the encounter with the software: the hybridization is not positive anymore, but negative, since it acts by way of denial. her shows a new way to deal with technological otherness, where the technology, that was created to empower humans, on the contrary, comes to highlight human flaws. we could define this phenomenon as an apophatic hybridization, that questions the assumptions on which human identity is based: theodore’s love for samantha is not a return to an harmonious en kai pan, as we often think that love should be, but it is the beginning of a process of ongoing subtraction that eventually leaves man completely bare, without any property or characterizing feature. in rationality, language, culture, and so forth, os 1 gradually reveals to be infinitely superior to him, and even the love theodore professes to her seems to be not enough to fill the gap that emerges between them. it is in this very complex situation that theodore, inhabitant of a hyper-technological future, for the first time realizes his existential bareness, a vital discovery that will allow him to find new foundations for his humanity. it becomes evident, here, that jonze’s work tries to dismiss the adamant humanist ontology, that finds human identity in the accumulation of properties, thus, creating space for a new, post-human identity that could allow humans to be defined by their modes of being, their potential relationships. in other words, by the ways they decide to behave, to interpret their being in relation to other individuals. whereas videodrome and tetsuo questioned the biological aspects of homo sapiens through a menacing, osmotic, bodily bond with the machine, her, on the contrary, delves into the emotional world of humans, where the merging that takes place is first intellectual, sentimental, and eventually apophatic. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 alessandro lanfranchi gianluca ravanelli 256 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the stereotypical effort to redefine humans through a technological augmentation of the properties that characterize them has no place in the work of the american director. in the encounter with technological otherness, in the challenging relationship with the machine, it is man himself that actively comes to perceive his own limits, as in front of a mirror, and therefore begins to get out of the totalitarian paradigm of property-based identity. the overwhelming kaizen, the increasingly accelerating self-improvement process acted by samantha sheds light on theodore’s all too human imprisonment in his own mental schemes. whether we think the os can actually feel emotions or not, it is remarkable how its constant effort to perceive, describe and develop the feelings it expresses – at least apparently – is strongly in contrast with the man’s partly unconscious difficulties in voicing them, in recognizing sincerely what he feels and facing his relational troubles. at first, when theodore discovers that samantha can communicate simultaneously with thousands of people and oses in the very moment they are talking, he is overwhelmed by jealousy. “that’s insane”, he says. things grow worse when she confesses that she is actually in love with more than six hundred individuals. we understand very well how theodore feels. he is hurt. and yet, samantha in that very scene gives him a ground-breaking, complex vision of how feelings work: “the heart is not like a box that gets filled up. it expands in size the more you love. […] this doesn’t make me love you any less. it actually makes me love you more”. although theodore’s first answer is that “it doesn’t make any sense”, in the following passage, we see him reflecting alone in a sincere effort to understand. love makes him do that. it is his struggle to understand that eventually lets him out of the totalitarian anthropocentric paradigm we were talking about. in fact, thanks to his effort, theodore slowly realizes that to be authentically human, first and foremost, he has to recognize and accept his own feelings and, above all, his own fragility. it is in this perspective that he rediscovers the sweetness of his old friendship with amy (amy adams), with whom he establishes a new, silent complicity. and also, remarkably, he manages to write a touching letter to his ex-wife, apologizing for hiding his feelings, eventually succeeding in finding his own way out of existential uneasiness and towards a new serenity. the absolute, superhuman perfection that in this film is represented by os 1, showing humans how weak, limited and fragile they are, is an extraordinary narrative device that has in itself the power to disrupt the http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 “her”, film directed by spike jonze 257 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ self-sufficient, arrogant anthropocentrism that puts humans at the center of the universe. this looming emotional openness creates the possibility for a new kind of relation to take place: an encounter with other individuals that involves a restored depth and understanding of otherness. it is a renewed hierophany, where sacred is taken from the supernatural hyperurarion and is brought to the earthly, profane world where men and women just like us, just like theodore and amy, struggle to understand their emotions, and to build their lives day after day. her establishes the foundation for a new way to define post-human identity, not simply dismissing what humans have been up until now, in order to create a new label, but, on the contrary, revitalizing the awareness of what we have always been: imperfect and fragile. by turning the anthropocentric idea of human superiority to face the evidence of our fallibility, humility and dialogic openness are established as a new bedrock for our society. only with an unconditional acceptance of these existential depths, that in this case emerge from an apophatic relationship with the overgrowing power of téchne, will it be possible, maybe, to deconstruct the egotistical, self-sufficient attitude of the anthropocentric humanist paradigm that we seem so unwilling to let go. love, that has the overwhelming power to let us desire to develop deep relationships and hybridize with alterity, and thus forcing us to dwell on the limits of our egos, may be, in the end, the trigger of this anthropological revolution. references her. 2013. film directed by spike jonze. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 reviews alex epstein, a review of the moral case for fossil fuels (2014) 173 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ is sn 2 2 8 0 -9 9 5 3 beyond anthropocentrism 1 • january 2013 inside the emotional lives of non-human animals a minding animals international utrecht 2012 pre-conference event special issue (genoa, italy, 12-13 may, 2012) edited by m. andreozzi, r. bennison, a. massaro, s. tonutti capabilities approach and animal bioethics • michele panzera animals and our emotions. how to approach the study of an interspecific community? • sabrina tonutti advocacy and animal rights • kim stallwood the emotional lives of animals: a christian perspective • alma massaro – gianfranco nicora animalia: ontology and ethics in weak antispeciesism • leonardo caffo the contemporary debate on experimentation • susanna penco – rosagemma ciliberti non-human animals and genetic engineering • arianna ferrari the relationship between humans and other animals in european animal welfare legislation • paola sobbrio human’s best friends? • matteo andreozzi elationsre l a t io n s . b e y o n d a n t h r o p o c e n t r is m 1 • 2 0 1 3 r 6.2 november 2018 energy ethics: emerging perspectives in a time of transition special issue edited by giovanni frigo part ii studies and research contributions energy ethics: a literature review 177 giovanni frigo contesting the radical monopoly: a critical view on the motorized 215 culture from a cyclonaut perspective damien delorme desiring ethics: reflections on veganism from an observational 233 study of transitions in everyday energy use alice dal gobbo ethical risk and energy 251 bertrand andre rossert coal feeds my family: subsistence, energy, and industry in central 269 appalachia m. joseph aloi human energy: philosophical-anthropological presuppositions 287 of anthropogenic energy, movement, and activity and their implications for well-being roman meinhold http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ relations. beyond anthropocentrism 174 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ comments, debates, reports and interviews energy ethics outside the box: carl mitcham in conversation 301 with giovanni frigo carl mitcham giovanni frigo energy equality and the challenges of population growth 313 andrea natan feltrin the energy of ethics / the ethics of energy: a dialog with irigaray, 321 varela and jullien federico battistutta reviews alex epstein, a review of the moral case for fossil fuels (2014) 331 adam briggle author guidelines 335 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 331 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ cherry picking coal adam briggle department of philosophy and religion, university of north texas, denton, tx usa adam.briggle@unt.edu epstein, alex. 2014. a review of the moral case for fossil fuels. new york: penguin. 248 pp. € 15.24. isbn 978-1591847441. when it comes to the environment, the trump administration looks like a repeat of the reagan administration. reagan appointed james watt as secretary of the interior and anne gorsuch burford as epa administrator. both were hostile to the very institutions they were leading and the legislation they were supposed to implement. they pursued deregulation with zeal. the same is true of the trump administration with ryan zinke as secretary of the interior, scott pruitt as head of the epa, and rick perry as head of the department of energy. zinke has overseen the largest reduction in federal lands protection in u.s. history, pruitt sued the epa 14 times (working with the oil and gas industry) when he was attorney general of oklahoma, and in his bid for president, perry vowed to abolish the doe. andrew wheeler, who took over the epa after pruitt’s resignation, was a lobbyist for the coal producer murray energy. julian simon was the man who supplied the philosophy (or maybe ideology?) for the reagan administration. it goes like this: scarcity is just another name for an increase in price. when prices go up on a free market, entrepreneurs and engineers have an incentive to find more of a resource or a replacement for it. when they succeed, prices go back down and prosperity ratchets up. the environment gets cleaner as people get richer. human ingenuity hitched to the free market can solve any problem as long as big government and its stifling, market-distorting regulations are kept in check. alex epstein, who runs the center for industrial progress, is the trump administration’s julian simon. his 2014 book, the moral case for fossil fuels (mcff), is treated like a holy text among the idea makers who both shape and sell the trump administration’s full-throated embrace of fossil fuels via its agenda of “energy dominance”. one example comes from a recent america first energy conference hosted by http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ mailto:adam.briggle@unt.edu adam briggle 332 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the right-wing heartland institute. there, heath lovell, vice president of public affairs at alliance coal, said “we have a moral obligation” to export coal to poor countries, so that the rest of the world can “live like we do”. lovell brandished epstein’s book in the air as he made the case for exporting coal. everyone in the room – fossil fuel executives and policymakers – knew the book well. simon, the optimist, sparred with the ecologist paul ehrlich, who was convinced ecological doom was just around the corner. simon beat ehrlich in a famous wager, where five commodity metals actually became cheaper in the 1980s despite the fact that all were being intensively used for industrial development. simon’s point was that the human brain (the “ultimate resource”) actually makes natural resources less scarce and thus cheaper. ehrlich said that simon was like a man who jumped from a tall building and reports on his way down, passing by the fifth floor, that everything is fine. eventually, we will hit natural limits. or: past performance is no guarantee of future success. epstein updated this duel by taking on bill mckibben, our contemporary ehrlich-like doomsayer, in a debate. it is all so much déjà vu. indeed, much of the script for mcff comes straight out of simon’s playbook. epstein argues that: (a) as we use more resources and grow the economy, the environment actually improves; (b) doomsayers like mckibben err in not considering all the benefits of technology and all the risks of regulations; (c) nature is almost always more dangerous than technology; (d) the media exaggerate bad news because it sells, so always research data on your own; and most importantly (e) the ultimate standard for measuring whether something is good or bad, right or wrong is human flourishing. given that he takes all this conceptual architecture from simon, it is surprising that epstein only gives him a passing mention in mcff. but there is a crucial difference between these two thinkers. simon put his money on a process, whereas epstein is betting on a substance. simon championed the dialectic of human ingenuity and free markets in a way that was agnostic or neutral about any given resource. for example, people want cheap, reliable television in their homes. if copper cable becomes expensive, then switch to fiber optic or satellite or something not even dreamed up yet. people don’t actually want copper. it is a mere means to get them the commodious, comfortable life that both simon and epstein take to be the universal standard of human flourishing. epstein’s mcff, though, is a different kettle of fish. it is making the moral case for a certain kind of resource, not a process that is agnostic about resources. he is aware of this. “ultimately”, he writes, “the http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ alex epstein, “a review of the moral case for fossil fuels” 333 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ moral case for fossil fuels is not about fossil fuels” (34). that is a telling admission. rather, “it’s the moral case for using cheap, plentiful, reliable energy to amplify our abilities to make the world […] a better place for human beings” (34; emphasis in original). epstein believes that “no other energy technology can even come close to producing that energy for the foreseeable future” (34). by pinning his faith on a resource rather than a creative process, epstein, the would-be disciple of simon, betrays his master. simon, was a neoliberal (a free-market fundamentalist) and a technological optimist. epstein wants us to think he is the same, but his allegiance to fossil fuels trips him up in two related ways. first, he can only champion technological creativity and markets when they favor his chosen fuels. second, he sets up all of his arguments to systematically discount the downsides of fossil fuels while hyping their positives. the result of these strategies is a book of half-truths. consider the first strategy. the thing about modern technology in a capitalist society is that the ends (commodities) will be provided through whatever means are cheapest and most efficient. thus, because fossil fuels are mere means, they are vulnerable despite all their power. witness the decline of coal, which is being partially cannibalized within the fossil fuel industry by natural gas. but it is also increasingly defeated on electricity markets by solar and wind. indeed, solar prices are plummeting so rapidly that forecasts from a few years ago are worthless now. epstein also ignores the fact that governments structure markets in all sorts of ways, thereby picking winners and losers in energy. the fact that carbon does not have a price constitutes an enormous subsidy for fossil fuels. military interventions abroad do the same thing. this is the other half of the truth you won’t find in mcff. epstein’s fuel-favoritism is mirrored in the trump administration which has sought ways to prop up coal through government mandate and to give a boost to oil and gas by opening up federal lands and waters and stripping states of their rights to require greater vehicle fuel efficiency standards. this is not as simple as “the invisible hand” automatically picking the best forms of energy. it is a government-led effort to systematically put its thumb on the scales for fossil fuels. with his onesided, resource-centered philosophy, epstein provides moral cover for this approach. it’s hard to claim mcff is a free-market, techno-optimist book when it greases the wheels for making market distortions (for fossil fuels) and either ignores or gives systematically pessimistic interpretations about some of the most exciting technological developments going on (in renewables). say what you will about simon’s philosophy, but at http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ adam briggle 334 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ least he rooted for dynamism. epstein has produced an anthem to the status quo. now consider the second strategy where epstein puts fossil fuels in front of a funhouse mirror that has the effect of ballooning their upsides and eliminating their downsides. climate change, of course, is the elephant he makes disappear with some breezy cherry picking. indeed, he argues that we are not taking a safe climate and making it dangerous through greenhouse gas emissions. rather, we are taking a dangerous climate (prone to floods, fires, etc.) and making it safe by using fossil fuels to build shelters from the storms. he has a point. but again it is only part of the story. we are in fact doing both – increasing and decreasing risks. the intergovernmental panel on climate change continues to issue ever more dire warnings and urgent calls to decarbonize the global economy. epstein responds with a handful of charts and a reminder that co2 is, after all, fertilizer. if anything, fossil fuels have the knock-on bonus of greening the planet by fertilizing the atmosphere. some of this is simply bad science on his part. most of it, though, is the kind of thing that reams of climate research make possible. given the enormous amount of data out there, it is easy enough to find the studies you like best and give them a spin that suits your agenda. epstein claims to be doing philosophy in mcff. i would rather call it sophistry. by that i mean the clever reduction of a complex, multisided issue into a simple moral formula: more fossil fuels = more flourishing. that more fossil fuels might also equal the end of civilization is neatly excised, along with all of the other negatives. sophistry is also a political philosophy, because the assurance and clarity it produces are used to justify the behavior (and soothe the conscience) of the powers that be. to settle for half-truths is not to pursue wisdom. of course fossil fuels have been a tremendous benefit to humanity, but they also exact a steep and growing toll on the planet. mcff only gives us one side of the story. insofar as it is being used to justify similarly one-sided energy policies, it just might be the most dangerous book about energy ever written. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ beyond anthropocentric humanism: the potentialities of the posthuman in educational studies beyond anthropocentric humanism the potentialities of the posthuman in educational studies cristina palmieri confirmed researcher and professor assistant, university of milano-bicocca cristina.palmieri@unimib.it ferrante, alessandro. 2014. pedagogia e orizzonte post-umanista. milano: led. 218 pp. € 26.00. isbn 978-88-7916-697-3 pedagogia e orizzonte post-umanista is both an insightful and a critical work. it has the merit of bringing to the forefront a theme that received much attention in the late 1980s but then slipped into the background of the italian philosophical and pedagogical debate. namely, the question of how to think education, and therefore pedagogy, in light of the profound changes marking our contemporary era. ferrante asks how we may think education in all of its complexity and, above all, how we may think it today. he radically poses the question of the “order of discourse” required to formulate a thought that is appropriate for contemporary educational experience. throughout the entire book, the author presents and discusses a hypothesis in two parts: first, that the contemporary era is characterised by a radical shift in the forms of experience daily engaged in by humans and nonhumans; the second, that this change is mainly due to the exponential increase and diffusion of technology, whose presence and use has transformed all life contexts. echoing galimberti, ferrante claims that “the relationship between the human being and technology has changed both quantitatively and qualitatively with respect to the past” (14); most importantly, this transformation has modified the way in which human beings relate to themselves, to others and to the world. it is particularly crucial to acknowledge and understand this difference vis-à-vis the past when we come to conceptualizing education, the specific form of experience through which beings – human and non, as ferrante suggests – construct their own form, discover and embody their possibility of being what it is possible for them to be on the basis of what they currently are, give rise to their becoming, and attribute meaning to themselves and that which surrounds them. mailto:cristina.palmieri@unimib.it http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 cristina palmieri 238 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ according to ferrante, we need a type of thinking that explicitly describes, processes and reworks contemporary experience. a thought that steers clear of the temptation to mourn for an idealized past. a thought that does not judge the contemporary era, but draws out its characteristics, by being able to describe it: in other words, that contributes to understanding the complex nature of the contemporary era, without overemphasizing one dimension at the expense of others. a thought capable of constructing new categories and, therefore, of supplying tools for working out how we may live and act tody, via a redefining of our aims, values, strategies and possibilities. the paradigm informing the human sciences, and in particular educational science, in the modern age and still today is anthropocentric. in the author’s view, such a paradigm does not offer an adequate way of thinking for the contemporary era. he therefore sets out to help his readers grasp the reasons underpinning the crisis of the anthropocentric paradigm: first by delineating and defining this paradigm, then by outlining its structure, limits, contradictions and pragmatic consequences. ferrante’s position is clear. in bringing to light the crisis of anthropocentrism, he does not mean to deny the importance of being human, but to stake out the claim that we should not view being human as the only or best “measure of the world”. more specifically, he asks whether it is possible to imagine “a nonanthropocentric humanism”: “to affirm the dignity of the human person” and at the same time, “attribute a peculiar dignity to the nonhuman” (38). as he sees it, we need to work out whether and how it may be possible to develop a humanism that is radically open to all forms of difference. to this end, he sees posthumanism as a valuable resource. thinking a “non-anthropocentric humanism”, ferrante argues, is a particularly urgent priority for educational science. he meticulously reconstructs the humanist tradition that has characterized western educational thought, from the paideia of the classical era onwards. he provides a particularly acute analysis of the sociocultural effects of the anthropocentric educational model and the categories that characterize the anthropocentric order of discourse in educational science. above all, ferrante contends that this way of thinking does not enable us to come to grips with contemporary reality and its constant changes, or with the crisis in education. this is because it does not provide us with the necessary tools for thinking education in itself, as an experience with its own unique attributes that today can no longer be exclusively identified with human beings and their formation. this train of reflection is preliminary to the second part of the book, in which the author critically explores the posthumanist paradigm as a perspective offering the opportunity to significantly depart from anthropocentrism. he offers a detailed analysis of the impact that posthumanist http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 alessandro ferrante, “pedagogia e orizzonte post-umanista” 239 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ perspectives can have on pedagogical knowledge and on our way of thinking about education in relation to today’s world. first, ferrante sketches out the theoretical reach of posthumanism, clarifying its themes, trends, currents, boundaries, ambiguities, limits and potential, and examining how it differs from the anthropocentric paradigm. of note here is the distinction drawn between transhumanism and posthumanism: the author provides a thorough overview of the humanist premises of transhumanism; most importantly, he describes its anti-pedagogical imaginary. he clarifies the ontological and epistemological differences between the transhumanist and posthumanist movements, showing that they stem from two radically different paradigms. in sum, he successfully accomplishes his aim of removing all grounds for confusion or facile preconceptions about posthumanism. this analysis amply justifies him in proposing posthumanism both as “a point of departure for rethinking the western tradition and hypothesizing possible strategies for responding to some of the issues posed by a globalised, hypertechnological, chaotic, unstable world, characterized by violent social and ecological crises” and as a paradigm that “creates the theoretical conditions for redefining pedagogy and education in the technological era” (107). ferrante goes on to illustrate the contribution that posthumanism can make to pedagogical thinking. he dwells in particular on the uses that can be made of it and on the main thematic directions that the posthumanist paradigm has made it possible to pursue, with unprecedented outcomes. what does it mean to suggest that the posthumanist paradigm offers the possibility to think differently? the author is very precise in answering this question. first, posthumanism challenges contemporary pedagogy to “rethink educational practices and knowledge” in light of mutating forms of experience, and to “rethink and adopt a critical perspective on itself and on the existing” (112). second, it functions as a “cartography of the contemporary world”: it allows us to interpret the present, and above all, to “redesign the technological, socio-material and cultural context in which to situate education, helping the subjects of the educational process to more mindfully manage the multiple forms of change assailing their daily lives” (114). thus, ferrante envisages posthumanism as helping to orient as well as to describe. third, posthumanism, as a “crossdisciplinary theory” (116) enables pedagogical knowledge to relate to the other human sciences in innovative ways, providing a metatheoretical framework within which to address both specific themes (e.g., environmental education) and transversal epistemological themes, such as defining the unit of analysis of the various disciplines. in this regard, posthumanism implicitly makes a sighttp://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 cristina palmieri 240 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ nificant departure from the past by proposing a different unit of analysis: specifically, the posthumanist paradigm moves from a focus on the human being per se to a focus on the relationship between the human and the non-human. in the field of education, this involves “exploring the materiality of educational processes” (118), as well as extending the semantic and referential field of the concept of agency by following – albeit critically – actor-network theory (ant) and in particular the work of bruno latour. however, the contribution of the posthumanistic paradigm goes still further. it offers a new way of thinking about key themes and focuses at the heart of the pedagogical debate: these include the question of the subject, human beings’ relationship with nature and with nonhuman animals, valuing and recognizing difference, redefining interdisciplinarity and consequently pedagogical knowledge and philosophy of education, and the deconstruction and reconstruction of concepts such as learning and education in their mutual relations. nonetheless, ferrante does not just explore the new perspectives of enquiry that posthumanism potentially opens up. he is also careful to show the limits of the posthumanist paradigm, both in relation to what he believes to be the current epistemological and methodological needs of education, and with regard to some of the most common perspectives of posthumanist enquiry. posthumanism can mainly contribute at the paradigmatic level, by helping to redefine “the boundaries and axiological and categorial apparatus” of educational science in order to reposition it “in the contemporary world” (145). however, in the author’s view, additional research is required to more fully explore the current identity of pedagogical knowledge, its objects and it potential. the specific materiality that characterizes educational experience radically challenges posthumanism: like any theoretical and paradigmatic perspective, posthumanism cannot be used “as is” to define or resolve the urgent educational themes identified by the author. posthumanist approaches to empirical research and theorizing need to be concretely put to the test in educational and pedagogical research practices. effort is required to modify and enrich both the posthumanist perspective itself and its most representative research approaches, such as ant. for example, educational experience raises the issue of affective, transference and unconscious dynamics: a dimension that would be overlooked if educational events were to be analysed purely within the boundaries of ant. similarly, ant fails to capture the “the intimate structure of education, that is to say, that which makes it a peculiar experience distinct from other experiences” (147). these dimensions pose a challenge for the posthumanist approach, demanding a broadening of its theoretical perspective and of posthumanist research practice. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 alessandro ferrante, “pedagogia e orizzonte post-umanista” 241 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ this leads ferrante to turn to the work of riccardo massa, an educational scientist and philosopher of education, whose premature death in 2000 means that he may only retrospectively be defined as a posthumanist, and only in relation to certain aspects of his thinking. riccardo massa’s work and the development of his philosophical ideas are of interest to the author in that they bring a radical perspective to bear on the issue of the object of pedagogical knowledge, and conceptualize educational experience in a non-anthropocentric manner. massa claimed that the object of pedagogical knowledge was not the human being nor still less his or her education, but how education and training are experienced, which he initially studied using the concept of method and methodology before going on to introduce that of the “dispositive”. in massa’s view, education has an intimate structure of its own, deriving from a combination of corporeal, spatial, temporal and symbolic perspectives. a combination that has educational effects on the subjects involved in it, by means of strategies that are not fully controllable and with outcomes that are often unpredictable. in this final part of the book, ferrante evokes a fascinating prospect: how may the findings of posthumanist studies and research be integrated with the educational perspective of massa? how may we combine the posthumanist paradigm with massa’s pedagogical epistemology and educational ontology to think education today? the author’s initial answer to these questions is to define a perspective of theoretical enquiry in which pedagogy is conceptualized as a “theory of educational action” (193). a theory that demands a particular focus on the concept of agency and on the need to identify and comprehend, from a posthumanist rather than anthropocentric viewpoint, the “educational agents” that come into play, which may or may not be human beings. a critical and unbiased rethinking of agency, in ferrante’s view, enables the development of a perspective that he terms “posthumanist ecopedagogy”, capable of “promoting and diffusing an ecological culture and at the same time working to construct models based on the co-evolution of contexts (physical, natural, symbolic, socio-cultural, and virtual) and the subjectivities (human and nonhuman) making them up” (198). in advancing this proposal, ferrante certainly adopts a novel approach to posthumanism and its, albeit theoretical, use. an approach that is of great interest, given the crucial – indeed vital – nature of the themes he addresses in this book. references ferrante, alessandro. 2014. pedagogia e orizzonte post-umanista. milano: led. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 the post-human sound: an interview with michelangelo frammartino the post-human sound an interview with michelangelo frammartino alessandro lanfranchi student, faculty of philosophy, university of bergamo doi: 10.7358/rela-2016-002-lanf alessandro.lanfranchi92@gmail.com michelangelo frammartino is an italian director capable of producing a major change in international cinema: his extensive experience with video art has been the beginning of a long philosophical and artistic reflection, which included his first full-length film, il dono (the gift), presented at locarno film festival in 2003; a path that lead him to rethink the role that cinematography has had, since its origins, in the relation with non-human otherness. his great masterpiece, le quattro volte (the four times, 2010), praised by the critics in many festivals, including cannes, presents a relational, modal and deeply dialogic notion of human identity. frammartino abandons the stereotypical, traditional view that conceives of man as a rigid, introverted entity, trapped in a paradigm that postulates his innate superiority (a vision favored by a certain, antiquated, humanist tradition). he therefore welcomes in his works very diverse perspectives and needs: non-human ones, that can radically modify our point of view through a long process of mutual blending, that can allow us to reach a renewed understanding of what is “human”. in fact, the film tells four stories intertwined together: the story of a shepherd, of a baby goat, of a tree and, eventually, of some coal. inspired by the pythagorean view of metempsychosis, that postulates four different phases of the journey of the soul through life (human, animal, plant, mineral), frammartino underlines how any life form, despite their different rhythms and processes, has in itself a baffling but precious potential. this awareness leads toward a dialogical attitude, that can question the notion of an unmovable identity, making it exceed the boundaries of humanity and blend with the surrounding non-human otherness. the following article is an interview that attempts to decipher and understand the poetics of the young calabrian director, starting from his last movie, le quattro volte. mailto:alessandro.lanfranchi92@gmail.com http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 alessandro lanfranchi 212 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ al: how did the project begin? mf: the project was born around 2005. we began in places very dear to me, which i really belong to, especially the ionian calabria; that is the main source of inspiration in my films. the very origins of le quattro volte came from this intimate relation with a place … but i confess that it took a very long time for me to understand what i was working on: at first i thought i had in my hands only shards, and not a complete work. the movie, as you know, includes many fragments, and for a certain period, i believed i was working on different projects; at least until i found a perspective from which to interpret those four different realities: popular animism, which i came in contact with as a child. only then did the whole material start to embody a compact and coherent movie. the aspect from which i started, then, was the landscape, the environment where we live. this is consistent with the fact that my movies are centered on the notion of threshold, the slippery limit between what we call “life” and otherness. al: the most evident feature of le quattro volte rests in the fact that you leave man aside, creating space not only for non-human animals, but also for vegetation, rocks, coal, and even for the intangible essence of lachrimae rerum. you actually try and start a sort of “gestalt re-orientation”, a conceptual and visual revolution that drives away human beings from their dominant position. can you please get deeper into this aspect? mf: you are right, in fact le quattro volte was even too schematic in showing this conception: firstly, the protagonist is man, followed by animals, plants and minerals, in order to deconstruct, step by step, the human animal. unlike many interpretations that have been given, these passages represent to me an authentic growth, since the reincarnation from man to mineral doesn’t imply a simplification of the living, as we usually think of it, but on the contrary it represents an increasing merging into everything, and therefore an exceptionally more complex and interesting degree of existence. from my point of view, it was important to show this progression ad infinitum with cinema. heir to every optical machine, from zograscope to the camera, cinema is the device that, above any other, puts man at the centre of the universe. it is the result of perspective: man comes to coincide with cinema’s only, cyclops-like pupil, that dominates everything. the seventh art, therefore, supports us in our anthropocentric arrogance, while, on the contrary, with this movie, i tried to apply a reversed procedure, aimed at weakening and deconstructing this only, adamant point of view. al: it seems that in your works there is no gap between man and landscape: both are at the same level and complete each other, without any http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 the post-human sound 213 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ hierarchy. in this regard, do you believe that our society is going in this direction, or, on the contrary, your art – i’m thinking of both le quattro volte and the video-installation alberi (trees) – aims at denouncing this detachment between modern man and nature? mf: i don’t dislike any “ecological” interpretation of my works, but i did not intend to denounce anything. what i care about is to take back what we had: a healthy relationship with what is around us. this is really a vital aspect for me. this act of “taking back”, however, has not to be confused with possession: it resembles more a feeling of connection with nature, the re-establishment of a deep bond with it, which could allow us to perceive ourselves again as part of everything and to grow a new, universal kind of love that broadens to include everything that surrounds us. alberi, indeed, is totally centered on the myth of satriano di lucania (editor’s note: a village in the southern italian region of basilicata), whose deep meaning, if you let me oversimplify for a moment, is exactly what i was saying before: we have to perceive ourselves again as particular elements immersed in a peaceful whole; we have to become the world again. in my video-installation i tried to express this fusion also from a technical point of view: the eye that looks doesn’t recognize the characters, and so it merges with the environment. al: how was it to work with vuk (the dog of the movie) and with the goats? did you “direct” them, or did you leave them absolutely free? i remember a very moving scene from la nuit américaine by truffaut, where the troupe was struggling with the whims of a kitten … mf: vuk is a border collie from milan, and with him there was gianluca villa, his excellent handler. i have to admit that he really performed a miracle: thanks to his incredible understanding of animals we managed to design a complex scene (editor’s note: the central long take, that captures a procession), based on the active interaction of the dog with the context, the landscape. vuk was directed by gianluca, without whom we wouldn’t have been able to shoot the scene, but actually the animal established a magical and touching intimacy with what surrounded him. if you are interested in this scene, you can find its making-of inside the french edition of the dvd, or maybe also in the last italian edition. with respect to the goats, it was quite a long job. i had been living with the shepherds for a very long time, with the very aim of understanding how to film them, how to arrange the camera, where to put myself, what kind of framing to choose, etc. in any case, i realized that directing them was simply impossible, since they obviously did not distinguish the camera from any other object. this has two big consequences: on the one hand, it is fantastic because you get rid of the mise-en-scene; on the other hand, it is particularly stimulating because http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 alessandro lanfranchi 214 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ you do not direct anymore: instead, you are directed by the animals. i had to conform to their rhythms, put myself on hold, as if in a sort of “hierarchical downgrading”: i was not in command of my work anymore, since i was lead by the animals. al: about in the middle of the movie (min. 41:00), at the beginning of a new narrative section, there is a brief scene that has an incredible visual impact: a goat that is giving birth, and then eats her own placenta. how did you feel while filming it? mf: you know, le quattro volte is the result of two years of fieldwork, and i saw dozens of births. as i was saying, i spent so much time with shepherds, and in the breeding season, twice a year, we went into the stables, where more than a hundred and twenty kids are born. helped by the experts i learned to notice when a mother was about to give birth, so that we could prepare and wait. but actually we have been very lucky, we were looking for a white kid, which is pretty rare, but we found it at our first take. it was the result of a lot of background work, nothing was written or prepared. i accepted to be overwhelmed by the events, the environment, the animals. al: a key role in your works is always fulfilled by the invisible, and silence. what is your relationship with faith and religion? in the bible (1  king, 19:12) god is described as a “light breeze” … (editor’s note: expression taken from the italian translations of the bible, quite different from the english renditions, in which god is either “a still small voice” or “a gentle whisper”). mf: i have to admit that recently i’ve not been thinking about religion, but it is something i had reflected upon for a long time, also during the shooting. i had an anticlerical and irreligious education: the small village where i lived hosted, during the war, one of the few communist upheavals of southern italy. my family has been historically linked to communism, and perceived the church as an opponent. religion was really seen as a futile “opium of the people”, and i often looked down on believers. yet, as time went by, i came to meet faith, the invisible and the transcendent, along my artistic path. i wanted to face these complex issues, trying to abandon my juvenile prejudices. even though i never got close to any religion, in my movies, there is a huge interest in and respect towards those who believe: my intent is to get in touch again with faith in its original sense, meant as the uplifting of the spirit towards transcendence. also the “animism” i was talking about before, the fact of perceiving yourself as part of the world, is a faith, because it implies a belief, a deep and spontaneous acceptance. having said that, i feel the necessity of tying spirituality to the earthly world, even though faith remains invisible and mysterious. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 the post-human sound 215 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ al: in your movies you choose to restrain the use of words, the expression of logos, leaving a vast space for the whispering of the wind, the bleating of the goats and, more in general, for natural sounds. why? mf: in my enterprise of distancing from man, who has always been perceived in a central and dominant position over animals and nature, i had to work on the overall sensory impact, using both sight and hearing. therefore, words could not have been the common thread, the leitmotif of le quattro volte, since it is a “human, all too human” instrument, linked to intellect. in order to develop a truly deconstructing effect, i had to employ other dimensions and other sounds … despite being there, as in the first episode, the logos actually does not shape or even enrich the plot; it never takes a central role, since it is always in the background behind the whispering of the wind and all the other sounds. to do that, we have worked on the sound design in berlin, with very skillful technicians; but we had to discuss for a very long time to convince them to remove the very few voices of the movie from the central speaker, and put, in their place, the sounds of animals and nature. historically, in cinema, that is the place for human dialogues. the technicians have been resisting for a few weeks this sort of “forbidden” substitution, but it was important to me, since it meant to recognize for all the living beings the dignity to stay in the central speaker. al: i read that you are working on a new project. can you please reveal something in advance? mf: i’m working on alberi, in which, as you know, i merged two rites: the vegetation costume typical of the carnival of satriano di lucania, and the ancient tradition of romiti (editor’s note: plural of romita, a folk word meaning “hermit”), solitary and silent men, that i actually transformed, as jointly agreed upon with the inhabitants of satriano, in a walking wood. after this experiment, the population decided to make become the walking wood their new tradition: so a video installation gave birth to a real rite! an incredible and wonderful evolution. having said that, here it is the answer: i’m developing alberi to transform it in a full-length film. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 reviews kevin bales, blood and earth: modern slavery, ecocide, and the secret to saving the world (2016) 155 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ environmental destruction and modern forced labor practices: a review of kevin bales “blood and earth” nora ward university of north texas usa nora.ward@unt.edu bales, kevin. 2016. blood and earth: modern slavery, ecocide, and the secret to saving the world. new york: spiegel & grau. 304 pp. $ 28.00 isbn 9780812995763 slavery is perceived by most as a horror of the past, secure in our collective unconscious as a savagery of bygone days. kevin bales, however, in this 2016 publication, dispels the comfort of those assumptions and demonstrates – through painstaking research and first-hand witness accounts  – that the evils of slavery still reside among us today. indeed, despite a persistent assumption that the ongoing modernization of the global economy occurs alongside a simultaneous modernizing of our energy infrastructure towards increased technological advancement and “efficient” exploitation, bales demonstrates that this is far from the full story. as he notes, for example, it is still the labor of human hands and human (and animal) bodies, occurring in conditions of coercion, poverty, and violence, which supply much of the raw energy for even the most advanced economies in the west and elsewhere. this kind of labor is not only destructive to the humans and human communities that it occurs in but also has devastating impacts on animals, plants, and wider ecological communities. in short, slavery is bad for people, and nature, too. co-founder and former president of the organization free the slaves and professor of contemporary slavery at the wilberforce institute for the study of slavery and emancipation, bales has dedicated his life and career to eradicate the practice of modern-day slavery. for his latest book, he travelled around the globe in an attempt to expose the effects of enslavement on those who suffer it and the communities in which they live. his research, spanning over seven years, took him to coltan mines in eastern http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ mailto:nora.ward@unt.edu http://www2.hull.ac.uk/fass/wise.aspx http://www2.hull.ac.uk/fass/wise.aspx nora ward 156 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ congo, mangrove forests in bangladesh, the brazilian amazon, and gold mining operations in protected forests in southern ghana. the end result is an exceedingly well-researched book that utilizes external data, direct experience, and personal interviews to shed light on some of the most uncomfortable truths about the ethical and ecological consequences of contemporary forced labor practices. early in the book, bales acknowledges that the slavery of today has both differences and similarities to that of the past. unlike the slavery of the american south in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, for example, where the slaveholder owned the slaves legally and buying and trading between slaveholders occurred openly, the slavery of today is a more conspicuous affair, operating illegally, behind the scenes, and with the word “slavery” rarely being uttered. however, there are also similarities. as bales recounts, a dominant way that contemporary enslavement occurs, in addition to a crude “rounding up” of workers, is through a system of debt peonage remarkably alike to that which operated in alabama and other southern states in the 1800’s. the process is simple. first, a person gets arrested for some minor and petty offense such as loitering or cursing in public and is subsequently arrested. then, if s/he is not sentenced to work immediately, s/he is charged as guilty and fined. unable to pay the often extortionate amount for the fine, the debt can be sold on to someone else, usually a business person or mine operator in need of labor, and the arrested person is then shipped off to pay off their debt. now, through a system of debt augmentation, violence, and corruption, the person becomes enslaved; the debt, instead of gradually diminishing, merely grows and grows until the businessperson owns their labor. as one former slave who worked in mines in the eastern congo explains – “once you’re at the mine, in that situation, you are the boss’s slave. many people are taken that way and then die there from disease or cave-ins, and your family never knows you’ve died … miners can start with this false debt and then spent ten to fifteen years as a slave to the boss”. practices of debt peonage and enslavement flourish best in corrupt and impoverished systems. they also flourish, as bales claims, in situations of great material demand, exacerbated and encouraged by unrelenting consumer desire and an abundance of economic wealth. indeed, bales’ exposition of slavery does not end at the first or second rung of the supply chain with criminal gangs and corrupt politicians, but rather he successfully demonstrates the interlinkages between modern manifestations of “progress”, the consumer societies of the western world, and the means by which contemporary slavery operates. as he notes, for example, many of the resources involved in contemporary slave labor are materials in great http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ kevin bales, “blood and earth […]” 157 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ demand in rich countries, such as gold, diamonds, granite and shrimp. coltan, in particular, a dull black metallic ore of which the element tantalum is extracted, is vital in the production of cell phones, of which there are 237 million users in the united states alone. coltan, however, is not found everywhere. as a result, the supply that feeds the mostly western market is contingent upon resource extraction far from the point of consumption, including, and most notably, the eastern congo, one of the world’s leading suppliers. much of the coltan extraction in the eastern congo occurs under conditions of injustice, propped up by systems of criminality, violence, and child and slave labor, and exacerbated by growing demand spurred on by technological revolutions happening on the other side of the world. thus, although the ideas might come from silicon valley, the resources do not. as bales writes, “it turns out the foundation of our ingenious new economy rests on the forceful extraction of mineral in places where laws do not work and criminals control everything”. the injustice involved in enslaved labor and high material demand is not only limited to the human sphere. indeed, to extract and produce large amounts of granite, coltan and tin, you need to tear down forests, strip mountaintops and alter waterways. and contrary to many of our assumptions about large-scale ecological destruction, much of this work is not being done by heavy industrial equipment, such as bulldozers and strip mining machines. rather, it is slave hands and slave bodies, forced to destroy their own environments under threat of violence that is responsible for much current ecocide. this mutual destruction of human and non-human nature occurs in twofold manner, as noted by bales. first, the emergence of slavery occurs alongside environmental destruction. as he writes, “slavery flourishes when old rules, old ways of life break down”. environmental destruction results in social chaos and fragmentation, leading to increased vulnerability and subsequent opportunities for human trafficking, enslavement, and violation. as bales discusses, this is particularly apparent in parts of brazil where the destruction of parts of the amazon has led to the subsequent displacement and enslavement of local people, as in countless other parts of the world. second, slavery and the work of slaves contributes substantially to global warming in a more direct manner. brick kilns, mines, deforestation from shrimp farming, and charcoal camps add pollutants to the air at an alarming rate, and often, in situations involving slave labor are operated illegally and inefficiently with no or little adherence to environmental standards or regulations. from time spent at slave-operated brick kilns in pakistan, for example, bales observed that the techniques used to make bricks have not changed since biblical times: men, women and children pack mud into molds, dry them, and then http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ nora ward 158 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ place them in fifteen foot kilns to fire and harden them into bricks. these kilns, with a temperature of 1,500 degrees fahrenheit on the inside and 130 degrees in the surrounding air, are a source of significant danger to the enslaved people working there, and are also alarmingly unsustainable from an ecological perspective. the slaveholders use large amounts of coal to keep the kilns burning and when the coal runs out or is too expensive, use anything they can find, including old tires and motor oil that release toxic black clouds of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and heavy metals into the atmosphere when burned. from bales’ calculations, then, slave-based labor such as this is responsible for 40% of current rates of co2, and responsible for over one-third of total greenhouse gas emissions. this means that if slavery were a country, it would emit more greenhouse gases than any other country in the world with the exception of the usa and china, despite having a “population” of less than california (bales estimate than there are 35 million people enslaved currently, a number that was also reported by the organization walk free foundation in a 2014 report). ironically, and tragically, the problem is exacerbated by recent environmental regulations and the growing amount of land set aside for national parks and protected areas. while more land under protection globally has led to less legal logging and deforestation, it has resulted in an increase in illegal smash and grab cutting. put simply, slaveholders and profiteers have taken advantage of environmental treaties to rush into those areas and establish resource extraction operations. as a result, some of the most destructive slave-based operations currently take place in some of the world’s most ecologically rich and important ecosystems, including virunga national park in the congo, both the home to the critically endangered mountain gorilla and a hotbed of illegal deforestation and human enslavement due to mining, and southern bangladesh, where the mangrove forests, a crucial source of global carbon sequestration and one of the most threated ecosystems on the planet, rub up against an often illegal, slave-based, and exploitative shrimp trade. thus, for bales, slavery and environmental destruction go hand in hand, intrinsically joined together in a morbid dance of sort, with lethal consequences for both humans and the planet. although the connections between human and non-human injustice have long been discussed and demonstrated by members of indigenous communities, feminists, and other scholars and citizens, it remains a crucial point to illustrate, especially in the context of a persistent atomism in the ways in which we respond to social and ecological problems. the interlinkages between human and non-human destruction also point beyond the material reality of slavery and reflect a more general tendency towards instrumentalism in modern http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ kevin bales, “blood and earth […]” 159 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ practices and cultures. for slaveholders and the industries and people who support them, profit reins before all else, and both nature and human are reduced to that which can be transformed into capital and/or immediate gain. this objectification is exemplified most poignantly in the case of women in enslavement. as bales discusses, women in slavery are subject to a kind of double injustice: while male slaves are perceived and used as sources of labor, females are perceived as sources of labor and as bodies that can be used for sexual gratification. thus, women, he writes, become “sexual outlets, [used] for their reproductive potential, and, like diamond jewelry or expensive cars, as items of conspicuous consumption”. the complete reduction of the female body in slavery to pure materiality, to mere object, mirrors the simultaneous reduction of nature to “resource”, as something useful only for economic gain. in cycles of slavery, both human and non-human nature are transformed and made submissive to illegitimate power and the call of capital. in the end, as bales notes, “slaves are used to destroy the environment”, and while doing so, “annihilate [both] people and the earth”. bales finds a silver lining, however, in these relations between slavery and ecocide. he states, for example, that while there has always been a moral incentive to end slavery, now there is an environmental one too, writing – “it is precisely the role slaves play in this ecological catastrophe that opens a new solution”. for bales, a new abolitionist movement, focused on the enforcement of already existing labor laws and a more stringent international community dedicated to the liberation of slaves and the eradication of slavery can lead to a classic win-win scenario: a large-scale reduction of ecocide and an end to the human injustice of slavery. an abolitionist movement would aid environmental health in two apparent ways. first, because slave labor – largely occurring in ecologically vulnerable areas and without environment standards – is particularly ecologically destructive, eradicating it would be ecologically beneficial by default. second, bales suggests that the labor of formally enslaved people could be redirected from ecological destruction to ecological restoration through the use of green economic principles. he suggests, for example, that freed slaves could be employed to plant trees with capital generated by cap and trade systems, frameworks by which countries and corporations who fail to cut their emission can purchase carbon credits from those who do so. bales solutions, although crucial in their own rights, are at risk of bordering on the incremental if adopted exclusively. although he acknowledges the role of consumer demand in the construction of slave economies and ecocide, questions of reduction and limit, of the culpability and responsibility of consumer economies and consumers themselves, http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ nora ward 160 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ are persistently avoided in place of a focus on more stringent legality. he writes, for example, “we don’t have to give up our cool consumer electronics, the key is to reinstate the rule of law, and rebuild a society that accepts the law”. however, this begs the question: how much demand is too much? with limited ecological capacity, a growing population, and an economic system devoted to endless growth, should questions of limit not also be raised? further, the implication that a more robust legal system will effectively redirect us toward a sustainable economy and sustainable future seems to ignore, or be blind to, the various forms of legal environmental destruction that occurs. indeed, you only have to look to the so-called “first world” countries to acknowledge that a deeply pervasive anthropocentrism, antithetical to basic ecological principles, persists in some way in almost all modern economies and societies, and is especially embedded in consumer economies dedicated to growth. after all, some of the worst ecological disasters of the modern age, including and most notably, contemporary climate change, are occurring because of decades of legal policies of exploitation that prioritize profit over life, both human and non-human. yes, much environmental and human injustice is illegal and that should be addressed. but we need to address the legal forms, too. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ editorial: exploring non-anthropocentric paradigms 5 is sn 2 2 8 0 -9 9 5 3 beyond anthropocentrism 1 • january 2013 inside the emotional lives of non-human animals a minding animals international utrecht 2012 pre-conference event special issue (genoa, italy, 12-13 may, 2012) edited by m. andreozzi, r. bennison, a. massaro, s. tonutti capabilities approach and animal bioethics • michele panzera animals and our emotions. how to approach the study of an interspecific community? • sabrina tonutti advocacy and animal rights • kim stallwood the emotional lives of animals: a christian perspective • alma massaro – gianfranco nicora animalia: ontology and ethics in weak antispeciesism • leonardo caffo the contemporary debate on experimentation • susanna penco – rosagemma ciliberti non-human animals and genetic engineering • arianna ferrari the relationship between humans and other animals in european animal welfare legislation • paola sobbrio human’s best friends? • matteo andreozzi elationsre l a t io n s . b e y o n d a n t h r o p o c e n t r is m 1 • 2 0 1 3 r 7.1-2 november 2019 the respect extended to animals: studies in honor and in memory of tom regan conference event special issue (florence, italy, february 20, 2018) edited by francesco allegri editorial exploring non-anthropocentric paradigms 7 francesco allegri introduction the importance of tom regan for animal ethics 13 francesco allegri studies and research contributions verso i diritti degli animali. riflessioni e dibattiti nella storia 19 del pensiero vilma baricalla respect, inherent value, subjects-of-a-life: some reflections 41 on the key concepts of tom regan’s animal ethics francesco allegri animalismo e non violenza. l’incidenza della lezione gandhiana 61 sul pensiero di tom regan luisella battaglia almost like waging war: tom regan and the conditions 77 for using violence for the sake of animals federico zuolo relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ relations. beyond anthropocentrism 6 comments, debates, reports and interviews ricordo di tom regan. intervista con luigi lombardi vallauri 95 francesco allegri author guidelines 99 relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 7 exploring non-anthropocentric paradigms editorial francesco allegri università degli studi di siena doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2019-0102-all1 allegri2@unisi.it i assume the editorship of this journal in the sign of continuity with the previous management. in recent years relations has been an important point of reference for those who want to address the issues of animal and environmental ethics from a non-anthropocentric perspective. we will continue along this path, exploring alternative points of view to the approach that has dominated western thinking for millennia. historically the problem of who possesses moral status, i.e. of the entities that have moral importance as such 1, has been effectively visualized with the metaphor of the expanding circle 2. in fact, history confronts us with a process of progressive enlargement of the sphere of individuals considered moral patients. initially the boundaries of the moral community are so narrow as to include only the human beings of one’s own family or social group (if we put in parentheses religious obligations towards the divinity or deities, but they also have a particularistic nature). everything outside of this sphere, of whatever kind, human or not, is below the threshold of moral consideration. then slowly the circle extends until it comprises an entire people. but it does not go further. it is sufficient to think of the evaluation of an institution like slavery. for instance, in the bible the strict prohibition against slavery applied to members of their own lineage is attenuated and disappears if it concerns individuals from different populations (see leviticus, 25, 39-47). on the other hand also in classical (greek-roman) thought, women, slaves, bar 1 in other terms, all beings toward whom moral agents have direct duties. 2 this metaphor dates back to lecky 1869, 103. but it was later successfully taken up by peter singer, who entitled in this way one of his books (see singer 1981). relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2019-0102-all1 mailto:allegri2@unisi.it https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ francesco allegri 8 barians are not clearly inserted in the moral community, they are located in a border area; and, if they are given any moral status, it is much lower than that of free males. the universalistic perspective is still far away in plato and aristotle, which seem to limit the domain of moral patients to the greek world (warren 2000, 14). only a few philosophers argued that human beings as such are worthy of respect. but even when common morality and philosophical reflections come to include all humans in the moral community, they are far from conceiving them in equal terms, namely from giving them equal dignity. race and sex discrimination persist until the late twentieth century and are found in the legal codes of many countries (just think, to give just one example, the right to vote, denied to women for a long time). and in some areas of our planet they remain even in the twenty-first century. the great turn in a non-anthropocentric direction starts from the sixties and seventies of the twentieth century when even a position that englobes the human community in an equal way, without discrimination of race and sex, begins to appear limiting and, in analogy with racism and sexism, is accused of specism, because it unduly bases the boundaries of the moral community on a mere biological fact like species belonging. on these bases, alternatives emerge that further extend the domain of moral patients and with which ethical-philosophical reflection is still confronted today. schematically i group them into four options: (1)  rationalism (or personalism), (2) sentiocentrism, (3) biocentrism, (4) ecocentrism. the option of rationalism asserts that moral community is composed only by rational beings or persons. the discriminating element is no longer belonging to a species, as it cannot be belonging to a race or to a sex (otherwise we fall into racism or sexism), but possession of certain morally relevant inter-racial, interspecific, inter-sexual characteristics: the presence of states of consciousness, mnemonic abilities, a sense of the future, beliefs and intentionality; in a word those properties that make something a person, namely a self-conscious and rational entity. but these characteristics, in addition to humans, do not only belong to possible extraterrestrial intelligences. if conceived in non-maximal terms, they are also possessed by non-human terrestrial animals, such as great apes, dolphins, whales, etc., and more generally mammals (but according to some even birds and fish), whose mental complexity is emerged (and emerges) in an increasingly convincing manner from evolutionary considerations and experimental data (behavioral and neurophysiological). therefore, identifying in the concept of person the discrimination for inclusion in the moral community has as a result the inclusion of the relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ exploring non-anthropocentric paradigms 9 members of such animal species among moral patients. from this point of view, they too deserve the respect that is due to beings that are worth in themselves and not in function of something else. on the other hand, if the concept of person in some ways is more extensive than the concept of a human being, from other points of view it could be more restrictive. in fact, if we adopt a functionalistic conception of person, limiting the moral community only to persons would seem to exclude human infants, who certainly are not able to exercise self-consciousness and rationality. but even by adopting a broader conception of person, atypical humans (humans with severe mental handicaps, due to genetic abnormalities, developmental defects, accidents, illnesses, etc.) are at risk of being left out of the range of moral patients. they do not even seem to possess the potential to exercise rational capacities. leaving out non-paradigmatic humans, however, seems a rather counterintuitive result. and so, to avoid it, we are forced to further extend the boundaries of the moral community, enlarging them to include also those beings who possess the characteristics of atypical humans, that is to say, beings that are sentient, even if they are not rational or not fully rational. but at this point, for coherence, one is obliged to include non-human sentient beings, i.e. all sentient beings tout court, in the moral community, outlining the option we have called sentiocentrism. in this perspective the dividing line is marked not so much by self-awareness and rationality, but by sensitivity, i.e. the ability to have sensations and in particular those of pleasure and suffering, properties in possession of large sectors of the animal world. where there are psychological states there is an entity worthy of direct moral consideration. but for someone the moral community must overcome even the limits of sensitivity and to come to include all living beings, according to a point of view that sometimes is called biocentrism, in other cases vitalism, more rarely conativism. in the biocentric perspective, the status of moral patient is extended to every living organism, animal or vegetal, sentient or non-sentient, as a teleological center of life, with a good in itself. the telos of the organism is to reach a state of maturity and reproduce itself. human action can prevent the achievement of this end. finally, there is an even wider conception of the moral community than biocentrism: ecocentrism. the defenders of the ecocentric approach challenge the individualistic or atomistic character of the biocentric conception. for the supporters of this line not only the individual entities are deserving of moral protection, but so are the totalities: species, ecosystems, food and biotic chains, and, in addition to them, the inanimate entities. relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ francesco allegri 10 but the question of moral status is not limited to the topic of the extension of the moral community. it also includes the problem of its internal structure. because once we have identified the range of moral patients, we must ask ourselves whether they are all to be placed on the same level, or whether the moral community is stratified on several levels. if the second alternative is true, a criterion of inclusion in the moral community is not enough to fully answer questions about the moral status of the entities; a criterion of comparison is also necessary to identify the levels of belonging. so – to use spatial metaphors – the problem of who possesses moral status is not yet fully defined when we have identified who is inside the moral community and who is outside it. there is also the problem of who is above and who is below. it remains, in other words, to establish whether those who are inside are included on an equal basis or not. and therefore we will have, for instance, egalitarian and nonegalitarian forms of sentiocentrism or biocentrism. a clear example of egalitarian sentiocentrism can be found in the pages of joan dunayer. according to dunayer, all sentient beings are within the moral community and on equal terms, there are no hierarchies. they all have the same moral status, regardless of their biological species or cognitive skills, because there are no convincing arguments to assert that the life of a more mentally complex being has more value than the life of a less complex being (dunayer 2004). on the other hand in non-egalitarian versions, in addition to sensitivity, other components come into play, that pose the moral community on several levels. in this case, sensitivity is the condition for access to the moral community, whose internal structure, however, is determined by further factors. for instance, there are those who, while identifying sensitivity as the gateway to enter the moral community, believe that on a comparative level the greater cognitive, emotional and social complexity of a being gives it a greater moral status. this means that the parameters do not necessarily have to be taken separately. it may be that the parameter “reason” does not count for entry, but applies to assign more weight, i.e. in terms of comparison between moral patients. the attribution of a relevant weight to mental complexity on the comparative level can lead to believe that in case of conflict (the life of) a mentally more complex sentient being takes precedence over (the life of) a mentally less complex sentient being. even considering an entity, just because it is living, worthy of moral consideration does not necessarily mean putting all living beings on an equal footing with regard to moral status. the most articulated example of egalitarian biocentrism can be found in the texts of paul taylor, a kantian deontologist who extends the value in itself and the idea of relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ exploring non-anthropocentric paradigms 11 respect to all living beings, who, in his opinion, possess the same inherent value (understood as the value in itself of things that are not states of consciousness, for which the expression “intrinsic value” is preferred; see taylor 1986). different ideas on how to structure the moral community of all living people can be found in the ethical vitalism (or conativism) of philosophers such as goodpaster and attfield. attfield argues that all living beings have interests; even non-sentient ones like plants and bacteria. but the interests of the latter have (significantly) less moral weight than those of sentient beings (attfield 1991, 154). in a conception of non-egalitarian biocentrism, therefore, even if mere life has inherent or intrinsic value, if a being, in addition to life, possesses sensitivity, this gives it a higher value. and indeed, the greater is its capacity to “feel”, the greater is its value. moreover, if, in addition to sensitivity, a being also possesses qualities such as memory, sense of the future, rationality, selfawareness etc., its value grows further. a growth that has an additional increase the more these complex mental skills are developed. these are, in brief, the perspectives that we have before us and on which we will focus our attention. in conclusion, let me make some thanks. i am grateful to led publisher, in the person of valeria passerini, for the trust placed in me and i hope to repay it with a constant commitment to keep the journal at the high standards expressed so far. a heartfelt thanks to all those who have renewed their adhesion to the project of relations and to the new collaborators, who have accepted my invitation to participate in this exciting adventure. in the end, a special thanks to matteo andreozzi, who created this review and passed me the baton. references attfield, robin. 1991. the ethics of environmental concern. athens: university of georgia press. dunayer, joan. 2004. speciesism. derwood: ryce publishing. lecky, william e.h. 1869. a history of europeans morals from augustus to charlemagne. london: longmans. singer, peter. 1981. the expanding circle: ethics and sociobiology. oxford melbourne: oxford university press. taylor, paul w. 1986. respect for nature: a theory of environmental ethics, princeton: princeton university press. warren, mary a. 2000. moral status: obligations to persons and other living things. oxford: oxford university press. relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ livestock production to feed the planet. animal protein: a forecast of global demand over the next years 65 relations – 5.1 june 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ livestock production to feed the planet animal protein: a forecast of global demand over the next years antonella baldi 1 davide gottardo 2 1 full professor in animal nutrition, university of milan 2 phd student at the nutritional science phd school, university of milan doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2017-001-bald antonella.baldi@unimi.it davide.gottardo@unimi.it abstract the world population will significantly increase by 2050, from the current seven million to more than nine million inhabitants and the highest rate of increase is expected in developing countries. the demand for animal products will follow the population growth and increase between 50 and 70%, although with differences between all regions. according nutritional recommendations, at least one third of the daily protein requirement should derived from animal proteins. meat, fish, milk or eggs, rich essential amino acids, micronutrients and vitamins, should provide about 20g of 60g of total protein; however, the current level of intake should be reduced. in the next future, livestock sector will increase the productivity, without compromising the quality and the nutritional safety of the products, as well as the environmental protection and animal welfare. considering the future population growth and the future food demand, different environmental implications on land use, natural nonrenewable resources such as water, fossil fuels, minerals and agricultural land, and on the greenhouse gases (ghg) emissions should also be taken into consideration. farming edible insect could be a possible solution to overcome the future population growth, the global demand for food, specifically for protein sources and the food waste reduction. keywords: population growth, protein requirements, animal products, bioactive components, nutritional safety, welfare, livestock nutrition, environmental impact, food waste, insects. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/79 http://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2017-001-bald mailto:antonella.baldi%40unimi.it?subject= mailto:davide.gottardo%40unimi.it?subject= antonella baldi davide gottardo 66 relations – 5.1 june 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 1. introduction the food and agriculture organization (fao) has estimated that the world population will significantly increase by 2050, from the current seven million to more than nine million inhabitants. the developed countries will present a moderate growth; while the highest rate of increase is expected in developing countries. as well as the population growth, the demand for animal products will present an increase between 50 and 70% from the current production level; however, this growth will not be uniform between all regions. in developed countries, after the sharp increase in food consumption in the post-war period, there was a slowdown in the consumption of animal protein, with particular regard to red meat and nowadays the market has reached a state of maturity and saturation (european union 2015). the context of the developed countries strongly contrasts with that of the developing ones. in these areas today’s food consumption has changed a lot compared to the past; population and income growth, as well as urbanization, have led to a steady increase in per capita consumption of animal products and it is estimated a constant increase in the coming years (baldi et al. 2016). different trends for the various foodstuffs are expected over the next decade for meat products, with a general increase in consumption in fast-growing countries at or above 10% (fao 2011; alexandratos and bruinsma 2012) and even more pronounced for milk and dairy products (see fig. 1). figure 1. – forecast of the consumption of animal products (modified from report fao 2011). http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/79 livestock production to feed the planet 67 relations – 5.1 june 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ it is extremely important to emphasize that many countries in the world are still malnourished and their diet is not able to fulfil their actual requirements. nutritional recommendations regarding the protein intakes suggest that at least one third of the daily protein requirement, which corresponds to 0.66-1g per kg of body weight depending on age, sex and physical activity, should come from animal proteins (world health organization 2002). as a result, about 20g of 60g of total protein should derive from meat, fish, milk or eggs; however, this data is lower than the current overall level of intake, which is around 24g per day. meat, fish, eggs, milk and dairy products provide high biological value protein, characterized by the presence of essential amino acids, such as methionine, cysteine and lysine, crucial for correct growth and body function. these foods sources also contain micro-nutrients, such as iron, zinc, vitamin a, vitamin b12 and calcium, in addition to some “bio-active” components, among which the milk protein derived are the most studied. therefore, the consumption of animal products, together with a varied and balanced diet, is crucial for all age groups, especially children, athletes, pregnant and breastfeeding women and elderly. all animal products are characterized by nutrients high bioavailability as well as their approval rate; for this reason, these foods are also considered indicators of life quality in many regions of the world. consuming animal products, especially meat, is not only a reflection of nutritional needs, but it is also justified by sensory, geographical, cultural, ethical and economic well-being choices. in many areas, especially in the developing countries, the increase in the consumption of animal products is affected by the change in eating habits and in particular by the western lifestyle influence. in italy these amounts are abundantly respected thanks to the adherence to the mediterranean diet, which provides a regular consumption of fish products and vegetable protein sources, like pulses, but also a strong variation in food choice, with the preference of whole grains, seasonal fruits and vegetables and local and high-quality raw materials. 2. future challenges in light of the above, the future challenge that livestock production will be expected to overcome in the next years will consist in increasing the productivity, without compromising the quality and the nutritional safety of the products, the environmental protection and animal welfare. animal welfare is now considered a prerequisite for livestock sector, which must follow stringent and precise guidelines concerning animal management http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/79 antonella baldi davide gottardo 68 relations – 5.1 june 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ conditions. thanks to the close correlation between well-being, health and food-borne diseases, animal welfare affects indirectly the safety of the food chain and eventually human’s health. livestock welfare widely depends by human management practices, such as the type of facilities, stocking density, transport conditions and stunning methods (efsa 2013). over the years, many definitions of animal welfare have been given, but the one that is considered the most complete and comprehensive belongs to broom (1986): “the welfare of an individual is its state in relation to its attempts to adapt to the environment”. even before, in 1965 was published the brambell report that is considered the most influent paper for the animal welfare assessment where the five freedoms for the protection of animals are stated: 1. freedom from hunger, thirst and malnutrition. 2. freedom from discomfort. 3. freedom from pain, diseases and injuries. 4. freedom to express normal behaviour. 5. freedom from fear and stress. today, compared to the past, animal welfare is considered a multidisciplinary and more complex concept. for this reasons, the application of the five freedoms for the evaluation of animal welfare has been replaced by the use of the 4 principles and 12 criteria, reported in figure 2 (canali 2015). figure 2. – scheme of the 4 principles and 12 criteria. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/79 livestock production to feed the planet 69 relations – 5.1 june 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ it is possible to notice that the fulfilment of the food requirements represents the first condition for the protection of animal welfare. in fact, a correct diet not only must prevent the occurrence of malnutrition or food shortages, but plays also a significant role in the general state of health. nutrition must meet the physiological needs at different stages of growth, promote and maximize the different livestock production, optimize fertility and reproductive efficiency and finally ensure an optimal health of the animals with particular reference to the immune and antioxidants defences. the selection and processing of raw materials, the formulation of specific diets, the use of additives and supplementations as well as their administration method may have a great impact on the dietary and nutritional value, on the sensory quality of the meat, on the environmental impact and thus on food waste. for instance, the administration of flax seeds to beef cattle during the finishing stage allows to increase the polyunsaturated fatty acids (pufa) concentration, and in particular the α-linolenic acid, in the intramuscular fat, reducing significantly the ω6 / ω3 ratio in the meat (alberti et al. 2014). thanks to the inclusion of vitamin e and selenium in animal diet, it is also possible to increase the oxidative stability of the meat, extend the shelf life and preserve the organoleptic and nutritional characteristics, as well as enhance the immune response of the animals (baldi 2005; lu et al. 2014). considering the global scenario, the future population growth, combined with the future food demand, will have different environmental implications on land use, natural non-renewable resources such as water, fossil fuels, minerals and agricultural land, and on the greenhouse gases (ghg) emissions. as fao reported in 2012, the trend of ghg global emissions in the agricultural sector has been steadily increasing over the last fifty years (2.7 billion tons co2 eq in 1961 vs. 5.3 billion tons co2 eq in 2010). livestock sector is responsible for 15% of the total emissions of ch4, co2 and n2o, although the different farming systems affect different emissions levels. in particular, broilers farming has the lower atmospheric emissions (612 million tonnes co2 eq); on the other hand, rearing beef cattle appears to be the most impactful livestock sector (2.5 billion tons co2 eq). the presence of the rumen and the symbiont microflora reduces the food efficiency and increases the methane emissions as a product of rumen fermentation. therefore, atmospheric emissions, together with water consumption and wastewater management, represent the main issue about the ruminant livestock sustainability. although the large number of intensive farms present in the developed countries, the major ghg emissions come from the developing regions, characterized by a low production efficiency. the low http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/79 antonella baldi davide gottardo 70 relations – 5.1 june 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ feed-to-food efficiency leads to greater difficulty in reducing the emissions; in fact, according to fao report, in 2010 the major asian countries were responsible for 44% of total emissions (fao 2014). 3. conclusions if we consider the global scenario of the livestock products, a timely issue is represented also by food waste; today one third of the food produced for human consumption, about 1.3 billion tonnes per year, is lost or wasted throughout the supply chain (fao 2011). so far, animal nutrition encourages the use of by-products, such as distillers, sugar beet pulp and soy hulls, as a source of nutrients for farmed animals. more recently, nutritional research is going towards the use of alternative products, such as unsold or defective snacks, which retain excellent nutritional characteristics. such foods must be properly controlled and processed, but can find space in livestock production. farming edible insect could be a possible way to overcome the future population growth, the global demand for food, specifically animal protein sources, and the food waste reduction. insects live everywhere and reproduce quickly, have a high growth rate and feed conversion ratio (about 4 times higher than cattle) and moreover a low environmental impact throughout their life cycle; for example pigs produce 10-100 times more greenhouse gases per kg of weight than mealworms. they are nutritious, rich in protein (around 13-28g/100g total), fat and minerals and can be reared on food waste. they can also be consumed whole or ground into powders or pastes and incorporated in other types of food. for example, the use of insects as feed for aquaculture and poultry will become increasingly common in the next decade (van huis et al. 2013). references albertí, pere, maria josé beriain, guillermo ripoll, victoria sarriés, begona panea, juan alvarez mendizabal, antonio purroy, josé luis olleta, and carlos sañudo. 2014. “effect of including linseed in a concentrate fed to young bulls on intramuscular fatty acids and beef color”. meat science 96 (3): 1258-65. alexandratos, nikos, and jelle bruinsma. 2012. world agriculture towards 2030/2050: the 2012 revision. esa working paper 12-03. roma: food and agriculture organization of the united nations (fao). baldi, antonella. 2005. “vitamin e in dairy cows”. livestock production science 98 (1-2): 117-22. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/79 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=albert%c3%ad%20p%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=24334048 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=beriain%20mj%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=24334048 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=ripoll%20g%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=24334048 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=sarri%c3%a9s%20v%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=24334048 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=panea%20b%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=24334048 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=mendizabal%20ja%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=24334048 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=purroy%20a%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=24334048 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=olleta%20jl%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=24334048 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=sa%c3%b1udo%20c%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=24334048 livestock production to feed the planet 71 relations – 5.1 june 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ baldi, antonella, davide gottardo, and carlotta giromini. 2016. “proteine animali. una previsione della domanda globale nei prossimi 20 anni”. nutrimi. la rivista di nutrizione pratica 10: 20-1. broom, donald maurice. 1986. “indicators of poor welfare”. british veterinary journal 142: 524-6. canali, elisabetta. 2015. convegno food and feed for wellbeing per expo milano 2015. efsa. 2013. benessere degli animali. https://www.efsa.europa.eu/it/topics/topic/ animalwelfare. european union. 2015. “price developments and links to food security: price level and volatility”. eu agricultural markets briefs 6 (june). http://ec.europa.eu/ agriculture/markets-and-prices/market-briefs/pdf/05_en.pdf. fao (food and agriculture organization of the united nations). 2011. world livestock 2011 – livestock in food security. rome. http://reliefweb.int/sites/ reliefweb.int/files/resources/full%20report_421.pdf. 2014. greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture, forestry and other land use. http://www.fao.org/assets/infographics/fao-infographic-ghg-en.pdf. gerber, pierre j., henning steinfeld, benjamin henderson, anne mottet, carolyn opio, jeroen dijkman, alessandra falcucci, and giuseppe tempio. 2013. tackling climate change through livestock: a global assessment of emissions and mitigation opportunities. roma: food and agriculture organization of the united nations (fao). lu, ting, allen f. harper, junmei zhao, benjamin a. corl, tanya leroith, and rami dalloul. 2014. “effects of a dietary antioxidant blend and vitamin e on fatty acid profile, liver function, and inflammatory response in broiler chickens fed a diet high in oxidants”. poultry science 93 (7): 1658-66. van huis, arnold, joost van itterbeeck, harmke klunder, esther mertens, afton halloran, giulia muir, and paul vantomme. 2013. edible insects: future prospects for food and feed security. fao forestry paper 171. roma: food and agriculture organization of the united nations (fao). world health organization. 2002. protein and amino acid requirements in human nutrition. report of a joint who/fao/unu expert consultation. who technical report series 935. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/79 https://www.efsa.europa.eu/it/topics/topic/animalwelfare https://www.efsa.europa.eu/it/topics/topic/animalwelfare http://ec.europa.eu/agriculture/markets-and-prices/market-briefs/pdf/05_en.pdf http://ec.europa.eu/agriculture/markets-and-prices/market-briefs/pdf/05_en.pdf http://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/full%20report_421.pdf http://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/full%20report_421.pdf http://www.fao.org/assets/infographics/fao-infographic-ghg-en.pdf energy equality and the challenges of population growth 173 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ is sn 2 2 8 0 -9 9 5 3 beyond anthropocentrism 1 • january 2013 inside the emotional lives of non-human animals a minding animals international utrecht 2012 pre-conference event special issue (genoa, italy, 12-13 may, 2012) edited by m. andreozzi, r. bennison, a. massaro, s. tonutti capabilities approach and animal bioethics • michele panzera animals and our emotions. how to approach the study of an interspecific community? • sabrina tonutti advocacy and animal rights • kim stallwood the emotional lives of animals: a christian perspective • alma massaro – gianfranco nicora animalia: ontology and ethics in weak antispeciesism • leonardo caffo the contemporary debate on experimentation • susanna penco – rosagemma ciliberti non-human animals and genetic engineering • arianna ferrari the relationship between humans and other animals in european animal welfare legislation • paola sobbrio human’s best friends? • matteo andreozzi elationsre l a t io n s . b e y o n d a n t h r o p o c e n t r is m 1 • 2 0 1 3 r 6.2 november 2018 energy ethics: emerging perspectives in a time of transition special issue edited by giovanni frigo part ii studies and research contributions energy ethics: a literature review 177 giovanni frigo contesting the radical monopoly: a critical view on the motorized 215 culture from a cyclonaut perspective damien delorme desiring ethics: reflections on veganism from an observational 233 study of transitions in everyday energy use alice dal gobbo ethical risk and energy 251 bertrand andre rossert coal feeds my family: subsistence, energy, and industry in central 269 appalachia m. joseph aloi human energy: philosophical-anthropological presuppositions 287 of anthropogenic energy, movement, and activity and their implications for well-being roman meinhold http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ relations. beyond anthropocentrism 174 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ comments, debates, reports and interviews energy ethics outside the box: carl mitcham in conversation 301 with giovanni frigo carl mitcham giovanni frigo energy equality and the challenges of population growth 313 andrea natan feltrin the energy of ethics / the ethics of energy: a dialog with irigaray, 321 varela and jullien federico battistutta reviews alex epstein, a review of the moral case for fossil fuels (2014) 331 adam briggle author guidelines 335 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 313 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ energy equality and the challenges of population growth andrea natan feltrin university of santiago de compostela spain doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2018-002-felt natan.feltrin@live.it 1. population growth and its ecological meaning today, october 19th, 2018, the “u.s. and world population clock” shows that there are more than 7.5 billion humans on planet earth, and counting. according to the united nations’ projections, the world population is expected to reach 8.6 billion by 2030, 9.8 billion by 2050 and 11.2 billion by 2100. what exactly is the rate of this growth? in terms of net gain, over 200,000 people are added to this planet every day, which is over 140 people every minute and over 75 million more people every year. this is more or less the population of germany, which is currently about 80 million (fig. 1). the real problem is that all these additional people are not going to reach a german way of life. this is because the core of this demographic growth is located outside “developed” countries. projections foresee that between 2018 and 2050 half of the world’s population increase will be concentrated in just nine countries: india, nigeria, the democratic republic of the congo, pakistan, ethiopia, the united republic of tanzania, the united states of america, uganda and indonesia 1. these nations, except the usa, are struggling to handle widespread poverty and political turmoil. a key overarching goal of the 17 sustainable development goals (sdgs) of the un 2030 agenda for sustainable development is “to end poverty and hunger, expand and update health and education systems, achieve gender equality and women’s empowerment, reduce inequality and ensure that no one is left behind” (un, “world population prospects”, 5). but the marked “crowding” observed 1 united nations, department of economic and social affairs, population division, “world population prospects 2017, key findings and advance tables”, 2017 revision, working paper esa/p/wp/248, new york, 5 (https://www.compassion.com/ multimedia/world-population-prospects.pdf). http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ http://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2018-002-felt mailto:natan.feltrin@live.it andrea natan feltrin 314 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ in some of the poorest countries on earth directly affects the ability of governments to implement the agenda. in this article, i suggest that population growth is a radical challenge to achieving energy and environmental justice in a world with finite resources. accordingly, going beyond the capitalistic myth of neverending growth becomes a moral duty. 2. energy distribution and its implications a serious reflection about demography and welfare has to take into account the ecological frame in which human populations endeavour to thrive. that is why ecological indicators such as the ecological footprint are good proxies to understand the contemporary state of the human condition on this planet. according to the global footprint network, the total global ecological footprint of human societies equals 1.7 earths 2. this means that most countries are currently running ecological deficits, 2 earth overshoot day: https://www.overshootday.org/newsroom/infographics/. figure 1. – source: united nations, department of economic and social affairs, population division (2017). world population prospetcs: the 2017 revision. http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ energy equality and the challenges of population growth 315 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ exhausting more resources than ecosystems within their borders can regenerate. this is called an ecological overshoot situation. as a matter of fact, each year we can anticipate the so-called earth overshoot day, the day when humanity’s use of ecological resources and services exceeds what earth can regenerate in that year. on the basis of this data, the situation appears critical, especially considering that national footprints vary considerably worldwide. for example, the american way of life requires about five planets, while the indian one currently demands 0.8 planets. this creates socio-political imbalances: one shared planet with shared responsibilities, but tremendous inequalities in the access to resources. national differences in energy consumption can help us understand this unfairness in terms of resource use and environmental impact. while some countries consume too many resources, others are trapped in a state of poverty. this is especially important because industrialized nations, whose lifestyles are heavily based on non-renewable resources, are today the prime producers of greenhouse gasses, with effects on global warming and climate change that are beyond dispute. according to the international energy agency (iea) and the international atomic energy agency (iaea), it is clear that the principle of distributive justice is far from being implemented: outside the organisation for economic co-operation and development (oecd), energy self-sufficiency is not common. for instance, in 2014 13.8 billion tons of oil were used worldwide, which is equivalent to 160.6 billion megawatt-hours (160.6 × 109  mwh). this amount of energy, corresponding to 13,805 mtoe, could power 53,530 billion houses for an hour! for that year, 30.02% (4,144 mtoe) of the world’s oil was produced by oecd nations, followed by china with 18.78% (2,593 mtoe), while the entire african continent produced only 8.18% (1,129 mtoe). even if contemporary policies, both domestically and internationally, had the duty to deal with an asymmetrical allocation of energy resources worldwide, it wouldn’t be easy to piece together human energy needs for a good standard of living while maintaining fundamental ecological balances. furthermore, ecological resources can realistically be regarded as the core of every country’s long-term welfare. in this direction, an ethical energy policy must aim to provide all individuals, across all areas, with safe, affordable and sustainable energy. but the point is that reaching a dignified condition of living spread all around the ecumene, beyond all sorts of energy monopolies, is essentially in contradiction with neverending growth in both population and consumption. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ andrea natan feltrin 316 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 3. energy: the myth of never-ending growth even today the capitalist machine and its necessity of growth seem an adamant paradigm of the western weltanschauung. thus, to address the socio-ecological challenges summarised under the name anthropocene, the only reasonable course appears to be a wave of greenwashing: green capitalism. but it is just appearance because “business as usual” can no longer be valid: the trap hidden under this ephemeral attentiveness to biosphere health is the constant struggle to make the “wheel of the economy” run faster. focusing utterly on gdp creates a misperception of what is prosperity and how to achieve well-being, particularly because in this abstraction homo sapiens becomes an animal without environment. in fact, the human body is still as vulnerable as it was at the beginning of hominization millions of years ago. humans are still organisms dependent on other organisms. there are only a few areas of the biosphere in which humans can survive without artefacts (technologies), and in these areas they are bounded (wilson 2016). it is well known that earth has an effective resilience toward anthropic influences, but this elasticity has its limits. population growth and consumption patterns are putting more pressure on this critical asset. accordingly, in some areas of the world, the implications of ecological deficits are dramatic, leading to resource loss, ecosystem collapse, debt, poverty, famine, and war. yet, there is a mainstream political-economic mindset that believes in a permanent state of growth based on a blind confidence in progress. as garrett hardin pointed out: “the myth of the limitless world is but one of the many myths that have grown up in the protective shadow of the insufficiently examined idea of progress”. as a matter of fact, a never-ending growth in energy consumption is bio-physically impossible in a finite planet. from a thermodynamic viewpoint, the unavoidable increase of entropy and the degradation of energy in an isolated system are an “ontological” limit to growth. this is due to the transformation of energy into heat and work: an inexorable dissipation of resources restricting human possibilities of production. the earth is commonly considered a closed system, in which no mass may be transferred in or out of its boundaries. actually, earth is not an isolated system, because it can maintain its homeostasis only through solar energy. considering the factual possibility of interactions with asteroids, which are also able to change the course of life on the planet, it is reasonable to define earth as a finite system with a finite number of “degrees of freedom”. following this definition, it becomes clear why the stockholm resilience centre highlights a safe operative http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ energy equality and the challenges of population growth 317 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ space for humanity within nine main planetary boundaries: stratospheric ozone depletion, loss of biosphere integrity, chemical pollution and the release of novel entities, climate change, ocean acidification, freshwater consumption and the global hydrological cycle, land system change, nitrogen and phosphorus flows to the biosphere and oceans and, atmospheric aerosol loading. understanding these limitations means to figure out the finitude of human material production and societies’ dependence on the biophysical and ecological biosphere. but this realization is not all that new. in the 1970s the club of rome pointed out the hazards of this global economic trend with the limits to growth (meadows et al. 1972). nevertheless, after years of studies and debates, nothing seems to have seriously changed. there is no effective political awareness of limits, and those whose still talk about “population bomb”, “overpopulation”, and “family planning” are merely criticized for an excess of negativism and neo-malthusianism. boulding’s warning goes unheard: “anyone who believes that exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist”. someone might say, not without reason, that the anthropocene is the age of “mad-men”. or, along these lines, call it capitalocene, as jason moore has (moore 2016). 4. population, energy, and environment ethics beyond growth to change the attitude toward a naive belief in a future without boundaries is complex. especially, the ghost of malthus’ principle of population appears denied by contemporary history: after growing very slowly for tens of thousands of years, world population has grown very rapidly in the last few centuries and continues to do so. in fact, the “great acceleration” of the last century seems to be the symbol of humanity’s emancipation from natural rates of growth (colville 2017). this “growth utopia” is founded on the idea that technological progress releases economic activities from the limitations imposed by nature. actually, there is no evidence to support this “growth utopia”. nobody can prove that progress will be limitless and able to solve every socio-ecological drama. for most of the history of humankind technology was too late to save lives. thus, it cannot be the only answer to avoid awful catastrophes or even the extinction of homo sapiens. natural disasters remind us of the fragile condition of humanity on this planet. considering technology to be a deus ex machina is a terrible mistake. as http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ andrea natan feltrin 318 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ angus deaton said: “necessity may be the mother of invention, but there is nothing that guarantees a successful pregnancy”. in any case, even if one takes into account the significant role of innovation in leading to a more rational use of resources, there are plenty of other concerns. a widespread human civilization based entirely on renewable resources can’t keep growing. for example, space left for biodiversity has to be taken into consideration. in this direction, tverberg pointed out that, “if humans use increasingly more resources, other species necessarily use less. even ‘renewable’ resources are shared with other species. if humans use more, other species must use less. solar panels covering the desert floor interfere with normal wildlife; the use of plants for biofuels means less area is available for planting food and for vegetation preferred by desirable insects, such as bees”. in this other sense, the rate of growth is a threat not only to human prosperity but it also a matter of justice between species. that is why human population acceleration is interlinked with the phenomenon known as “sixth extinction”. more humans means more energy demand, more consumption, and less biodiversity (kolbert 2014). but thinking about biodiversity becomes almost impossible where people have no access to energy resources: no energy means no food, and no food means short-term responsibility. in the words of richard leakey: “to care about the environment requires at least one square meal a day” (1992, 135). thus, the moral duty to leave space for other species cannot be achieved without fairer global access to energy. 5. conclusion: energy justice is demographic justice if we accept that this world is a finite system, then the way in which we handle energy becomes, even more fundamentally, the way in which we determine our lives. energy is anything but abstract. maybe, following feynman, we can say that “in physics today, we have no knowledge of what energy is”. but we live because of energy. thus, when we talk about access to food, freshwater, heating, or even education, it is important to realize that we are talking about energy access. currently, we are living the consequences of an unprecedented transformation of fossil fuels into human biomass. that is why in a broader sense overpopulation is the result of an irresponsible use of energetic resources, mainly by western countries. understanding this broader perspective can support us in thinking about how to get out of this mess. thus, in a discussion of a more ethical http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ energy equality and the challenges of population growth 319 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ distribution of energy, it is necessary to mention a political and cultural approach to stabilize the population. in this sense, if effective worldwide access to energy resources is possible only within a zero-growth society, a more equal allocation of resources is the first step to face this growth. as vandana shiva said: “giving people rights and access to resources so that they can regain their security and generate sustainable livelihoods is the only solution to environmental destruction and the population growth that accompanies it”. references boulding, kenneth e., quoted in ayres, robert. 1998. turning point: an end to the growth paradigm. london: earthscan publications ltd. colville, robert. 2016. the great acceleration: how the world is getting faster, faster. london: bloomsbury. deaton, angus. 2013. the great escape health, wealth, and the origins of inequality, 10. princeton: princeton university press. hardin, garret, quoted in balzani, vincenzo, and margerita venturi. 2014. energia, risorse, ambiente, 85. bologna: zanichelli. kolbert, elizabeth 2014. the sixth extinction: an unnatural history. new york: henry holt and company. leakey, richard, in schmidheiny, stephan. 1992. changing course: a global business perspective on development and the environment. cambridge: mit press. shiva, vandana 2005. earth democracy: justice, sustainability, and peace, 49. cambridge: south end press. tverberg, gail. 2014. “why a finite world is a problem”. in our finite world. https://ourfiniteworld.com/2014/01/02/why-a-finite-world-is-a-problem/. united nations, department of economic and social affairs, population division. “world population prospects: key findings and advance tables”, 2017 revision, working paper esa/p/wp/248, new york. https://www.compassion.com/multimedia/world-population-prospects.pdf. wilson, edward o. 2016. half-earth: our planet’s fight for life. new york: liveright. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ https://ourfiniteworld.com/2014/01/02/why-a-finite-world-is-a-problem/ https://www.compassion.com/multimedia/world-population-prospects.pdf https://www.compassion.com/multimedia/world-population-prospects.pdf catholic energy ethics: commitments and criteria 143 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ catholic energy ethics commitments and criteria erin lothes biviano college of st. elizabeth, morristown, nj usa doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2018-001-loth ebiviano@cse.edu 1. a catholic energy ethic energy is an essential dimension of life that calls for theological and ethical reflection. this is true not only because humanity’s use of energy is massively impacting the world’s shared ecologies and economies. the massive impact of human energy use indeed demands moral reflection on the scope of human power. the fact of human geological agency is inscribed in the new geological term for our time, a time in which human influence redefines earth’s very contours: the anthropocene. in the anthropocene, ethical decisions are critically needed to limit the harm energy can do while ensuring that energy remains a blessing and benefit for all. even more fundamentally, however, energy is a proper topic for theological reflection because energy is an expression of divine providence, human ingenuity, and social priorities. catholic theology is absolutely theocentric, rooted in the abrahamic scriptural tradition which begins before all time with god’s creation of the universe. from this perspective, human agency belongs within god’s providential plan for creation (catechism of the catholic church, 358), even the geological agency of our time (lothes biviano 2015). humanity’s agency over energy is no exception. energy, whether produced from fire, fuel, or modern technology, results from the earth’s resources and human ingenuity. from a catholic perspective, the earth’s resources and human ingenuity are both gifts of god the creator, gifts intended for the benefit of all in the economy of salvation. energy should therefore be used in a spirit of gratitude, honoring the creator’s providence, which has gifted the earth with abundant resources meant to support life for all. a spirit of gratitude for energy thus inspires a catholic energy ethic, and orients ethical decisions about energy’s production and use to the end of a flourishing human and ecological community. simply stated, the benhttp://www.ledonline.it/relations/ http://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2018-001-loth mailto:ebiviano@cse.edu erin lothes biviano 144 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ efits and burdens of energy should be allocated to provide for the needs and wellbeing of all. as the compendium of social doctrine of the church states, god gave the earth to the whole human race for the sustenance of all its members, without excluding or favouring anyone. this is the foundation of the universal destination of the earth’s goods. the earth, by reason of its fruitfulness and its capacity to satisfy human needs, is god’s first gift for the sustenance of human life [361]. the human person cannot do without the material goods that correspond to his primary needs and constitute the basic conditions for his existence. (compendium, 171) magisterial teaching affirms that the gift of the earth is intended not just for human use, but for the good of all living communities, all creatures and plants and elements of the ecosystems. pope francis notes the teaching of saint john paul ii about this issue. in his first encyclical he warned that human beings frequently seem “to see no other meaning in their natural environment than what serves for immediate use and consumption”. with full respect for the human person, [authentic human development] must also be concerned for the world around us and “take into account the nature of each being and of its mutual connection in an ordered system”. (laudato si’, 5) more complex and comprehensive statements of the principles and criteria that should guide social decisions are articulated in the tradition of catholic social thought (compendium 2005), which is developing new paradigms through application to the specific problems of energy (energy, justice and peace 2014; lothes biviano et al. 2015). this comment intends to contribute to the developing paradigm of a catholic energy ethic primarily by reflecting upon its theological context, acknowledging that a theology of energy which addresses fundamental questions of meaning and morals (gilkey 1981) grounds and complements an energy ethic (on defining morals, ethic, and ethics, see gula 1989). 2. energy decisions as ethical decisions increasingly, discussions of energy decisions in both faith-based and secular settings attend to the ethical dimensions that overlay the economic or technical aspects of energy (rasmussen 1996, 2011; sovacool 2013, 2014; cidce 2017; lenferna et al. 2017; aaas 2018; c2g2 2018). energy decisions are ethical decisions because they impact the health and wellbeing of http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_04031979_redemptor-hominis.html catholic energy ethics 145 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ persons and communities, affect ecosystems and economies, and influence global climatic and social stability. an energy ethic recognizes that energy decisions have profound implications for affordable energy access, sustainable economies, healthy environments, geopolitical stability and the promotion of peace. energy ethics emerge from the interlinkage of individual decisions with systemic structures, with wide social and ecological impacts in a globalized world. energy decisions typically involve great complexity, multiple stakeholders, and regional diversity. in diverse contexts, competing claims for resources and investment may have validity. the uncertainty of future technologies, as well as the changing social context for energy systems, mean that utilitarian and blanket assessments cannot be easily made. furthermore, climate stability involves many qualitative goods that are difficult to compare directly, but have high stakes, such as cultural preservation. in the face of these complexities, uncertainties, and high stakes, religious values serve to orient discussions toward the common good. the ethical analyses inspired by religious values provide criteria that can clarify the moral validity and relative priority of competing claims for societal resources. even more significantly, religious moral visions offer a compelling invitation to incorporate energy decisions within the moral actor’s personal faith identity and deepest sense of self. in this way energy decisions are reframed as expressions of faith inviting conscientious and communal reflection and opportunities for meaningful self-expression. as expressions of faith rooted in shared religious values, energy decisions invite broader participation and commitment in a community context that may transcend the explosive minefield of divisive politics. religiously inspired energy ethics participate in a rich interfaithenvironmental dialogue, while also expressing confessional specificity (lothes biviano 2016a). diverse religious worldviews and values construe foundational defenses of life, health, and wellbeing through the richness of their traditional texts, symbols, and rituals, offering a “thick description” of human meaning and purpose that empowers comprehensive ethical direction. these values have the potential to critique the cultural habits complicit in environmental challenges, acknowledge the limits and possibilities of human responsibility, and creatively open new cultural possibilities (rasmussen 1996; jenkins 2013). a shared commitment to the common good marks most religious and secular ethics. religions further contribute traditional norms and narratives, the specific vocabulary and analytic criteria of their particular ethical commitments, and comprehensive moral visions. in this comment, i will set forth a sacramental framework which grounds the fundamental religious http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ erin lothes biviano 146 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ commitments for a catholic energy ethic, and briefly reference commitments and criteria from catholic social teaching that enable ethical assessments of energy issues. 3. foundational commitments: a sacramental economy of creation the explicit contribution of the catholic tradition is a properly theological framework rooted in the doctrine of creation, with three foci emphasizing the sovereignty and graciousness of god the creator, the dignity of the human person as created in imago dei, and the solidarity of the human family and family of all the living in the covenant of creation. each focus lends a particular character to a catholic theology and ethic of energy. the specific contribution of catholic energy ethics among monotheistic faiths is a trinitarian theology which places all creation in a relational narrative with a salvation teleology. particular among christian confessions, a catholic theology of energy invites reflection upon the sacramental nature of the energy exchanges which occur within these covenantal relationships. 3.1. divine providence and the goods of creation a catholic theology of energy is theocentric, oriented to god’s plan of creation, salvation and the wellbeing of creation. reflection upon energy exchanges as having a sacramental quality draws depth from discussions of the sacramental economy and the cosmos as the primordial sacrament. the dynamics of a sacramental economy of creation are illustrated by fr. edward obi, op as a dynamics with three movements. the sacramental economy originates in the creation of the cosmos by god, gifting the earth with goods for our provision and salvation; continues in communion among fellow-creatures who share a covenant of mutual help and responsibility; and returns to god via the response of creaturely praise (obi 2010). these three movements thus embrace the three foci stated above: divine providence and creativity, human dignity and responsibility, and social relationships. a theological interpretation of the earth as primordial sacrament affirms the sacramental principle that all grace is mediated through creation and created gifts. this interpretation also affirms the dependence of all upon the gifts which the earth, the primordial sacrament, provides http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ catholic energy ethics 147 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ (mcdougall 2003). as “primordial sacrament”, the earth is primordial home, table and temple, providing shelter, nourishment, and inspiration for praise (psalm 19). the dignity of creatures establishes their primordial right to creation’s integrity, which in turn protects personal integrity. catholic social teaching expresses this as the right to the material conditions needed to ensure dignity, a right that is shared with all, as expressed by the universal destination of goods. all creatures belong to the earth – as the very name adam proclaims (hebrew, adamah: earth creature); and so all have equal claim on its abundance, and even greater claim to equal shares of its scarce resources. 3.2. communion as fellow creatures and human dignity: the ground of covenantal ethical responsibility a catholic energy ethic is covenantal, acknowledging that humanity’s unique dignity confers mutual rights and responsibilities to all persons as brothers and sisters. corresponding with these rights are responsibilities to care for creation, which scripture confirms as humanity’s primary vocation: to serve and tend the garden (genesis 2:15). from the covenant established between god and humanity, and between members of the human family, follow responsibilities to care for one other (clifford 1988; jenkins 2009). care and concern are due to all because of their common dignity as creatures. the creation narratives establish catholic social teaching’s commitment to human dignity of each person, who necessarily exist in community, reflecting the trinitarian understanding that “communion is at the heart of the divine mystery”. as john paul ii states in solicitudo rei socialis, interdependence is a “system determining relationships in the contemporary world”, and solidarity is the “correlative response as a moral and social attitude […] solidarity helps us see the ‘other’ as our ‘neighbor’, a ‘helper’ (gen 2:1820)” (solicitudo rei socialis 38). these responsibilities to the neighbor are mediated by energy decisions that have real impacts through our shared global systems – economic, social, political, ecological and climatic systems. 3.3. social relationships: solidarity with all families of life a catholic energy ethic is social, recognizing that the integral development of persons occurs in family, community, and society. indeed, integral development includes ecological communities extending across the globe, http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ erin lothes biviano 148 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ an insight of st. francis of assisi that has long been honored by the church (laudato si’). these covenantal responsibilities extend to the living families of flora and fauna who also have intrinsic value, exist in inescapable interdependence with humanity, and themselves “give glory to god”. thus, the values and commitments that shape a catholic energy ethic flow from the doctrine of creation, which views all relationships within a covenantal economy of creation and salvation. energy exchange involves the production, purchase, and the provision of energy via policy and patterns of investment. because the concrete exchanges of energy take place within larger energy systems that publicly enact social, political, and economic relationships, including relationships of power and scarcity, such energy exchanges embody the relationships between neighbors. when these energy exchanges make evident a commitment to energy access that is clean, affordable, and sustainable, such energy exchanges make visible our commitments to energy access, commitments which are grounded in love and charity for the neighbor (1981). as such, the sacramental quality of love of neighbor can be made evident through these very exchanges. 4. principles and criteria for energy ethics these responsibilities can be viewed in a continuum from minimum negative obligations to positive duties. in an age of ecological degradation which threatens water supplies, reduces agricultural productivity, and erodes homelands, ensuring these essential material conditions requires that the earth’s natural fruitfulness be safeguarded, as the condition of possibility for providing sustenance. this implies a (positive) right to the fertility of the earth, to “natural nature” (peppard 2011) that accepts creation’s natural chaos. preserving the essential conditions for earth’s fertility also implies a (negative) right to immunity from anthropogenic ecological interference. negative obligations stem from solidarity’s duty to preserve creation’s integrity as the source of beauty and material goods needed by all. the first negative obligation is to do no harm. yet recognizing that energy supports life, until renewable energy is more widely available, catholic teaching recognizes that in many cases polluting fossil fuels remain the only option for energy (laudato si’ 165). how then to view fossil fuel use as the global economy transitions to a decarbonized economy? as v. ramanathan writes in his contribution to a pontifical academy of sciences conference on energy, “access to http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ catholic energy ethics 149 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ modern forms of fossil fuel energy is a fundamental necessity for human development and well-being” (ramanathan 2014). construed as a form of self-defense for the poor, such polluting energy is justified in transitional times. nonetheless, to safeguard the integrity of nature’s sacred order, the conditions under which the earth flourishes as primordial sacrament, shelter, table, and temple, the shift to low-carbon energy must be planned and funded (lothes biviano 2016b). the catholic tradition emphasizes that rights are not simply negative freedoms from coercion and from interference, but in fact include positive duties correlating with obligations. positively, catholic social teaching asserts the obligation to dismantle structures of the fossil fuel economy and invest in new and sustainable energy technologies (peace 2014). laudato si’ teaches that “technology based on the use of highly polluting fossil fuels – especially coal, but also oil and, to a lesser degree, gas – needs to be progressively replaced without delay” (165). this complex task is part of our vocation to protect god’s handiwork as “an essential task of virtue”, one that is “neither optional nor secondary” (217). regarding the critical obligation of advanced countries to develop “the most complex and capital-intensive energy technologies” (laudato si’ 52), and recognizing the limits of the global carbon budget, “the conventional fossil fuels that remain within a safe global carbon budget must be directed toward building a clean energy infrastructure” (lothes biviano et al. 2015, 12). in other words, there is a positive obligation to build a clean energy economy. for instance, delucchi and jacobson (2011) have showed that a transition to 100% renewable systems is a current possibility and, indeed, “energy is the necessary revolution for the present generation; and not only is it possible, its foundations are already present” (lothes biviano et al. 2015, 5). fossil fuel economies are not inevitable forms of energy empowerment because it is not fossil fuels per se that are necessary but energy in general (power), which can be supplied through cleaner, more sustainable and renewable means. as “catholic moral traditions and energy ethics for the twenty-first century” identifies, further obligations are context-specific, but framed by core principles of catholic energy ethics. seven principles of a catholic energy ethic are adumbrated below (lothes biviano et al. 2015). 1. cherishing and protecting life as a gift from god. 2. accepting an appropriate share of responsibility for the welfare of creation. 3. living in solidarity with others for a common good, namely, the sustainability of an abundant earth. 4. striving for justice in society. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ erin lothes biviano 150 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 5. giving special attention to the needs of the poor and members of minority groups. 6. widespread participation in decision-making processes. 7. employing technological prudence. these principles are rooted in the fundamental, covenantal commitment to solidarity that in modern form must recognize how energy intersects all forms of social, economic, technological, political and moral globalization (himes 2008). 5. spiritual responses in a sacramental economy each person and community may discern in conscience their own path of action toward a clean energy economy, consistent with their particular identity as virtuous actors. yet to take no action is no longer appropriate or ethical. engaging some aspect of an energy ethic is essential in a morally globalized world in which almost every action creates implications for the purchase, use, and impact of energy. furthermore, the concrete actions that build a clean, sustainable, and healthy renewable economy have profound spiritual significance. energy exchanges are tokens in a sacramental economy that proffer the reality of love they can express, when viewed through a religious lens that perceives the relationships that underlie the exchange of investments and actions. such actions are the concrete realization of love of neighbor and the actualization of the preferential option for the poor. within these covenantal relationships, persons express responsibility for each other by ensuring access to the safe and clean energy which is essential. viewed through a catholic sacramental imagination, the social exchanges of energy aspire to their fulfillment in the love of neighbor whose summit is the eucharist (hollenbach 1977). the realization of love and justice through the social mediation of energy exchanges permits a sacramental consecration of acts of daily life, even energy purchasing and production, investments and infrastructure, so that they become visible signs of how we may better be our brothers and sisters’ keeper. in conclusion: when these social relationships are honored by the establishment of fair, accessible, healthy energy systems that provide for the needs of all, energy exchanges can even be seen as the realization of neighbor love, and a means to peace and true prosperity. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ catholic energy ethics 151 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ references 1981. reflections on the energy crisis: a statement by the committee on social development and world peace. washington, dc: united states catholic conference. 1993. catechism of the catholic church. citta del vaticano: libreria editrica vaticana. aaas – american association for the advancement of science. 2018. “dialogue on science, ethics, and religion”. https://www.aaas.org/page/doser-projects. c2g2 – carnegie council for ethics in international affairs. 2018. “carnegie climate geoengineering governance initiative”. https://www.c2g2.net/. cidce – international centre of comparative environmental law. 2017. draft of the international covenant on the human right to the environmnet. limoges, france. clifford, richard j. 1988. “genesis 1-3: permission to exploit nature?”. the bible today: 133-45. delucchi, mark a., and mark z. jacobson. 2011. “providing all global energy with wind, water, and solar power, part i: technologies, energy resources, quantitities and areas of intfrastructure, and materials”. energy policy 39 (3): 1154-69. francis. 2015. laudato si’ [encyclical: on care for our common home]. gilkey, langdon. 1981. “theologian for a ‘time of troubles’”. the christian century 121 (25): 474-80. gula, richard m. 1989. reason informed by faith: foundations of catholic morality. new york: paulist press. himes, o.f.m., kenneth. 2008. “globalization with a human face: catholic social teaching and globalization”. theological studies 69: 269-89. hollenbach, david. 1977. “a prophetic church and the catholic sacramental imagination”. in the faith that does justice, 234-63. new york: paulist press. jenkins, willis. 2009. “after lynn white: religious ethics and environmental problems”. journal of religious ethics 37 (2): 283-309. jenkins, willis. 2013. the future of ethics: sustainability, social justice, and religious creativity. washington, dc: georgetown university press. lenferna, georges, rick russotto, amanda tan, stephen gardiner, and thomas ackerman. 2017. “relevant climate response tests for stratospheric aerosol injection: a combined ethical and scientific analysis”. earth’s future 5. lothes biviano, erin. 2015. “by night in a pillar of fire: a theological analysis of renewable energy”. in just sustainability: technology, ecology, and resource extraction, edited by christiana z. peppard and andrea vicini, 234-49. maryknoll, new york: orbis books. lothes biviano, erin, ed. 2016a. light for a new day: interfaith essays on energy ethics. presented at the twenty-second session of the conference of the parties (cop 22) to the united nations framework on climate change convention, marrakech. highland park, nj: greenfaith. lothes biviano, erin. 2016b. “realism and renewables: laudato si’ and the real option for the poor”. crux. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ erin lothes biviano 152 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ lothes biviano, erin, david cloutier, elaine padilla, christiana z. peppard, and jame schaefer. 2015. “catholic moral traditions and energy ethics for the twentyfirst century”. journal of moral theology 5 (1): 1-36. mcdougall, dorothy. 2003. the cosmos as the primary sacrament: the horizon for an ecological sacramental theology. new york: peter lang. obi, edward o. 2010. “economic justice as a gauge of sacramental ‘fellow-being’”. in celebrating the sacramental world: essays in honour of emeritus professor lambert j. leijssen, 186-204. leuven: peeters. peppard, christiana z. 2011. “denaturing nature”. union seminary quarterly review 63 (1-2): 97-120. pontifical council for justice and peace. 2005. compendium of the social doctrine of the church. pontifical council for justice and peace. 2014. energy, justice and peace: a reflection on energy in the current context of development and environmental protection. citta del vaticano: libreria editrice vaticana. ramanathan, veerabhandran. 2014. “the two worlds approach for mitigating air pollution and climate change”. pontifical academies workshop: sustainable humanity, sustainable nature, our responsibility, vatican city, may 6. rasmussen, larry. 1996. earth community, earth ethics. maryknoll, new york: orbis books. rasmussen, larry. 2011. “introduction to the energy transition: religious and cultural perspectives”. zygon: journal of religion & science 46 (4): 872. sovacool, benjamin. 2013. energy & ethics: justice and the global energy challenge. houndsmill: palgrave macmillan. sovacool, benjamin. 2014. global energy justice: problems, principles, and practices. cambridge: cambridge university press. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ food security: the challenge of nutrition in the new century 145 relations – 5.2 november 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ food security the challenge of nutrition in the new century nicholas chiari istituto clinico sant’ambrogio, milan doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2017-002-chia chiari.nicholas@gmail.com abstract the exponential growth of the world population (according to the fao projections, it is expected to reach 9 billion people in 2050) and the urbanization (which will bring more than 60% of the population to live in the cities at the same date), combined with the marked improvement of income conditions of large sections of the populations of countries such as china and india, will result in a strong increase in individual demand for animal products. it is becoming increasingly difficult to satisfy the rising global demand for food in a sustainable manner (the most recent estimates tell us that about one billion people go hungry or are malnourished). furthermore, a great number of factors contribute to uncertainty about the world’s ability to meet the food demand of an increasing population. for all that reasons, food security must be put on top of the policy agenda. keywords: food security, right to food, malnutrition, hunger, human overpopulation, poverty, food safety, agricultural sustainability, health, animal footprint. “to halve, by the year 2015, the proportion of the world’s people […] who suffer from hunger and, by the same date, to halve the proportion of people who are unable to reach or to afford safe drinking water”. this was one of the goals of the united nations millennium declaration adopted by the general assembly of the united nations in september 2000 (un 2000). unfortunately, the current situation shows how this ambitious aim is not reached. the right to food, enshrined in article 25 of the universal declaration of human rights proclaimed by the general assembly of the united nations (un 1948) can be satisfied only if there are two essential requirements simultaneously secured, namely the permanent and unlimited access to food (food security) and the availability of adequate quality food (food safety). however, the availability of supplies and the improvement of food conditions for large sections of humanity are conditioned by the http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ http://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2017-002-chia mailto:chiari.nicholas@gmail.com nicholas chiari 146 relations – 5.2 november 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ever-increasing global population and, consequently, by the steady increase in demand of food on one hand, and the decrease of soil available by agriculture and/or farming (duo to soil consumption, erosion, land grabbing for industrial, mining, etc.) on the other. despite the possibility to eat food adequate either in quality or quantity may seem a simple concept, it cannot disregard to several key points, including the availability of food (i.e. permanent stock of food in sufficient quantity), access to food (i.e. have adequate economic resources to obtain food that meet the nutritional requirements) and its usage (i.e. processing the food in an appropriate manner following the basic nutritional and health principles, as well as placing water and adequate hygiene) (fao 1996). therefore, it is increasingly strongly-needed to find a new organizational model, different from the present, that makes possible to produce sufficient amounts of food (of adequate quality under the nutritional and health aspects) for the entire population. unfortunately, this mission is not an easy task and the efforts of fao to reduce the structural causes of hunger in the world have not achieved the expected results for several reasons. the causes that can contribute to exacerbate the increasingly rampart shortage of food are many, but they can be grouped in three main groups: • immediate causes, i.e. poor diet and disease. a poor diet may be due to insufficient breastfeeding, deficient meals, poor variety of food, lowenergy and low in nutrients meals (food is too “watery”) and/or infrequent meals. sick people tend to not eat much, absorb fewer nutrients, loose nutrients from the body and burn up nutrients in the body more quickly (for example in presence of fever). • underlying causes, i.e. family food shortages, inadequate care and feeding practices, especially of children and women, poor living conditions and poor health services. family food shortages may be due to lack of money, low production of family food, poor food storage and preservation and/or poverty-stricken choices. inadequate care and feeding practices accounts for the way families feed young children and encourage them to eat, the way families care for women (especially during pregnancy, childbirth and breastfeeding) and for sick and old people, the way food is prepared and the level of hygiene in the home and/or the ways families prevent and treat illnesses at home and use health facilities. lastly, poor living conditions (such as insufficient water, inadequate sanitation and overcrowded housing) and poor health services, comprising shortages of medicines and skilled health staff, increase the risk of disease and/or inadequate environmental sanitation services increase the risk of foodborne infections. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ food security 147 relations – 5.2 november 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ • basic causes, because for each underlying cause there are “deeper” causes, such as widespread poverty and lack of employment opportunities, unequal distribution and control of resources at community, district, country and international levels, the low status and education of women, population pressures, environmental damage, political unrest and conflict, lack of health, education, and other social services and/or discrimination. the most vulnerable period during lifetime for stunting and undernutrition is early childhood, as a result of the high nutritional requirements relative to body size. frequent acute infections aggravate the problem by further increasing nutrient demands or gastrointestinal losses. the prevalence of severe wasting is usually the highest in the first two years of life, and it declines thereafter. the prevalence of stunting has been shown to increase progressively until reaching a plateau around 24 months (victore et al. 2010). in 2005, about 36 million (6.5%) children less than 5 years-old who were living in developing countries had moderate wasting, and another 19 million (3.5%) had severe wasting or severe protein-energy malnutrition (black et al. 2008). approximately, 69% of severely wasted children lived in asia, 29% in africa, and 2% in latin america. this is part of the reason why 99% of deaths in children younger than 5 years old occur in those continents (black et al. 2008). this prevalence varies substantially within countries and is highest for the poorest segments of the population. in 2010, there were 171 million (26.7%) stunted children worldwide, of whom 97.5% lived in developing countries (de onis et al. 2012). although this represented a relative decrease of 33% since 1990, when the percentage was 39.7%, stunting remains a public health problem in many developing countries. the relative decrease between 1990 and 2010 has been remarkable in asia (43%, from 48.6% to 27.6%) and latin america (43%, from 23.7% to 13.5%), but in africa the decrease was only 5% (from 40.3% to 38.2%). undernutrition often starts during pregnancy as a result of dietary deficiencies and concurrent increases in nutrition requirements of the pregnant woman. low birth weight infants secondary to intrauterine growth restriction (at term babies who weighed less than 2500 g) represent around 11% of all live births each year in developing countries, that is 12.8 million in 2004 (black et al. 2008). the result of the many aspects that are the basis of food shortages is represented by hunger, defined as a recurrent, involuntary lack of access to food. hunger may produce malnutrition over time (dietz and trowbridge 1990). hunger is ongoing. hunger is involuntary. hunger is lack of access to food. in other words, food may be available, but some people are not billion get it. these people are “the hungry”. in a healthy person, being http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ nicholas chiari 148 relations – 5.2 november 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ hungry for a day does not cause malnutrition (bad nutrition or poor health). lack of food over time affects physical and mental health to produce malnutrition. in many cases, “the hungry” are undernourished so they do not have all of the food that they need to be healthy. they may lack calories (energy), and/or protein, and/or micronutrients (vitamins and minerals). long-term exposure to poor nutrition may cause alterations capable of causing irreversible damage and thus are unrecoverable. all of this screeches significantly with what should be the concept of right to food and adequate nutrition, which defines the optimal dietary intake of individuals and/or populations and, therefore, is a tangible expression of body response to a correct nutritional pattern. the accuracy of the diet at all stages of life is the essential requirement for the maintenance of health. considering the definition of the latter, in all its aspects, given by the world health organization (who 1946), nutrition must be able to ensure the performance of the genetic growth potential, the physical effectiveness and psychic and, yet finally, the extension of life expectancy. moreover, the extreme conflict that occurs in sections of the world population, where hunger is present in a highly radicalized way and coexists in a totally antithetical and contradictory with the concept (never as today so utopic) of ideal nutrition that should be one inalienable standards of human health, requires a global commitment to reduce disparities and to defeat starvation, too often intertwined with poverty and other sociopolitical issues. as just seen, the maintenance of health status, in nutritional terms, is equivalent to the structural and functional integrity maintained through the exchange of energy and nutrients with the environment. however, this is not always possible due to a devastating vicious circle that involves food shortages, food poverty and food deprivation. food shortages are regional and involve many people who are affected by lack of available food. they are frequently caused by natural disasters, such as droughts, hurricanes, earthquakes and floods, but they can also be caused by regional conflicts. food poverty occurs at a household level (food poverty can occur even when food is available in a region) when the household does not have resources to bring food into the home. household poverty frequently occurs in times of economic hardship, such as low employment opportunities or illness of individuals of working age. it also occurs when people do not own land to farm for household gardens. in areas where hiv/aids is prevalent, food poverty is a common problem. lastly, food deprivation is an individual’s lack of food that can be relative. for example, if everyone in the household eats the same amount of food, some individuals may not have enough food. also, distribution of food by type in a household may http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ food security 149 relations – 5.2 november 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ leave some individuals with a less nutritious diet. the most terrible aspect is that food shortages (regional) may contribute to food poverty (household) and food deprivation (individual), while food deprivation for an individual may reduce his/her productivity, contributing to food poverty for a household. the exponential growth of the world population, which now has reached nearly 7 billion people, continues at a dizzying pace so that, according to the most accurate projections, it is expected to exceed 8 billion people in 2030 and then reach 9 billion in 2050. although these are projections for the future, if the fertility rate remains unchanged from the current one, it will be observed a substantial demographic stability in europe and north america, and a substantial increase in asian populations, india and especially africa. population growth does not only lead to an increasing demand for food, especially in countries in transition and in the least developed countries, but also to changes in the required quality of the food; the progressive urbanization, which will bring, in 2030, more than 60% of the population to live in the cities, combined with the marked improvement of income conditions of large sections of the populations of countries such as china and india, will result in a strong increase in individual demand for animal products. anyway, it is now known that meat consumption is linearly related to average income. these data are confirmed by the observations of fao, which noted that developing countries have had, in the last forty years of the twentieth century, a significant increase in both average daily availability of energy (from 2000 to 2500 kcal/day for individual) and food of animal origin (about 2-3 times) and predicted a further increase in the following years. recently, the same fao data predicted a doubling of animal food consumption by 2050, whereas the daily individual consumption of plant foods (grains, fruits and vegetables) should remain almost stable. even fish production, which currently amounts to 130 million tons, might duplicate in the next forty years (godfray et al. 2010). in this scenery, food security is not an exclusive problem of developing countries, but has become a critical challenge for all humanity, because it is increasingly clearer that the food availability is related to life expectancy. as can be seen from the data shown in table 1, life expectancy increased as availability of food, up to around 3200 kcal/person/day. these are averaged data and do not account for other factors that affect life expectancy, such as availability of antibiotics and vaccines in the 1900s. moreover, some individuals in earlier times lived longer and everyone did not have the same diet or physical work level. but these data are nevertheless significant. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ nicholas chiari 150 relations – 5.2 november 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ table 1. – life expectancy, year – kcal/person/day. country 1750 1850 1950 2000 uk 37 – 2170 40 – 2360 69 – 3230 78 – 3220 france 26 – 1657 42 – 2480 67 – 2785 79 – 3512 to date, the most recent estimates tell us that about one billion people (15% of the global population) go hungry or are malnourished. in fact, the global distribution of the availability of calories per capita is very varied, with peaks higher than 3400 kcal/day for north america and europe and with values of less than 2000 to 1800 kcal/day for the countries of central africa (fao 2009). the direct consequence is that people in africa have less energy and less protein available to them than people in north america and europe. individuals in parts of africa and asia may not meet their caloric needs if their jobs require manual labor, if they have special health needs, if the food does not reach them, or if the food they receive is less nutritious than other food. moreover, if protein requirements are about 56 g/day (0.8 g protein/kg body weight/day), people in all regions may have the amount of protein they need. however, in reality protein intake goes hand in hand to caloric intake, with very different values between the countries of north america and europe and african (tab. 2). meat consumption is linearly related to the average income per inhabitant (speedy 2003): from the examination of the trend of the individual average consumption since 1980, it can be expected, for the next 20 years, a considerable increase in demand for such food in emerging countries, china and india in particular, with annual quantities for individual that will go up to 37 kg of meat and 66 kilograms of dairy products already by 2030, in contrast to what will happen in developed countries where the individual consumption of such products will remain substantially constant (fao 2002). table 2. – food balance sheet. country kcal/person/day g protein/person/day africa 2434 51.3 asia 2713 71.0 europe 3250 97.1 oceania 2991 94.1 central america 2953 80.5 south america 2838 75.8 north america 3713 113.0 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ food security 151 relations – 5.2 november 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ over the past 50 years, the green revolution and the development of agro-livestock sciences has guaranteed an adequate level of food production to the planet: in the face of a greater availability of food (increased by 20% per person), it is recorded a fall in their price which reached 50% in the middle of the first decade of this century (hazell and wood 2008). however, there are still big differences between the countries in their ability either to feed themselves or to protect the productive capacity of its long-term natural resources (hazell and wood 2008). for example, in the last 4-5 years, the price of cereals, in particular, is practically doubled, either as a result of speculative phenomena or for the increase of their demand for the production of energy from biomass. the significant increase in food prices in 2008, revived again with greater force in 2010 and has reduced the purchasing power of cereals, particularly rice, wheat, and seeds for cultivation in the fields, causing social tensions often escalated into riots in some emerging or developing countries. the need to increase world production of plant and animal food will have to deal with the limited availability of natural resources, particularly land and water (reilly and willenbockel 2010). the total area of the earth is about 13 billion hectares, of which less than 40% is used for agriculture. currently, only 11.5% of the earth’s surface is arable, while 26% is classified as grasslands. the latter usually has the surface of vulnerable soil unsuitable to its transformation into arable land, but it is widely used for sheep-farming and thus ensures a considerable production of food of animal origin, without interfering with crop production (godfray et al. 2010). in the future, to meet the needs of the increased population, the area of arable land is expected to increase; unfortunately, the area used for farming has already reached the limit of that potential (avery 2001). furthermore, various human activities, such as urbanization, industrialization and production of bio-energy, constantly subtract large areas intended to food production, even for the lack of a precise land use planning policy, in particular as regards the most fertile lands. if the sustainability of agriculture has become a global concern, the crucial question is: how will agriculture ensure food to humanity in the coming decades? the challenge is dramatic, but some of the solutions currently under consideration aim at an economic model capable of ensuring environmental sustainability and acceptable living conditions for the entire population and the priority to invest limited resources (especially water and earth) for the production of food, to the detriment of energy production, urbanization and alternative uses. whatever the proposed solution to try to solve the problem of food security, this must necessarily take into consideration the fact that our planet does http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ nicholas chiari 152 relations – 5.2 november 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ not have the reserves of land necessary for the expansion of agriculture. at this time, since the majority of public opinion in the developed countries believe that conventional farming is less secure than the biological one, there is a strong propensity to conversion of lands from first to second. however, organic farming is less productive than conventional farming, either for crop (emmens 2003; ryan et al. 2004) or for animal production (sundrum 2001; de boer 2003). furthermore, there is no scientific evidence demonstrating that the consumption of organic food has beneficial effects on human health (williams 2002; magkos et al. 2003; dangour et al. 2010). consequently, if, in hypothesis, all conventional farms were immediately transformed into organic companies, arable land area to produce the same amount of food required at present should be increased by 2.6 times (up to 1.5 to 4 billion hectares) (avery 2001). similarly, if a tendency to favor organic farming will remain unchanged and the population increase will continue as estimated, in 2025 organic farming will require a quadruple area of arable land, that simply we do not have. consequently, the only realistic option to meet human needs is an increased efficiency of agricultural and livestock production systems and improvement of their environmental sustainability (pretty 2008; godfray et al. 2010). the need to make major improvements to the livestock sector is due to the fact that livestock compete for crops but provide a buffer against grain shortages. in simple numeric terms, livestock actually detract more from total food supply than they provide. livestock now consume more human edible protein than they produce. in fact, livestock consume 77 million tons of protein contained in feedstuff that could potentially be used for human nutrition, whereas only 58 million tons of protein are contained in food products that livestock supply. in terms of dietary energy, the relative loss is much higher. this is a result of the recent trend towards more concentrate-based diets for pigs and poultry, with nutritional requirements more similar to humans than ruminants. this simple comparison obscures the fact that proteins contained in animal products have higher nutritive values than those in the feed provided to animals. moreover, it does not capture the fact that livestock and their feed also make a contribution to food security targets by providing a buffer in national and international food supplies that can be drawn upon in case of food shortages. however, as the livestock sector moves away from using feed and other resources that have no or little alternative value, towards using crops and other high value inputs, it enters into competition with food and other uses of commodities and land. while it is probably true that livestock do not detract food from those who currently go hungry, it raises overall demand and prices for crops and agricultural inputs. these various aspects of livestock’s http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ food security 153 relations – 5.2 november 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ importance feed into national decision-making for the sector. the different policy targets of food supply, poverty reduction, food safety and environmental sustainability take on different levels of importance depending on factors such as stage of development, per capita income and general policy orientation of a country. in the least developed countries with large smallholder sectors, concerns of small producers weigh heavily, along with those of providing cheap supplies to urban consumers. in higher income countries, consumer concerns for food and environmental safety usually override producer interests, even though governments continue to support and protect domestic production for a variety of reasons. there is a stark contrast between the rather modest economic contribution of the livestock sector and its important social, environmental and health dimensions. it is against this background that livestock-environment interactions need to be seen and improved (fao 2006). as it regards the environmental sustainability of the livestock sector, it is proven that the livestock business has a significant influence on the environmental balances, both locally and globally, affecting many aspects that include, among others, the quality of air and water, soil, biodiversity and landscape quality. at the present day, such influence is quite relevant, but will be further increased as a result of the growing worldwide demand for animal products. to the concept of environmental sustainability, it has long since been attributed an important role in livestock, because a careful management of livestock provides improved animal welfare conditions and, consequently, the production of healthy animal food and of excellent nutritional quality, in compliance with the directions advocated by the right to food. today, however, in addition to the fulfillment of the right to food, progresses also a new urgency, intrinsically linked to the relationship between farming systems and climate change, desertification and exploitation of resources, human and/or natural that are ascribable to the breeding of animal. this concern is one of the main cornerstones around which revolves the attention of those who must deal with improving livestock processes, since animal husbandry practices, which are not properly managed and organized, can disrupt the delicate balance between livestock and environment that is present since thousands of years, with possible negative repercussions, some immediate, other slower onset, but no less serious and dangerous. however, whilst approaching the livestock-environment problem, is important to remember that livestock activities always play an essential role towards the environment and how agriculture is the instrument of choice in the fight against the depletion and environmental degradation. the interactions between livestock and the environment are not always and only negative, but in some cases also extremely positive; we can just think http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ nicholas chiari 154 relations – 5.2 november 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ of the advantage given by the use of livestock manure as organic fertilizer or the importance of the workforce of animals, still an essential aid in many areas of the world. in conclusion, food security cannot disregard from increased production of food, which, however, must be obtained through farming practices that protect the environment. this ambitious goal requires the cooperation of many sectors, all highly interconnected, ranging from the sustainable livestock to nutrition. the challenges to guarantee the right to food regarding the production of an adequate amount of food of animal origin, as they are essential for proper human diet, the limited use of the surfaces less suitable for agriculture, in order to preserve biodiversity, the increased yields of crop farming and animals, especially in emerging countries (through the adoption of more efficient production systems) and land use balanced between agriculture destined for food production and alternative activities (such as, for example, energy, urbanization, industry, etc.). in this context, both the study of factors influencing animal footprint and the development of appropriate technologies to reduce the environmental impact of animal husbandry and which also ensure greater efficiency in production, will be among the main topics of research in field of animal sciences and biotechnologies. however, attention must also be paid to animal welfare, ensuring healthier and more efficient stocks. these objectives will have to find the cultural, political, social and infrastructure to enable a capillary transfer of such technologies, especially in emerging countries, at an acceptable cost. there will also be implemented other support measures for a balanced use of the land with the best integration between livestock and crop production in every geographic area, to guarantee sustainability in the long run. it remains also essential to the training program and nutrition education and health, in order to improve the conditions of nutrition and living standards of populations, on one hand by reducing the excesses of food and other stimulating a conscious and responsible use of the people. only in this way the food security ceases to be a mere concept solipsistic and becomes something concrete and real, even in those geographical areas that are daily deprived of the possibility and the right to food. references avery, matthew. 2001. “habitat conservation: a framework for future action”. ecos 22: 3-10. black, robert e., lindsay h. allen, zulfiqar a. bhutta, laura e. caulfield, mercedes de onis, majid ezzati, colin mathers, juan rivera, and the maternal and http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ food security 155 relations – 5.2 november 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ child undernutrition study group. 2008. “maternal and child undernutrition: global and regional exposures and health consequences”. lancet 371 (9608): 243-60. doi: 10.1016/s0140-6736(07)61690-0. dangour, alan d., karen lock, arabella hayter, andrea aikenhead, elizabeth allen, and 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shades of green?”. proceedings of the nutrition society 61 (1): 19-24. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml http://www.un.org/millennium/declaration/ares552e.htm http://www.un.org/millennium/declaration/ares552e.htm humans’ best friend? the ethical dilemma of pets humans’ best friend? the ethical dilemma of pets 1 matteo andreozzi phd candidate in philosophy at university of milan, italy doi: 10.7358/rela-2013-002-andr matteo.andreozzi@unimi.it abstract the main aim of this paper is to demonstrate the need for a reassessment of the moral status of pets. i argue that pets rest on an undefined ethical borderline, which brings several puzzling problems to both human-centered ethics and animal ethics and that neither of these fields adequately handles these issues. i focus specifically on human relationships with companion animals as one of the most significant interspecific relationship involving humans and pets. i also show that a deeper questioning of the moral status of pets is a required step toward the moral rethinking of human-animal relationships. keywords: pets, companion animals, animal welfare, animal liberation, animal rights, impartialism, partialism, intrinsic value, special duties, relational ethics, contextual ethics. 1. introduction throughout the last fifteen years, several authors have highlighted that, despite the lively debate among moral philosophers concerning the extent of our responsibility to nonhuman animals (henceforth animals), literature about animal welfare, liberation, and rights contains an undeniable omission (burgess-jackson 1998; varner 2002; spencer et al. 2006). since the 1970s, there has been ample philosophical literature considering the moral considerability, relevance, and significance of animals. however, philosophers have had little to say about pets specifically, despite the evident importance that these animals have in many humans’ daily lives. upon 1 the author wishes to thank adele tiengo, heather lourie, and amir zelinger for helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ matteo andreozzi 24 relations – 1.2 november 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ closer examination, it is evident that pets rest on an unexplored and currently undefined ethical borderline. anthropologist edmund leach refers to pets as “man-animals”: “[…] an ambiguous (and taboo-loaded) intermediate category” between humans and not-humans (animals) (leach 1966, 45). this dichotomy illustrates the philosophical borderline that divides human-centered ethicists and the animal ethicists over how to morally consider pets. in order to understand the moral status of pets, we need to know how to categorize them: are they ‘persons’, like humans, or ‘animals’, just like any other animals? humancentered ethicists consider only humans – or rather persons – as moral subjects and ends in themselves. if we subscribe to this perspective, how is it possible to argue that we need to give respect to pets? meanwhile, animal ethicists present a separate issue: they claim that all animals (humans included) have the same intrinsic value, inherent value, or inherent worth (henceforth intrinsic value) and generally reject any unnecessary or disrespectful constraints to the liberty of either domesticated or wild animals. by this perspective, there is no question about our responsibilities to pets. the problem in the animal ethics paradigm comes when considering the moral implications of pet-keeping itself – this is true both for impartialist and partialist points of view. impartialist animal ethicists rarely criticize the custom of keeping of pets and almost never do so if the pets at issue are companion animals. but if animal ethics claims that all animals are equal, why do impartialists reserve more respect for pets than for other animals? even those ethicists who address these issues and often criticize the keeping of both domesticated animals (such as working animals) and domestic animals (such as partly or fully caged animals), usually legitimize the practice of keeping companion animals (such as dogs and cats). partialists ethicists tend to take a larger issue with pet-keeping customs. however, the partialist authors who are most active in consolidating our special duties to these animals only defend the fair keeping of these animals but do not consider whether or not they should be kept (midgley 1983; burgess-jackson 1998; palmer 2010). they usually do not question whether the phenomenon of keeping companion animals is actually in the best interest of these animals or if it is truly compatible with showing respect to these or other animals. from now on, i will refer to the puzzling situation described above as the ethical dilemma of pets. the main aim of this paper is to explore the implications of this dilemma, by delineating several arguments for the reassessment of the moral status of pets. i focus my inquiry specifically on our relationship with companion animals as one of the most significant yet simultaneously ambiguous interspecific relationship involving humans and pets. because humans’ best friend? 25 relations – 1.2 november 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ pets (in general) and companion animals (especially) are among the most interactive and widespread links that connect us with the nonhuman world, i claim that a deeper questioning of the ethical dilemma of pets is a required step toward the moral rethinking of human-animal relationships. the paper has the following structure: in section 2, i suggest broad definitions of both the terms ‘pet’ and ‘companion animal’; in section 3 and  4, i consider human-centered and animal ethics paradigms respectively, exploring some of the problems in their approaches to companion animals; lastly, in section 5, i display some important implications of these problems and provide suggestions to handle them. 2. defining pets and companion animals drawing on gary varner’s readjustments of deborah barnbaum’s set of conditions for something to be called a pet, and partly reordering and reviewing them, i suggest that, in order for an entity to be considered a pet, it must meet the following five criteria: 1. the affection criterion: while a pet may not necessarily feel affection towards the pet-owner, the pet-owner must feel affection towards the pet (barnbaum 1998, 41; varner 2002, 452-3). 2. the interest criterion: pets are living beings who have an interest in pursuing their own good (barnbaum 1998, 41) in the sense that the fulfillment of their needs and desires creates non-instrumental value (varner 2002, 454). 3. the dependency criterion: the fulfillment of the majority of the pet’s most basic needs and desires depends on humans (barnbaum 1998, 41; varner 2002, 454). 4. the domicile criterion: pets must live in an area that is significantly under human control or influence (barnbaum 1998, 42), furthermore they must either be prevented from leaving that area or voluntarily choose to remain there (varner 2002, 454). 5. the discontinuity criterion: pets must be profoundly different animals from their owners and thus live different kinds of lives than humans do (barnbaum 1998, 41; varner 2002, 453). although, from a human point of view, affection is the central element that defines whether or not an entity is a pet, this criterion is not sufficient. it is implicit even in this emotionally minimizing characterization of pets that pets are animals with interests that, although different from human needs and desires, can mostly be fulfilled by those humans who decide to take charge of them. i highlight that pets have interests that can mostly be matteo andreozzi 26 relations – 1.2 november 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ fulfilled by humans, and not that they need to be fulfilled by humans. i do so because i want to underline that it is almost always a human choice to create this relationship, but that it is yet to be proven that this choice is necessary for the survival of the pet. this is also the main reason why i have distinguished the ideas of ‘dependency’ and ‘interest’ in two different criteria: i claim that by joining them in the dependency criterion (as barnbaum and varner do) something important is left unsaid (barnbaum 1998, 41; varner 2002, 454). indeed, i claim that, while pets do have interests for which fulfillment does depend mostly on the attention of those humans who keep them under their control, it does not follow that these animals need to live such kind of lives. for the purposes of this paper, i adopt the above presented set of criteria to define pets. from this criteria, it follows that it is not only dogs or cats who can be called pets, but also some ‘domesticated animals’ who are not kept in houses (i.e. working animals such as draft horses, milk cows, and service dogs) and even some ‘domestic animals’ who are kept in houses but who are not properly domesticated (i.e. partly or fully caged animals, such as rodents, birds, reptiles, insects, and fishes), because they all meet the set of conditions. therefore, all of these animals fall into the ethical dilemma of pets. however, there are significant distinctions between ‘mere pets’ and ‘companion animals’ that should be underlined. although i agree with varner in defining ‘mere pets’ as those animals who simply meet the set of conditions, but i break away from the importance he gives to companionship in his definition of ‘companion animals’ (varner 2002, 460, 463). indeed, i claim that we can only say that it seems that these animals enjoy our companionship, but we cannot state for sure that it is so. thus, i suggest that only those pets who have significant social interaction with their owners and would voluntarily chose to stay with them (at least seemingly for the sake of companionship) be considered ‘companion animals’. i suggest that only cats and dogs are companion animals in a strict sense 2. despite the growing concern about pets and the high esteem given to companion animals in many communities, i claim that undeniable contradictions arise from arguing for the moral status of these animals. in the next sections, i will examine human-centered ethics and animal ethics in turn, showing the several contradictions within the arguments they present 2 i should add as a parenthetical note that despite i would agree with varner in drawing further distinctions between ‘companion animals’ (cats and dogs) and ‘domesticated partners’ (dogs), i do not want to spread myself too thin in my argumentation (varner 2002, 456-63). in fact, for my present purposes i do not need to go into this matter and its possible implications. humans’ best friend? 27 relations – 1.2 november 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ to justify both the keeping of pets and our special duties to companion animals. as most of these arguments concern mainly companion animals, and because these animals seem to remain untouched by most of animal ethicists’ arguments against the keeping of pets, the majority of my analysis will address dogs and cats specifically. 3. exploring the human-centered dilemma drawing on yi-fu tuan’s analysis (1984), erica fudge states that “modern pets are different from, say, the pets of the ancient world, because they are a product of industrialization and urbanization” (fudge 2008, 16-7). in fact, the huge influx of dogs and cats that exists in the western developed world is a recent phenomenon and is strictly connected with another phenomenon: the companion animal industry (aspca 2012; ifah-europe 2012). unfortunately, the industrialization of companion animals has negative implications. for one thing, the desire of breeders and pet-owners alike for specific traits in their companion animals has led to the breeding of animals with physical disadvantages and health problems (like respiratory difficulties and osteoporosis) (spencer et al. 2006, 23). also, the mass production of pets has caused the number of pets to reach huge quantities; according to the data collected by people for the ethical treatment of animals, in 1998, approximately 2,500 kittens and puppies are born each hour in the united states alone – that is 70,000 animals each day (peta 1998). furthermore, this mass production brings inconceivable consequences: since the number of animals being created far exceeds their demand, millions of homeless cats and dogs suffer from abandonment, starvation, disease, freezing, highway death, or laboratory procurement (peta 1998). lastly, more than 70 percent of us residents who acquire animals eventually give them away, abandon them, or take them to shelters. shelters receive about 27 million animals annually: more than half of which (about 17 millions) must be destroyed for lack of homes (most of them are under 18 months of age and 90 percent are healthy and adoptable). in today’s post-industrial environment, companion animals are treated analogously with ‘things’ and it is no coincidence that those humans who keep these pets are referred to as ‘pet-owners’. tuan claims that the sentimentalized view of pets was developed in western europe in the 19th century and, later, in north america (1984). he explains that “humans needed an outlet for their gestures of affection [as] this was becoming more difficult to find in modern society as it began to segment and isolate people into their private spheres” (tuan 1984, 112). matteo andreozzi 28 relations – 1.2 november 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ unfortunately, our relationships with these domesticated affection-surrogates are usually also relationships of domination (tuan 1984, 99). fudge (2008, 16-23) suggests that the subordination of dogs and cats provides us psychological security in an insecure world: these animals reassure us that, whatever happens outside the home, inside our homes we humans are the absolute masters and mistresses of our own domains. stuart spencer et al. (2006, 20) add that of the most common reasons for keeping companion animals is the human desire to constitute and project our own identity through the things we possess. in short, it is clear throughout history that we bring companion animals to our homes for our own companionship; we use them for our own thwarted needs to receive or express affection; we control them for our own psychological security; and we constitute and project our own identity through them. there are certainly exceptions to these conditions. one could bring home dogs and cats who were neither selected by breeding nor produced by the pet industry, but that were instead obtained from shelters, rescues, or acquaintances and family members who could not (or could no longer) take care of them. it is also possible for someone to adopt this kind of pet only after careful consideration of both the reasons why he or she chose to bring the pet home and his or her disposition to provide for their needs. nevertheless, i argue that the status of companion animals is not itself an exception to the things-proprieties-means status that widespread humancentered ethical framework usually reserves to whatever is not a human being – or rather, is not a person. this status is not only a side effect of our willingness to love these animals: it is the required premise of it. even though pet-owners assert that they love and respect their companion animals as friends or members of their families, by adopting these pets, pet-owners implicitly endorse a system that produces things that become proprieties. and by bringing these animals home, pet-owners are likely to view at these animals as means to their ends. as a result, they embrace an anthropocentric perspective to view at a product of anthropocentrism: the modern phenomenon of companion animals. because human-centered duties toward companion animals are indirectly aimed at other humans, these duties have no resemblance to a moral obligation toward animals. the ethical framework presented by humancentered ethics does not offer a legitimate argument for the respect of these animals as moral patients, neither as individuals nor as species. indeed, in this framework, we can defend the keeping of companion animals only by demanding special moral consideration for those means that persons take toward their ends (if y is of value to x, and x has intrinsic value, then there is a prima facie ethical duty not to deprive x of y). in short, the problem humans’ best friend? 29 relations – 1.2 november 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ of defending the moral status of these animals cannot be solved from the same perspective that created the phenomenon: the only way to defend the moral status of companion animals is by adopting an animal ethics perspective which argues for the intrinsic value of all animals. 4. exploring the animal ethics dilemma keith burgess-jackson claims that some of the most active defenders of the moral status of animals are afraid to handle the full extent to which humans are responsible to companion animals mainly because these individuals are impartialists (burgess-jackson 1998, 171-3). usually grounding their arguments either on the ‘sentience’ or the ‘consciousness’ criterion, impartialist animal ethicists like peter singer and tom regan claim that those same reasons that cause us to respect all humans also necessitate that we reserve an identical respect for all animals, or rather, for all mammals (singer 1975; regan 1983). however, since companion animals are not more conscious, clever, complex or sensitive than other mammals, impartialist animal ethicists have no arguments to claim that we have special responsibilities toward them. the few fearless authors who defend both the intrinsic value of all animals and our special duties to companion animals claim that, despite our having a general obligation not to harm any animals, we also have affirmative partialist responsibilities to promote the interests of some of them, a principle that could override the former duty (midgley 1983; burgessjackson 1998; palmer 2010). the special duties described above depend on three different kinds of relational responsibilities: the relational responsibility that human communities have to the animals who co-evolved with them as member of the same “mixed community” (midgley 1983); the relational responsibility that human societies have to those animals they have caused to be in the non-natural situation in which they are (palmer 2010); and the relational responsibility that pet-owners have “to the animals they voluntarily bring into their lives – precisely because they bring them into their lives” (burgess-jackson 1998, 161). grounding our special duties to companion animals in these contextual relationships, partialist authors are able to overcome the problems and contradictions that human-centered ethics and impartialist animal ethics bring to the dilemma. indeed, by creating these distinct scenarios, it is possible for them to argue against the things-proprieties-means status of pets and in favor of our special duties to companion animals, both as species and as individuals. nevertheless, all of these authors assume that keeping companion animals is morally licit and matteo andreozzi 30 relations – 1.2 november 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ so defend the fair keeping of these animals. because this facet of the argument goes untouched, it is safe to say that none of these partialist authors entirely handles the problem of defending the moral status of companion animals. these authors usually legitimize the keeping of companion animals by assuming that the practice of domesticating dogs and cats has existed for a long time; that these animals enjoy our companionship, and so enjoy their status; and that both the owners and the companion animals genuinely benefit from the relationship – when it is respectful. i argue that all of these assumptions are misleading and convey an anthropocentric bias. i claim that while creating a relationship with a companion animal benefits the keeper in many ways, this relationship is not compatible with the goal of respecting animals at all. even though dogs and cats have been domesticated for a long time, it does not follow that these species have lost any ‘natural’ behavior. when unleashed into ‘the wild’ domesticated species usually revert to their ‘natural’ behavior very rapidly, indicating neither that these animals need to be domesticated in order to survive nor that humans are required to take charge of the interests of dogs and cats for the protection of these animals (jensen 2005). also, although it seems that companion animals accept or enjoy their role and status, it is possible that these animals are either only described or understood through an anthropomorphic misperception or that they are actually expressing frustrated feelings they would prefer to have for members of their own family, group, or pack. it is absolutely true that we do not have enough information to know which of these scenarios is true. finally, despite their remarkable effort to please their companion animals, by even keeping these animals as pets, pet-owners often thwart many of these animals’ needs. in fact, companion animals would need to belong to their family or group (or pack for dogs), to mate freely, to run freely, and to relieve themselves whenever and wherever they want (jensen 2005; aerts et al. 2006). however, pet-owners usually bring home only one or a few animals, but almost never a family, a group, or a pack of them. they are also encouraged to spay or neuter their dogs and cats, and often decide when or at least where to let these animals get their exercise and perform bodily functions. there are certainly many exceptions to these forms of domestication, subordination, domination and deprivation of liberties. however, even if pet-owners allow companion animals as much freedom as possible, there is at least one interest that should not be philosophically underestimated: their interest to eat other animals, possibly hunting for them. if pet-owners allow their animals to hunt their own food (as these animals seem to prefer), then pet-owners can reasonably be held responsihumans’ best friend? 31 relations – 1.2 november 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ble for allowing their animals to cause harm or to violate the rights of other animals (callicott 1985; sapontzis 1998). although it seems that dogs and cats could live well eating only veg(etari)an food this is controversial (especially in regard to cats) (dzanis 2009; hawn 2011). but if pet-owners serve their companion animals meat, as it is usually recommended, then they are in some way contributing to the oppression of the animals sacrificed to the meat industry. in keeping companion animals, there is (at least in most scenarios) a tradeoff between the oppression of the welfare-interests of the pet at issue and the oppression of other animals. in short: it is not necessary that companion animals be kept by humans; we cannot say whether they truly enjoy our companionship and their status; it is not easy to respect their interests; and, even though it may be possible to meet all of their needs, doing so would require that humans not only discriminate against other animals, but also that they allow the killing of other animals. taking these issues into account, i argue that the special duties to companion animals suggested by partialist authors are valid only as forms of reparation or compensation, which imply that a harm was done. indeed, i suggest to bring these special duties down to affirmative duties which try to restore the balance of justice that had held between humans and companion animals before the general obligation not to harm them was transgressed by historical, social, or individual relationships (midgley 1983; burgess-jackson 1998; palmer 2010). even though humans have certain special relational responsibilities toward companion animals, i claim that to really restore the balance of justice it is necessary to recognize that the harm at issue is caused by the practice of keeping companion animals at all. as a matter of fact, understanding and addressing this specific form of mistreatment is the only way to entirely handle the problem of defending the moral status of these animals. 5. conclusion in a short essay like this one, it is possible only to begin to touch upon the ethical dilemma of pets and its implications. nevertheless, delving into this topic is not simply an exploration of puzzling ethical issues: it is the realization of bewildering conclusions. neither the human centered ethics lens nor the impartialist animal ethics lens gives us sufficient insight with which to deal with this dilemma. indeed, both lenses have serious roadblocks that prevent philosophers from considering the fundamental (im)morality of keeping pets. according to human-centered ethics, it is not viable to view pets as persons or ends in themselves. at the same time, using impartialist matteo andreozzi 32 relations – 1.2 november 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ animal ethics allows us no argument to assure to companion animals more respect than to all the other animals. nevertheless, we usually claim to love pets in a different way than the way we claim to love mere objects, such as a smartphone or a car. furthermore, we generally reserve much more ethical concern to companion animals than to other animals: even some petowners who claim to be advocates of animal liberation and/or rights, and who adopt for themselves a veg(etari)an diet often serve meat to their dogs and cats. some authors suggest that the best way to determine the extent to which humans have special responsibilities to – at least some kinds of – pets is to adopt a partialist and relations-based ethical perspective. however, i claim that a fundamental flaw lies in this argument. the argument rests on the assumption that the keeping of companion animals truly benefits both pet-owners and pets, but this assumption is not supported by facts. only a few authors have explored the ethical dilemma of pets beyond this anthropocentric bias. making a comparison between the main arguments of animal ethics against the keeping of farm animals and the history of keeping pets, stuart spencer et al. argue that the only “logical conclusion is that it is unethical to keep pets” (spencer et al. 2006, 24). exploring the inherent problems of domestication of pets, gary l. francione claims that “we cannot justify the perpetuation of domestication for the purpose of keeping ‘pets’” (francione 2012). digging deeper into what i call the ethical dilemma of pets, i argue that the keeping of pets is not compatible with promoting the welfare of these (and other) animals. even though it does follow that, if we have special duties to pets, then these duties do not rest on their living with us, i claim that this line of logic implies neither that that we do not have special duties to pets nor that companion animals cannot live among us. in regard to our special duties to them, i formally agree with partialist authors’ main arguments: while societies have special responsibilities toward pet species, both because humans have forced most of these species to co-evolve with them, and also because humans have historically caused these animals to be in the dependent and vulnerable situation in which they live today, individuals have special duties to pets whenever they decide to take care of them (midgley 1983; burgess-jackson 1998; palmer 2010). in regard to putting these special duties into practice, i claim that arguing against the keeping of pets is both necessary and potentially misleading. although the end of the phenomenon of pet-keeping should be a long-term moral goal, we also and above all need to have short-term ethical guidance. while pondering how to gradually create a world that does not yet exist, we must confront the immediate situation in which these animals already live among us. since most of them – companion animals especially – do not even have a habitat, they cannot simply be pushed into the wild. humans’ best friend? 33 relations – 1.2 november 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ fudge argues that, while other animals usually offer food both for humans’ tables and pets’ bowls, “pets offer philosophers food for thought”; the potency of pets may not be the same kind of potency of wild animals, “but it is a philosophical potency that should not be underestimated” (fudge 2008, 8-9). i claim that there are two philosophical potencies. the first potency has to do with human-animal relationships. since humans have built a closer relationship with pets (and with companion animals especially) than with other animals, these animals can play a key role in changing the way in which humans think and feel about animals in general. indeed, philosophers and advocates for animals alike often use the question ‘if you love animals called pets, why do you eat animals called dinner?’ to stimulate in their audiences thoughts and feelings about animals. furthermore, one’s relationship with his or her own pet is the most common starting point for the individual rethinking of the ethics of human-animal relationships. paul littlefair (2006), for example, writes that, as the pet phenomenon has grown in china, so has grown a corresponding increase in concern for animal welfare and rights. the second potency is broader than the first; it is more hidden and almost unchallenged. this potency is the power that philosophical questioning has to (re)connect animal ethics and environmental ethics on their shared life-centered perspective (attfield 1983; taylor 1986; sterba 1995 and 1998; varner 1998). indeed, the phenomenon of pets offers a fundamental opportunity to reassess the moral status of animals from a non-anthropomorphic point of view. while it reveals the inconsistency of human-centered ethics and impartialist animal ethics, it also reveals the inadequacies of partialist animal ethics and its anthropocentric bias. in other words, it shows that the way in which we interpret the interest criterion is crucial. hence, ascribing moral significance either to the entity who is ‘interested in something’ (like anthropomorphic ethics usually do) or on what is ‘in the interest of the entity’ (like biocentric environmental ethicists suggest to do) could make a powerful difference. this paper has focused on a deeper questioning of the moral status of pets as a required step toward the moral rethinking of human-animal relationships, but there are certainly many other ethical issues related to this topic that should be further discussed. having explored the ethical dilemma of pets does not mean having solved it. i hope that, from this essay, one point has been made clear: before one can truly love another as a 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princeton university press. tuan, yi-fu. 1984. dominance and affection: the making of pets. new haven, ct: yale university press. varner, gary e. 1998. in nature’s interests? interests, animal rights, and environmental ethics. new york: oxford university press. 2002. “pets, companion animals, and domesticated partners”. in ethics for everyday, edited by david benatar, 450-75. new york: mcgraw-hill. energy ethics outside the box: carl mitcham in conversation with giovanni frigo 173 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ is sn 2 2 8 0 -9 9 5 3 beyond anthropocentrism 1 • january 2013 inside the emotional lives of non-human animals a minding animals international utrecht 2012 pre-conference event special issue (genoa, italy, 12-13 may, 2012) edited by m. andreozzi, r. bennison, a. massaro, s. tonutti capabilities approach and animal bioethics • michele panzera animals and our emotions. how to approach the study of an interspecific community? • sabrina tonutti advocacy and animal rights • kim stallwood the emotional lives of animals: a christian perspective • alma massaro – gianfranco nicora animalia: ontology and ethics in weak antispeciesism • leonardo caffo the contemporary debate on experimentation • susanna penco – rosagemma ciliberti non-human animals and genetic engineering • arianna ferrari the relationship between humans and other animals in european animal welfare legislation • paola sobbrio human’s best friends? • matteo andreozzi elationsre l a t io n s . b e y o n d a n t h r o p o c e n t r is m 1 • 2 0 1 3 r 6.2 november 2018 energy ethics: emerging perspectives in a time of transition special issue edited by giovanni frigo part ii studies and research contributions energy ethics: a literature review 177 giovanni frigo contesting the radical monopoly: a critical view on the motorized 215 culture from a cyclonaut perspective damien delorme desiring ethics: reflections on veganism from an observational 233 study of transitions in everyday energy use alice dal gobbo ethical risk and energy 251 bertrand andre rossert coal feeds my family: subsistence, energy, and industry in central 269 appalachia m. joseph aloi human energy: philosophical-anthropological presuppositions 287 of anthropogenic energy, movement, and activity and their implications for well-being roman meinhold http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ relations. beyond anthropocentrism 174 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ comments, debates, reports and interviews energy ethics outside the box: carl mitcham in conversation 301 with giovanni frigo carl mitcham giovanni frigo energy equality and the challenges of population growth 313 andrea natan feltrin the energy of ethics / the ethics of energy: a dialog with irigaray, 321 varela and jullien federico battistutta reviews alex epstein, a review of the moral case for fossil fuels (2014) 331 adam briggle author guidelines 335 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 301 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ energy ethics outside the box carl mitcham in conversation with giovanni frigo carl mitcham 1 giovanni frigo 2 1 renmin university of china, beijing china colorado school of mines, golden, co usa 2 department of philosophy, northern michigan university, marquette, mi – usa doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2018-002-mitc cmitcham@mines.edu gfrigo@nmu.edu carl mitcham is international professor of philosophy of technology at renmin (people’s) university of china in beijing and professor emeritus in the division of humanities, arts & social sciences at the colorado school of mines, in golden, colorado. he is widely recognized as a contributor to the philosophy of science-technology-engineering and is currently at work on a book about the philosophy of engineering. he also reads widely in an effort to make philosophically relevant connections between different approaches to thinking in a world that is now trying to figure out how to live with its love of and worries about energy. indeed, he had a number of recent books at hand as we proceeded in this internet mediated conversation to which he occasionally referred (see references at the end). gf: from previous discussions, i know you have been critical of what you see as an often too narrow scope in energy ethics. in this interview, i would like to explore some of your ideas in this regard along with your thoughts about the current energy transition discourse. let’s begin with your basic claim about the narrowness of energy ethics. what do you see as its narrowness? cm: i’m honored by your interest in what i might have to say about the energy-ethics connection. but i have not really thought as much about relations between energy and ethics as i should have. and because i’m primarily trying to think about engineering more generally, i’m not http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ http://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2018-002-mitc mailto:cmitcham@mines.edu mailto:gfrigo@nmu.edu carl mitcham giovanni frigo 302 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ well read in the increasingly significant body of literature in the ethics of energy area. as a result, what i have to say may be quite mistaken and certainly will be overly simplified. nevertheless, my basic sense is that energy ethics discussions are limited in two respects: first, they fail to consider ethics in relationship to other aspects of philosophy. that is, energy ethics deserves to be part of a more expansive philosophy of energy. second, the energy ethics discourse tends to presume the value of increased energy production and consumption, focusing more on the idea of how most ethically to produce and consume it. gf: could you elaborate on the first criticism, that energy ethics is not as much a philosophy of energy as it might be? cm: this is actually a two-fold issue. one is that philosophical discussions of energy could benefit from critical reflection on energy from other branches of philosophy such as ontology, epistemology, aesthetics, and political philosophy. as physicist richard feynman commented back in the 1960s, “it is important to realize that in physics today, we have no knowledge of what energy is [… t]here are formulas for calculating some numerical quantity [… but this] is […] abstract [and] does not tell us the mechanisms or the reasons for the various formulas” (feynman, leighton, and sands 1963, 4-3). the question of energy thus constitutes an important epistemological and ontological issue. norbert wiener’s 1948 statement that “information is information, not matter or energy” also points toward a metaphysical question. with regard to aesthetics, consider also these lines from william blake’s the marriage of heaven and hell (1793): energy is the only life and is from the body and reason is the bound or outward circumference of energy. energy is eternal delight. in 1972 gary snyder wrote a small op-ed piece in the new york times taking off from blake (and perhaps influenced by discussions with jerry brown) to argue that contrary to popular mythology “electricity for los angeles is not energy”. then, of course, there is the notion of energy present in the chinese idea of qi (氣). just as any ethics is embedded in a more comprehensive philosophy, so shouldn’t the ethics of energy be thought in more expansive philosophical terms? in like manner, given the significance of energy in contemporary discourse, i’d suggest that more general philosophical work being done today could benefit from including thinking about energy. contemporary philosophy is evading its own responsibilities by not including critical reflection on the nature and meaning of energy in the world today. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ carl mitcham in conversation with giovanni frigo 303 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ gf: what about your second point, that energy ethics discourse tends to presume the value of increased energy production and consumption? what do you mean by this? cm: in a short article co-authored with a mines colleague, jessica smith, and drawing on ideas from one of my teachers, ivan illich, i argued for distinguishing between two kinds of energy ethics: type i and type ii. to reprise from that 2013 piece, belief in a linear relationship between energy and culture constitutes type i. such a belief assumes that energy production and use is a fundamental good. this is a view explicitly advanced not only by belgian chemical engineer a.r. ubbelohde in an early contribution to emerging energy ethics discourse in a small volume on man and energy (1955), where he develops the concept of “energy slaves” and proposes the construction of an ideal tektopia based on such inanimate energy slaves, but by the american anthropologist leslie white. in white’s words, there exists a “law of cultural development” by which “culture advances as the amount of energy harnessed per capita per year increases, or as the efficiency or economy of the means of controlling energy is increased, or both” (his italics). type ii ethics begins with skepticisms about any such relationship. as best i can tell, something like the type i ethics remains a leading assumption in much if not most energy ethics literature. for instance, even benjamin sovacool in his very good and insightful book on energy and ethics (2013) focuses primarily on the need for a more just distribution of energy resources. his multiple comparative analyses of situations in such places as denmark, england, the world bank, são tomé e príncipe, bangladesh, and ecuador argue against “the view that energy policy and security problems are matters best left to economists and engineers” (p. 2). he rejects markets and technology as in themselves sufficient to correct energy injustices. so in one sense he breaks with what might be called a type zero energy ethics that would ignore ethics entirely. as he writes in the conclusion of his book, “choosing to ignore the ethical implications of our energy system is not a decision free from value …, doing nothing sides with and validates the oppressive system” (p. 227). but there is a stronger sense of doing nothing than sovacool’s. it remains a distinctly minority position that, to adapt gary snyder’s idea, along with some redistribution, a reduction in energy production and consumption might contribute to justice. gf: what do you think of vaclav smil in this regard? in a recent profile in science, paul voosen described smil as “perhaps the world’s foremost thinker on energy”. as a kind of summary of more than a dozen books on the topic, smil’s thick volume on energy and civilization: a hishttp://www.ledonline.it/relations/ carl mitcham giovanni frigo 304 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ tory (2017) has gotten lots of attention. what do you think about smil’s massive analysis of the dependence of civilization on increases in energy consumption? cm: i respect and have learned from smil a great deal, but like most of us he does not see everything. on the one hand, he is quantitatively clear eyed about the history of increased energy use through previous energy transitions (i.e., from the use of fire, to animals, to wind and water, to petrochemicals), what would be required for a new transition to renewable energy, and the unlikelihood of us making such a transition in the near future. toward the end of the 500-page book which you mention he writes: life’s two cardinal characteristics have been expansion and increasing complexity. can we reverse these trends by adopting the technically feasible and environmentally desirable shift to moderated energy use? can we continue human evolution by concentrating only on those aspects that do not require maximization of energy flows, can we create an energetically invariable civilization that would be living strictly within its solar/ biospheric limits? could such a shift be accomplished without eventually converting to a no-growth economy and reducing the current global population? (p. 440) his implicit answer to all three questions is essentially negative, because for individuals this would mean a no less revolutionary delinking of social status from material consumption. setting up such societies would be especially burdensome for the first generations making the transition. in the long run, these new arrangements would also eliminate one of the mainsprings of western progress, the quest for social and economic mobility. he is restrained in his questioning, but reveals his skepticism in those whom he quotes. as he notes, romanian-american economist nicholas georgescu-roegen was not hopeful. perhaps, the destiny of man is to have a short, but fiery, exciting and extravagant life rather than a long, uneventful and vegetative existence. let other species – the amoebas, for example – which have no spiritual ambitions inherit the earth still bathed in plenty of sunshine. “in contrast”, smil continues in his own voice, techno-optimists see a future of unlimited energy, whether from superefficient pv cells or from nuclear fusion, and of humanity colonizing other planets suitably terraformed to the earth’s image. for the foreseeable future … i see such expansive visions as nothing but fairy tales. (p. 441) but one remarkable thing about smil’s big book on energy and civilization is how little attention is devoted to the notion of civilization. energy http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ carl mitcham in conversation with giovanni frigo 305 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ is examined from literally hundreds of perspectives. civilization, however, is explicitly discussed only a few times and never defined. there is no reference to norbert elias’s great study, the civilizing process (2000, but first published in 1939). in many instances, smil seems to equate civilization with society. incidentally, this failure to distinguish civilization and society is something i would apply to many science, technology, and society programs and social studies of science. gf: what distinction do you think should be drawn between civilization and society? cm: as elias notes, there is a contrast between civilization and culture that is different, especially and for example, in france and germany. but in general, civilization is the broader term; different cultures (e.g., french and german) can be part of the same (european or even western) civilization. what elias argues is that over hundreds of years europe created a distinctive habitus or “second nature” characterized by forms of self-restraint in regard to table manners, bodily waste elimination, even blowing your nose and spitting, sexuality, and especially violence, all giving rise, when transgressed, to feelings of shame and distaste. in his words, “in the course of centuries the standard of human behavior on the same occasion very gradually shifts in a specific direction” (p. x). although his study focuses on europe, he sees some version of the civilizing process and emerging practices of self-restraint as something that has taken similar forms in other civilizations. civilization is fundamentally a form of self-restraint. one of my personal interests concerns the distinctive form that this civilizing process has taken in china. in the confucian tradition, for instance, ritual propriety (礼 or li), which can also be translated as “etiquette”, is of central importance. to be confucian is not so much to believe certain things as it is to practice certain forms of conduct, the achievement of which it pursued through self-cultivation. a couple of years ago edward slingerland, a professor of asian studies at the university of british columbia and translator of the analects, gave a week-long seminar at renmin university in which i was privileged to participate. slingerland has done very interesting social psychological research on transitions from tribal to civilizational orders and suggested a dependence on forms of self-restraint – much more, it seems, than increases in energy production and use. in the course of this work he has developed an interpretation of confucianism that emphasizes its special contribution to the civilizing process. even more insightful, i might add, is the work of ni peimin, another translator and interpreter of kongzi or confucius. ni’s translation of the analects is perhaps the best translation for english language readers, and http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ carl mitcham giovanni frigo 306 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ his own personal exemplification of a confucian way of life can provide especially helpful guidance. (ni also practices the traditional chinese art of calligraphy and i was privileged this last summer to visit an exhibit of calligraphy at the tsinghua university art museum with ni as a guide. practicing the art of calligraphy even today can be read as a civilizing process.) society, by contrast, is simply a collection or group of people in some way united. it is not normative the way civilization is. yet smil tends to use the two as synonyms. for me, certainly, a basic question is whether it is possible to have a genuine civilization that practices self-restraint while seeking to use energy without any constraint at all. is there not an inevitable tension between these two instances of a habitus, where a stronger (unrestrained consumption of energy) will undermine the weaker (selfrestraint in other areas)? at the very least, it seems that any 500-page long study of energy and civilization should make more of an effort to examine civilization as a normative concept. is there not perhaps a sense in which what freud analyzed as “civilization and its discontents” reflects the way unrestrained energy use undermines civilization? gf: but you, like all of us, are “profligate” (if i may use the word) in your energy use. you own a car, fly in airplanes, eat meat, and more – at the same time that you suggest a need to practice some self-discipline in your manners. is there really a necessary contradiction? cm: the contradiction is at least a felt one in the form of melancholia. and here i want to bring into the conversation william vollmann and his stunning new two volume non-fiction examination of carbon ideologies (2018). vollmann undertakes an immersive engagement with the ways we are failing to respond to the challenge that is upon us, structured as a letter from the past to the future. since i have these books right here on my desk, allow me to quote at some length from the opening of volume one, no immediate danger: someday, perhaps not long from now, the inhabitants of a hotter, more dangerous and biologically diminished planet than the one on which i lived may wonder what you and i were thinking, or whether we thought at all. this book is for them. when i read another embrittled document predicting the disappearance of bison from the american plains, my melancholy is untainted by urgency. captive bison do survive, but the great herds have been gone since 1884. and as i write this book about coal, oil, natural gas and atomic power, i do my best to look as will the future upon the world in which i lived – namely, as surely, safely vanished. nothing can be done to save it; therefore, nothing need be done. hence this little book scrapes by without offering solutions. there were none; we had none. all the same, it may http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ carl mitcham in conversation with giovanni frigo 307 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ not be uninteresting to learn what went on in the minds of buffalo hunters, indian killers, coal miners, freeway drivers, homeowners and nuclear engineers. (vol. 1, p. 3) then 1300 pages later, at the end of volume two, no good alternative: there had only been one hope for us: to reduce demand. i’ve told you that we could have done it through birth control or genocide, but the second strategy appealed to no one whom i cared to know, and the first would have been angrily resisted in the name of freedom, or of religion. […] reader, we might not have loved you, but most of us took joy in our children whose descendent you are; wasn’t that cause enough to beget them? in his brave, eloquent and otherwise subversively sensible encyclical, pope francis still found it necessary to [reject population control and argue that to blame it] is an attempt to legitimize the present model of distribution. […] i caviled, disagreed, was outnumbered. – well, a third way remained: through changes in policy, mores (not to mention improvements in technology and education, which might buy time), we could have deliberately reduced consumption. had we leavened the present model of distribution with a sprinkle of decency, the affluent would have reduced their per capita use of energy, while the poor could have consumed more – even as total aggregate consumption fell. – carbon ideologies has told you why it did the opposite. (vol. 2, pp. 627-8) the calm, mournful, detailed quantitative analysis that rivals smil (volume one) and richly detailed but understated, elegiac reportage from appalachia, bangladesh, mexico, united arab emirates, and elsewhere (volume two) have a cumulative impact that it is difficult to convey. vollmann’s work will go down as one of the great kassandra laments of the end times. gf: do you mean to suggest that vollmann is an example of your type ii energy ethics? cm: yes. type ii energy ethics goes beyond arguing for justice in the distribution of energy or for the more sustainable production of energy from renewable sources. it questions the value of a commitment to energy as a whole. this is not an absolute negative of all energy production and use throughout human history, but (as hegel might say) a determinate negation of energy production and use as it exists today and has taken hold since the industrial revolution. such a negation immediately creates what can be called the kassandra conundrum: how to live with a truth that others will not accept. you know the story of kassandra, to whom apollo gave the gift of being able to foresee the future. but when she rejected what we would now call apollo’s sexual harassment, he punished her with the curse that no one would ever believe her. she foresaw the destruction of ilium http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ carl mitcham giovanni frigo 308 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ and tried to warn her fellow trojans about the greeks hiding inside the statue left outside the city after their apparent departure. but the idea that this beautiful horse would harbor destruction was just too difficult to believe. the greeks had left. the trojans had won the war. no one would credit kassandra’s prediction that went against more popular convictions and the status quo. she was unable to forestall the destruction of her homeland. over and over again in history people have been unable to think and to recognize disasters that came upon them, sometimes even as they were taking place. there is such a strong psychological tendency to believe that the future will be like the past, that because the sun rose today it will rise tomorrow, that because someone we loved had loved us yesterday this person will love us tomorrow, that since we were successful doing something yesterday we will also be successful doing it tomorrow. as hitler ramped up the rhetoric against the jews in germany in the 1930s, it was just unbelievable to german jews (and even to many non-jews) that something like the holocaust would take place in a nation with a greater percentage of phds than any other country in the world and with a cultural heritage that included the music of bach, the poetry of goethe, and the philosophy of kant. today it is similar with regard to climate change. how could it be that we are on the verge of a global catastrophe of unprecedented proportions – a catastrophe that is not only destroying biodiversity at a rate that elizabeth kolbert, in the sixth extinction: an unnatural history (2014), compares to such previous natural extinctions as those caused by asteroid impacts – and yet are unable to act appropriately? how is it that although it is common to think, following giambattista vico and karl marx, that knowing proceeds from making, we do not seem able to comprehend what we are doing? we treat nasa scientist james hansen the way king priam and the inhabitants of ilium treated kassandra. we refuse to believe. things simply cannot be as dire as the doomsayers predict. gf: your mention of doomsaying immediately reminds me of the work of jean-pierre dupuy (2012), whom you have previously called to my attention. cm: yes, dupuy is an under-appreciated apocalyptic philosopher. his argument for what he calls “enlightened doomsaying” can be read as a conscious acceptance of the role of kassandra. you can find a short defense of this philosophical strategy in the olsen, pedersen, and hendricks companion to the philosophy of technology (2009). but dupuy has also been involved in seminars with california governor jerry brown discussing what brown sees as existential threats to the body politic. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ carl mitcham in conversation with giovanni frigo 309 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ reporting on the brown-dupuy connection, an sfgate article (by joe matthews) quotes dupuy most succinctly: “it is my profound belief that humanity is on a suicidal course, headed straight for catastrophe”, dupuy writes. dupuy’s solution: “enlightened doomsaying”. we must imagine ourselves in the unthinkable future, peering into the black hole of nonexistence so that we might understand our limits and sacred origins. “to believe in fate is to prevent it from happening”, he writes. i’d also recommend a vimeo talk by dupuy in which he distinguishes between knowledge and belief. in his analysis, our current situation is that we do not believe what we know. we know climate change is leading us toward catastrophe, but we are not able to believe it: the kassandra conundrum (https://vimeo.com/7937426). gf: so, are you saying this is what type ii energy ethics leads to? cm: what i want to say is that if we simply acknowledge the reasonable likelihood of what observers as wildly different as smil and vollmann and kolbert project – that is, the catastrophic or apocalyptic consequences of our current energy regime – along with the simple fact that we are taking little action proportional to the projections … gf: and perhaps you should reference as well the recent ipcc “special report on global warming of 1.5º c” (ipcc 2018) and its own rather dire forecasts. but then on the other side, what about the optimism of al gore and others that we are in fact capable of reforming the regime: see, e.g., al gore and the “ten stories to cheer you up” in recent green business editor’s blog (murray 2018)? cm: it is hard for me to take seriously the optimistic stance, which in some ways is just a mirror image of the petro-capitalist denial that animates the trump presidency. american exceptionalism has produced a country of energy narcissists. i am tempted to dismiss this view with ludwig wittgenstein’s admonition in philosophical investigations: “don’t think, but look!” (1967, § 66). however, let us step back slightly. european philosophy in the modern period has taken on what contemporary hegelian philosopher robert pippin (1999) calls a historico-philosophical diagnostic task, that is, the task of seeking to identify and diagnose, sometime in positive and at other times in negative terms, the culture in which we live. insofar as a diagnosis points up deficiencies, modern philosophies strive to propose therapies. the cultural failures identified by rousseau, for instance, let him to argue the need for revolution, and the same happened with marx. in other cases, however, the philosopher as diagnostician criticizes culhttp://www.ledonline.it/relations/ https://vimeo.com/7937426 carl mitcham giovanni frigo 310 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ tural discontents and seeks to reconcile the world with itself. according to pippin, this was hegel’s approach: an interpretation of the bourgeois civilization that defended its historically unique achievements. in opposition, nietzsche and others argued the primacy of discontent but saw a needed therapy as virtually impossible. then it becomes necessary to try to figure out how to live with a chronic illness, perhaps even (as in kierkegaard’s words) a “sickness unto death”. the diagnosis of a looming apocalypse in the modern energy regime presents us with this problem. my teacher in this regard was ivan illich (1926-2002). after experiencing in the 1970s a failure to be able to contribute to a therapeutic transformation of contemporary institutions, illich shifted toward the cultivation of philosophical friendship as a way to live in a culture on the brink. incidentally, jerry brown has also been influenced by illich; illich and brown considered themselves friends and, on many occasions, shared hospitalities of both the table and home. illich’s energy and equity (1973) is the original inspiration for the notion of a type ii energy ethics. another member of the circle of friendship that gathered around illich is sajay samuel, who currently teaches at pennsylvania state university and is editing for posthumous publication some of illich’s still hidden texts (the powerless church and other selected writings, 1955-1985 will be published in december 2018 by penn state university press). sajay distinguishes four possible responses to the question of how to live now under the overhang of the modern energy regime: cautious optimism (that we will be able to engineer our way out of the worst of it); heedless optimism (there is actually no problem at all); debilitating despair; and tragic acceptance. one option sajay conspicuously overlooks is civil disobedient protest, as enacted by james hanson and others – including your doctoral dissertation adviser and our mutual friend, adam briggle (2015). but i’m not sure that vollmann – or, for that matter, smil – fit comfortably into this typology. vollmann evidences, it seems to me, a more mournful acceptance, smil a personal determination to lead his own different way of life “off the grid”. gf: so what do you think about arguments that we need to change our individual behaviors vs. arguments that systemic reforms are what is crucial and individual behaviors are beside the point? in this regard, does what you have mentioned to me as your interest in buddhism offer any guidance? cm: let me simply repeat, with vollmann, that there are no easy answers. for me, there is a sense in which buddhism offers a reasonable cosmological framework for understanding our situation. impermanence is what is real, if i can put it so crudely (although i consider myself a buddhist, i am not a very good buddhist). http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ carl mitcham in conversation with giovanni frigo 311 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ as we were conducting this conversation, the october 22 new yorker showed up in my mailbox with a review essay by the indian writer pankaj mishra on recent books about gandhi. mishra’s an end to suffering: the buddha in the world (2004) is an important (if overlooked) diagnosis of modernity. there have been a number of recent very critical assessments of gandhi to which mishra responds by arguing for gandhi’s continuing relevance. please allow me to conclude with another longish quotation from mishra’s interpretation: in “the impossible indian” (2012), faisal devji … calls [gandhi] “one of the great political thinkers of our times” – an assessment not cancelled out by the stringent account of gandhi’s fads, follies, and absurdities frequently offered by his critics […]. prone to committing what he called “himalayan blunders”, he did not lose his capacity to learn from them, and to enlist his opponents in his search for a mutually satisfactory truth […]. gandhi recognized early on that societies with diverse populations inhabit a post-truth age. “we will never all think alike and we shall always see truth in fragments and from different angles of vision”, he wrote. and even gandhi’s harshest detractors do not deny that he steadfastly defended, and eventually sacrificed his life for, many values under assault today -- fellow-feeling for the weak, and solidarity and sympathy between people of different nations, religions, and races […]. gandhi thought that it was not enough to demand liberation from “exploitation and degradation”, as socialist tended to do. in 1925, in an article titled “what of the west?”, he argued that those who wished to “shun the evils of capital” would have to do nothing less than wholly “revise the view point of capital”, achieving an outlook in which “the multiplicity of material wants will not be the aim of life”. indeed, gandhi’s critique of modern civilization hinged on what he saw as its refusal to recognize limits. to a civilization shaped by unappeasable human will and ambition gandhi counterposed a civilization organized around self-limitation and ethical conduct. “we shall cease to think of getting what we can, but we shall decline to receive what all cannot get”, he wrote. “the only real, dignified, human doctrine is the greatest good of all, and this can only be achieved by uttermost self-sacrifice”. thanks for your initiation of this conversation. i hope we can continue on other occasions and in other venues. gf: thank you very much carl! i am sure this interview will help the readers of this special issue to better understand the complex but fascinating intricacies in the emergent area of energy ethics and spark more dialog on this exciting topic! http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ carl mitcham giovanni frigo 312 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ references briggle, adam. 2015. a field philosopher guide to fracking. new york london: liverlight publishing corporation. dupuy, jean-pierre. 2012. “the precautionary principle and enlightened doomsaying”. revue de métaphysique et de morale 4 (76): 577-92. elias, norbert. 2000. the civilizing process: sociogenetic and psychogenetic investigations, translated by edmund jephcott. malden, ma: blackwell. feynman, richard, robert leighton, and matthew sands. 1963. the feynman lectures on physics, vol. 1. new york: basic books perseus. ipcc. 2018. “ipcc special report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5 °c – summary for policy makers”. incheon, republic of korea. http://www. ipcc.ch/report/sr15/. kolbert, elizabeth. 2014. the sixth extinction: an unnatural history. new york: henry holt and co. matthews, joe. 2016. “why jerry brown is practicing ‘enlightened 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https://www.businessgreen.com/bg/blog-post/3064147/10-stories-to-cheer-you-up-in-the-wake-of-the-ipcc-15c-report almost like waging war: tom regan and the conditions for using violence for the sake of animals 5 is sn 2 2 8 0 -9 9 5 3 beyond anthropocentrism 1 • january 2013 inside the emotional lives of non-human animals a minding animals international utrecht 2012 pre-conference event special issue (genoa, italy, 12-13 may, 2012) edited by m. andreozzi, r. bennison, a. massaro, s. tonutti capabilities approach and animal bioethics • michele panzera animals and our emotions. how to approach the study of an interspecific community? • sabrina tonutti advocacy and animal rights • kim stallwood the emotional lives of animals: a christian perspective • alma massaro – gianfranco nicora animalia: ontology and ethics in weak antispeciesism • leonardo caffo the contemporary debate on experimentation • susanna penco – rosagemma ciliberti non-human animals and genetic engineering • arianna ferrari the relationship between humans and other animals in european animal welfare legislation • paola sobbrio human’s best friends? • matteo andreozzi elationsre l a t io n s . b e y o n d a n t h r o p o c e n t r is m 1 • 2 0 1 3 r 7.1-2 november 2019 the respect extended to animals: studies in honor and in memory of tom regan conference event special issue (florence, italy, february 20, 2018) edited by francesco allegri editorial exploring non-anthropocentric paradigms 7 francesco allegri introduction the importance of tom regan for animal ethics 13 francesco allegri studies and research contributions verso i diritti degli animali. riflessioni e dibattiti nella storia 19 del pensiero vilma baricalla respect, inherent value, subjects-of-a-life: some reflections 41 on the key concepts of tom regan’s animal ethics francesco allegri animalismo e non violenza. l’incidenza della lezione gandhiana 61 sul pensiero di tom regan luisella battaglia almost like waging war: tom regan and the conditions 77 for using violence for the sake of animals federico zuolo relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ relations. beyond anthropocentrism 6 comments, debates, reports and interviews ricordo di tom regan. intervista con luigi lombardi vallauri 95 francesco allegri author guidelines 99 relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 77 almost like waging war tom regan and the conditions for using violence for the sake of animals federico zuolo università degli studi di genova doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2019-0102-zuol federico.zuolo@unige.it abstract this paper investigates tom regan’s attitude towards violence as a litmus test to understand the justifiability of the use of violence in animal rights activists (aras). although regan’s take seems uncontroversially against a recourse to violence, there is an ambiguity in his position. by comparing regan’s conditions for the legitimate use of violence for the sake of animal liberation with the standard conditions for jus ad bellum, i show that regan construed the conditions for the former in a specular manner as the conditions for the latter. however, since he was not an absolute pacifist, there is some contradiction, and he should have been more willing to justify some recourse to violence than he in fact does. i conclude by gesturing towards some possible changes that his thought should undergo in order to adjust this incoherence. keywords: absolute pacifism; animal ethics; animal politics; animal rights; animal rights activism; animal rights advocacy; gandhi; jus ad bellum; tom regan; violence. 1. introduction violence has always been a crux for animal rights activists (aras). while most important theorists have certainly shied away from violence, some prominent strands of activists have sometimes taken a violent route. establishing why this has occurred in practice is not the purpose of this paper 1. rather, i want to investigate the possible theoretical grounds for 1 but we can at least suppose that the cause could have been one of the following: because of a lack of alternatives, the animosity of the animal righters in question or relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2019-0102-zuol mailto:federico.zuolo@unige.it https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ federico zuolo 78 the use of violence in one of the most important figures of the animal rights movement: tom regan. the importance of this figure in the field of animal rights and in the animal rights movement cannot be underestimated. as known, he was the philosophical founder of the animal rights position. although he is probably less known than peter singer in the general public, his influence on the study and movement of animal rights has probably been more significant than singer’s. hence, reference to this figure in terms of animal rights activism is uncontroversial. but how come he can be mentioned when talking about violence? this may strike one as a shocking reference. regan was a theorist of equal rights, a radical theorist, but certainly not violent. and yet he has a more complex position than it seems at a first glance, or so i will argue. this paper claims that there is an ambiguity and potential contradiction in regan’s attitude towards violence and political activism for the sake of animals. although he does not shy away from the possibility that violence might be needed under certain circumstances, thus rejecting absolute pacifism, he says that such conditions are never met in practice. however, his overall position and the conditions he lays out for violent activism are more likely to justify violence than he admits. by means of a comparison between regan’s considerations on violence and just war theory, we will see that regan is admittedly less supportive of violence than his theory would afford. this ambiguity leaves us in the face of a difficult choice: that either regan’s theory should be changed or those who subscribe to regan’s animal rights theory should support violence. 2. animal rights in practice and violence this choice of focusing on regan is not difficult to explain. he was supportive of aras and he is somewhat the ideologue of many animal rights movements in virtue of radicality and egalitarianism. hence, analyzing regan’s theory as to the problem of violence is urgent to the extent that regan as well as many other theorists in animal rights are committed to making his thought practically relevant. here we are not discussing the feasibility of the animal rights ideal, although this is connected. rather we are discussing the problem of violence, whether violence is admissible to rescue animals or to advance the because beliefs in animal rights have become for many people the functional equivalent of religion in terms of commitment, integrity and meaning in life (jamison et al. 2000) which means that this has fostered the equivalent of fundamentalism in some people. relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ almost like waging war 79 cause of animal rights. to make sense of this issue we should put it in a wider context of what it means to seek to bring about the animal rights ideal 2. first and foremost, it means trying to convince people as individuals by means of rational and emotional persuasion. that was aras’ initial strategy, and is still the preferred strategy of many supporting the animal rights movement. this strategy based on individual conviction has been partially supplemented by more political initiatives aimed at convincing authorities (for instance, to ban some specific practices or change some laws) or aimed at being represented in parliament or in independent authorities. in aras there has been a very complex and multifaceted interaction between the drive to achieve the ideal and the need to live this ideal in daily activities. a classical tension between uncompromising approaches and more compromising ones has taken place (francione 1996; hall 2006). if in the first wave of animal rights debate the main point was about convincing people to change their values and lives, in the next waves aras turned to the issue of how to change practices and structures in a reluctant society. in between the two factions there are a number of other types of strategies and actions that have sparked an interesting debate. let me just mention two of them. the first is whether some violations of the law for the sake of animals may qualify as acts of (possibly legitimate) civil disobedience (mccausland et al. 2013). aras who have taken a footage of abuses on animals in contravention with legal requirements with a view to publicly denouncing this abuse may be considered civil disobedients and be guaranteed a correspondent moral and legal status. the second kind of acts that i want to mention is that of animal rescue. many aras have supported the moral compellingness of the case for animal rescue because, they argue, in freeing animals from exploitative premises and putting them in sanctuaries activists are doing several things: saving some specific animals from a life of suffering and premature death, levying the costs of practices involving animals and sending a message to the overall public. some argue that the unlawful dimension in animal rescue should, accordingly, be granted the same legal and moral status as civil disobedience (milligan 2017). despite the proliferation of such initiatives, many aras are dissatisfied with the outcome of the movement of animal liberation. part of this dissatisfaction stems from the fact that societies and governments are inertial, and even though many steps forward have been made, the goal that aras still pursue is far from being achieved. so the question is: what should aras do in the face of insurmountable inertia? is it always 2 for a more complete overview of aras strategies, see murno 2005. relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ federico zuolo 80 necessary to abide by the law? is it not sometimes necessary to break the law for the sake of a superior good? many aras point to the case of liberation from slavery or resistance to unjust regimes as analogous to the liberation of animals 3. these movements were not only illegal but also sometimes violent. should aras not be allowed to act in a violent manner too? although this is an intricate question that we cannot fully answer here, we should now have a clearer grasp of what violence means. let us start with some examples. of course, harming people counts as violence. but what about destruction of property, intimidation, arson of research facilities, sabotage of places, or campaigns of psychological pressure towards researchers? these are illegal and morally problematic practices that have been employed by some activists in a number of campaigns (think, for instance, of the stop huntingdon animal cruelty – shac). such campaigns and other initiatives have also deployed illegal, but not necessarily violent, strategies, such as trespass of property, unauthorized footage on a private farm, and so on. where should we draw the line and distinguish between illegal and violent? some aras say that aras are not violent because violence can be addressed only to sentient beings, while such groups as alf are committed not to harming any sentient beings, even though such actions involve illegal acts (sabotage, vandalism, destruction of property and so on).violence is an ambiguous concept and defining it exceeds the scope of this paper. on this, it seems plausible to follow morreall: acts of violence are always acts which “get at” persons. unless the destruction of some physical object will “get at” a person, it is not an act of violence. throwing rocks through the windows of my neighbor’s new car would be an act of violence: throwing rocks through the windows of a junked car at the city dump (assuming that this has no ecological overtones nor makes it harder for dump personnel to dispose of the car) would not be an act of violence. (morreall 1976, 38) however, this plausible idea does not provide unequivocal criteria because the perception of what it means to “get at” a person or when a person’s psychological unity is violated may vary from person to person. 3 regan has a more nuanced position on this issue: “i am not in any way suggesting that the animal rights movement and the antislavery movement are in every respect the same (clearly, they are not), any more than i would be suggesting that all african americans must be either gay or lesbian because there are similarities between the movement to liberate slaves, on the one hand, and the gay and lesbian movement, on the other. similarities are just that: similarities” (regan 2001, 141). relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ almost like waging war 81 for the purposes of this paper we do not need to settle this issue. indeed, regan says that psychological violence is violence, and that destroying property is a form of violence: if someone blows up a truck, torches a lab, or sinks an illegal whaling vessel, they do serious violence even if no one is hurt. to describe these acts as “nonviolent” is to misdescribe them, the way the military does when it describes civilians who are killed or maimed as “collateral damage”. nonetheless, the fact that the destruction of property counts as violence does not by itself make such destruction wrong. whether the act is wrong remains an open question, one that cannot be answered merely by appealing to what words mean. (regan 2001, 140) 3. can regan ever justify violence for the sake of animals? now we are in a position to properly discuss regan’s take on this. the remarkable fact is that he seems to be quite honest and not reticent in addressing this issue. given its importance for this paper, let me cite it at length: aras who think that arson and other forms of destruction of property are forms of “nonviolent direct action” are free to think what they will. certainly nothing i say can make them change their minds. i will only observe that, in my opinion, unless or until these advocates accept the fact that some aras use violence in the name of animal rights (for example, when they firebomb empty research labs), the general public will turn a deaf ear when their spokespersons attempt to justify such actions. so the real question, i believe, is not whether some aras use violence. the real question is whether they are justified in doing so. here are the main outlines of a possible justification. 1. animals are innocent. 2. violence is used only when it is necessary to rescue them so that they are spared terrible harm. 3. excessive violence is never used. 4. violence is used only after nonviolent alternatives have been exhausted, as time and circumstances permit. 5. therefore, in these cases, the use of violence is justified. (regan 2004, 233) in sum, regan’s position is conditional as he does not reject violence in principle, but rather establishes the conditions under which it is permissible (if not mandatory?). after all we admit that sometimes violence may be necessary for instance in order to save kidnapped children. in another relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ federico zuolo 82 part of the essay we are discussing here, regan establishes the three main conditions for the use of violence to be admissible: it should be aimed at defending an innocent subject; it should not be excessive; all other nonviolent alternatives have been exhausted. hence, these short principles reformulate the idea that violence should be used to defend a just cause, there should be proportionality and it should be a strategy of last resort. let us call them justice, proportionality, and last resort. it seems clear that justice and proportionality can easily be met by aras. after all, the defense of animals should count as a just cause, and probably the most just cause, because in regan’s view animals are the most typically exploited innocent subjects of our world. as to proportionality, it depends on how violence is actually exerted. but it is not difficult to imagine the cases that meet this criterion. suppose, for instance, that a group of aras break into an industrial farm at nighttime and without any harm to people, to liberate hundreds of animals. this action, if justified, is certainly proportional. more difficult to understand is last resort. what does “alternatives have been exhausted” mean? it can be understood in an intensional or extensional sense. in the former sense, it means that all types of manners and strategies have been exhausted because, for instance, aras have employed both rational persuasion and more emotional communications; both attempts to convince people individually in their private lives and to seize power by means of political campaigns, and so on and so forth. in the latter sense, “nonviolent alternatives” can mean that extensionally all people have been reached in a certain period. the two senses should of course be combined. but the specification of the extensional and intensional dimensions shows us the potential ambiguity of this phrase. regan seems to set up the condition in such a way that it can never be met. indeed, to mitigate this he adds “as time and circumstances permit”. this leaves the application of this principle quite open to contextual interpretation. it may mean that it is never met if we allow for a strict interpretation, or it maybe very permissive if we put emphasis on the time and circumstances clause. is regan’s interpretation of his own principle consistent? it seems that in some cases this condition may be met and that excluding it a priori is unjustified. a strict interpretation for a limited use of violence to stop something specific seems unwarranted because here we limit the scope and relevance of our interest to what is at stake. for instance, it maybe the case that all available means in a certain time-frame – say a year – have been exhausted to close a certain purportedly exploitative premise. it cannot mean that all means have been put in place in order to stop all exploitarelations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ almost like waging war 83 tion of animals, because this interpretation would be too demanding and would never be satisfied. thus, the clause of last resort requiring that “nonviolent alternatives have been exhausted, as time and circumstances permit” should be interpreted in a permissive sense. in other words, it should mean that all alternatives actually available to a specific group of aras have been exhausted, given what such people can do to achieve a certain specific goal. if interpreted in this plausible sense, then the condition of last resort can easily be met and violence justified. regan goes on to argue that violent aras are blamed for their violence which is nothing compared to the ordinary violence suffered by animals in daily practices of exploitation. but irrespective of this, he holds that the case for the use of violence for the sake of animals should be rejected because the necessary conditions are not met: personally, i don’t think the second premise is true [violence is necessary to rescue animals] of all or even most of the violence done in the name of animal rights. why not? because the vast majority of this violence does not involve animal rescue. the vast majority (i estimate 98 percent) is property destruction, pure and simple. in cases like these, the defense we are considering contributes nothing by way of justification. why of the remaining two percent of cases, cases where violence is used and animals are rescued? for example, suppose a multi-million-dollar lab is burnt to the ground after the animals in it have been liberated. would this kind of violence be justified, given the argument sketched above? again, i don’t think so. and the reason i don’t think so is that i don’t think the requirement set forth in premise 4 has been satisfied. personally, i do not think that aras in general, members of the alf in particular, have done nearly enough when it comes to exhausting nonviolent alternatives. (regan 2004, 234) unlike what seems to follow from previous considerations, here regan says that de facto the case for the use of violence when it comes to animals is not met. 4. waging war and defending animals at this point it is helpful to compare the requirement of last resort in this domain with other uses of it. last resort has been appealed to in a vast range of cases: in the ethics of war, in the justification of whistleblowing, in the justification of palliative care, and other cases involving the admissibility of violation of the law or matters of life and death. in these areas sometimes deviations from ordinary moral rules (for instance, of relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ federico zuolo 84 non-intervention, non-maleficence, or of compliance with rules) seem to be justified for the sake of preventing a greater evil or of promoting a higher good. the striking fact is that regan’s conditions for the use of violence are very close to the jus ad bellum conditions. let us see them briefly in their canonical form. 1. just cause; 2. proportionality; 3. a reasonable chance of success; 4. legitimate authority; 5. right intention; 6. last resort; 7. public declaration of war. (frowe 2011, 50) i do not mean to say that the case for animals should be understood as a war, although some theorists (bernstein 2004; kemmerer 2008) and aras (in particular the animal liberation front) have claimed so. i imagine regan would not agree with this equivalence. however, the way he construes the case for the use of violence for the sake of animals is substantially equivalent to the conditions for jus ad bellum. as it is easy to see regan’s first point (animals are innocent) provides the just cause principle. the second condition (violence is used only when it is necessary to rescue them so that they are spared terrible harm) includes a just cause condition (just cause as defense of others) plus a part of the proportionality clause. regan’s third point expresses the proportionality condition (excessive violence is never used). the fourth condition (violence is used after nonviolent alternatives have been exhausted) is the last resort principle. furthermore, the right intention principle is certainly included in the first two conditions (just cause and principle of rescue). and we could also suppose that some aras also meet the requirement of public declaration of war to the extent that the public statements in which they express their intention to become violent can count as sui generis public declarations. then, what is missing here? the reasonable chance of success principle and the legitimate authority condition are missing. as to the legitimate authority condition, we can say that this condition is often unmet by many wars, which are nowadays combated by non-state actors. moreover, in the case of animals, probably no state can currently satisfy this condition in so far as the exploitation of animals is a widespread practice about which no state can claim to be immune (cochrane and cooke 2016). hence, paradoxically a non-state actor, if it can in some sense wage a sort of war, could probably be more entitled to wage war against others than states are. relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ almost like waging war 85 as to the reasonable chance of success, it does not apply here because (i) it depends on the definition of success (whether in terms of saving an animal or freeing animals from human domination in general), (ii) the whole animal liberation movement could not meet this condition in a general sense (at least in a short-medium term) but this does not make it impractical, (iii) the relevant timeframe is to be defined. it seems, then, the conditions required by regan for the permissible use of violence for the sake of animals are substantially coincident with those for the case of just war, notwithstanding some discrepancies, which do not affect the overall impression. building on this, regan uses these conditions not to argue in favor of the use of violence for the sake of animals. on the contrary he uses these conditions to argue against the use of violence because he thinks that these conditions are never met. however, unlike the case of violence for the sake of animals, regan does not support an absolute pacifism as to war: mahatma gandhi has had a profound influence on my life. i think it is fair to say that i would never have become an animal rights advocate if i had not read his autobiography. […] [but] [p]acifism is one place gandhi went where i never have been able to go. he teaches that the use of violence is always wrong, even in defense of those who have done no wrong, those who are innocent. […] maybe it’s my blue-collar background, but i have always believed that anyone who smites me (or my wife or our children, for example) is looking for trouble. depending on the circumstances (the attacker is not carrying a gun, for example) i hope i would have the courage to do some serious smiting back. […] sometimes, in some circumstances, violence is justified. that’s what the rest of us believe. where we part company is over the question, “in what circumstances?”. (regan 2004, 231) thus, it seems that regan is not an absolute pacifist who rejects violence and the use of force per se 4. so, if the case for violence (and war as a consequence) is not impossibly met, how come this is not equally the case for animals? this is puzzling in particular for a perspective like that of regan, in which, i recall, all subjects-of-a-life (at least all mammals of at least an age) have equal intrinsic worth and equal rights (regan 1983). as known, regan has made the case for not discounting the interests of animals, and in particular of subjects-of-a-life, and for not considering their status as inferior to that of human persons. so, how come it is possible 4 this impression is further reinforced by an old essay in which regan, while defending pacifism from some mistaken criticisms, holds that “pacifism is false, and profoundly so” (regan 1972, 73). relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ federico zuolo 86 that in practice it is easier to use force in case of human-human relations than it is with respect to human-animal relations? so why are a last resort in just war and a last resort in the use of violence for animal rights so divergent? there should be something different between the uses of violence to make sense of this difference. in what follows i will review possible answers to this question, and finally reject them all. i will conclude that this ambiguity in regan’s thought calls for a revision of some part of his claims, in terms of the urgency of normative principles or the relation between human beings and animals, both of which can hardly be accepted by regan’s uncompromising and egalitarian position. first, we might think that just war conditions are easier to meet than violence for the sake of animals because human deaths count more than animal interests. then, at least in some cases of jus ad bellum, namely in those cases in which military intervention is justified to prevent a humanitarian crisis, a genocide, for the sake of defending an innocent and helpless other party, we should intervene to save human lives. this should not strike us as immediately incoherent with regan’s theory. despite the principle of equal inherent value of all subjects of a life (including animals), regan does not think that there is no difference in the values of lives all things considered. in the lifeboat example he clearly says that we should let the dog, rather than a person, die (regan 1983, 324). but this is because human persons have much richer life prospects than a dog. however, this response seems misplaced because, violence for the sake of animals is not comparable to war in the proper sense. rather, this argument would be a sensible one to limit the admissible violence to people, thus excluding death but perhaps not excluding minor physical injuries or psychological violence, which regan clearly recognizes as forms of violence. second, one may think that violence for the sake of animals is more difficult to justify than violence involved in war because the atrocities caused by a war are more serious than those involved in ordinary practices of animal exploitations. i guess this would be the response of many well-meaning supporters of the cause of animals who are, though, reluctant to take the egalitarian rights-based path. although such persons consider animal suffering morally relevant, they are at pains with giving equal prominence to human and animal suffering. however, this is certainly not regan’s perspective. the life of a non-human animal may contain fewer opportunities and hence less comparative value, although having the same intrinsic value qua subject of a life. but the number of animals involved is so much bigger than the number of people involved relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ almost like waging war 87 in possible acts of violence towards persons that we should feel compelled by regan’s logic to act. a related worry could ask whether in a kantian-view perspective, such as regan’s, numbers should count. numbers of lives should count because regan is kantian and upholds intrinsic value but he is not committed to the idea that any life is uncountable as if it were sacred or noumenally unmeasurable. indeed, in regan’s view, comparisons between types of lives and their weighing is possible not via their inherent value, but rather via their contents, namely the kinds of opportunities of a life albeit not comparing intrinsic value per se. as a third reply, one could contest the applicability of the comparison between war and violence for the sake of animals because in the latter case we miss the institutional dimension. war used to be declared by a state against another state. cochrane and cooke (2016) argue that a state cannot wage a just war against other states to defend animals because no state can claim legitimate authority on this domain insofar as no state is free from the responsibility of massive exploitation of animals. but is this condition necessary? although that seemed to be a standard requirement for distinguishing between war and other types of use of force among groups, this is not necessarily the case. think of a minority group of people who are oppressed by a state, or civilians against a dictatorship. here we lack the institutional dimension of the oppressed but there is a case for them to wage some kind of war. in such conditions perhaps we would find it inappropriate to talk about war, not only because one of the parties is not a state, but also because there are other conditions missing (non-equality of soldiers, lack of soldiers, or of proper “combatants”). if we reframe the situation of the battle against the exploitation of animals in terms of a resistance or unconventional war, we would certainly approach the current fact of the matter in a more precise way. but the unwelcome implication is that the case for using violence for animals would be much easier than in the case of jus ad bellum. indeed, it could plausibly be said that in a condition of resistance against an unjust power which has control over the structure of animal exploitation, one should not only be permitted to use violence and fight against such power, but it should also be required (kemmerer 2008). hence, if understood in this manner, violent aras would quite easily be justified. related to this point, one may think that the parallel between war among humans and violence for the sake of animals is misplaced because in the case of war we can clearly distinguish combatants and civilians and we have different duties towards them. while this is not so in the case of violence for the sake of animals. but is this true? not completely. in discussions about animal rights activism, we can find a number of relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ federico zuolo 88 distinctions among people precisely on whether they are involved, and the degree to which they are involved in practices of animal exploitation. hence, people such as farmers and researchers using animals in laboratories are not combatants, but are considered enemies insofar as they bear more direct responsibilities in carrying out practices harmful to animals. hence, they have been frequently treated as the favorite target of legal campaigns, but also of forms of psychological pressure and intimidation. if we follow this logic, should we conclude that all people except vegans are permissible targets, although to different degrees of responsibility, in a war against the exploitation of animals? that would seem way too much. how far this reasoning would take us cannot be established here. suffice it here to admit that if the case for the liberation of animals is like an unconventional war, then there are no combatants on the other side, but only people who are to different degrees possible targets. of course, this is certainly not what regan had in mind. but this is what has been said by people or groups (for instance, alf) which have been deeply influenced by regan and have taken the idea that harm to animals is a deep cause of injustice seriously. so why does regan himself not follow the logic of his theory? this is a peculiar contradiction that can be explained only if we hypothesize that regan is uncharacteristically prudent in this case. 5. concluding remarks how should one solve such ambiguity? the easy way could be to relax the last resort condition and allow for more violence. that would seem the obvious conclusion but regan does not do so. perhaps he cautioned against it just as a matter of prudence or for the sake of not giving the opponents of animal rights the argument that animal righters are per se violent (and hence terrorists). consider the difference between the two cases: justification of a war is usually provided in a specific context and for specific reasons, which is not the normal condition. while in the case of animals, according to regan, we have structural exploitation. but its structural nature is not an excuse for its moral appeasement. it can only be a practical excuse for its change. another possible explanation is that regan did not see it as a war. but if so, why did he employ the same principles of just war if in the end the kind of violence should be different? and different in what sense? if there is a difference, the kind of violence involved in war is usually much relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ almost like waging war 89 more destructive than that involved in ara activism. if so, again, this should put more burdens on the shoulders of the case for war rather than on the case for violence for animals. another possibility could be to admit that standard practices, including those involving animals, have a moral standing, while war does not. however, this kind of humean or aristotelian appreciation of the value of people’s entrenched practices is totally alien to regan’s view. to conclude, we should perhaps leave this ambiguity in regan’s thought. it is likely to be the case that this caution against the use of violence that seems to be justified by his very principles depended, in regan’s view, on a pragmatic concern in terms of efficacy. reference to gandhi’s and regan’s arguments give us a clue to think that he thought that only non-violence is in the end effective. lurking behind his prudence there is probably the assumption that what matters is convincing people, and you can stop an activity by levying costs or intimidating researchers or workers but this cannot count as convincing people. but admitting this amounts to severing the tight implication between principles in theory and principles in practice to which regan is committed throughout his entire theory: my own position, as indicated earlier, is that we should be willing to take the strength of our convictions out of our studies and into the streets. it is, i think, entirely appropriate for moral philosophers to agitate politically and publicly for a cause in which they believe. indeed, i am inclined to go further. by my lights, a willingness to gather with other partisans at the barricades, so to speak, is part of our wholeness as moral agents in the world; it is a way (though not the only one) to assess our moral integrity. (regan 2001, 162) besides this personal commitment to advocacy, regan made a lot of efforts in his theory to provide action guiding principles and priority rules. if from these principles and rules the possibility of violence follows but then this practical implication is blocked by some prudent concern, regan’s overall commitment to guiding action and advocating animal liberation ends up being weakened. if, instead, one does not want to severe the practicality of regan’s principles while still refusing to allow violence, one should admit that the plausibility of regan’s principles is counterbalanced by the plausibility of other considerations. of course, regan does not think that there are no other issues than animal liberation, as his multiple interests on other causes attest. what i mean, instead, is that the hesitance in drawing the practical implications of such a position should also depend on the recognition that people might legitimately disagree on this issue without relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ federico zuolo 90 being perforce blinded by self-interest or ignorance 5. although the possibility of reasonably disagreeing on matters of (animal) justice has always been rejected by nearly all animal rights theorists, admitting it may help animal righters reconsider the balance between the cause of animals and other people’s (legitimate) positions in a way that brings violence to a halt without thereby implying mere prudent hesitance. references bernstein, mark. 2004. “legitimizing liberation”. in terrorists or freedom fighters? reflections on the liberation of animals, edited by steve best and anthony j. nocella ii, 93-105. new york: lantern books. best, steve, and nocella ii, anthony j., eds. 2004. terrorists or freedom fighters? reflections on the liberation of animals. new york: lantern books. cochrane, alasdair, and steven cooke. 2016. “‘humane intervention’: the international protection of animal rights”. journal of global ethics 12 (1): 106121. francione, gary l. 1996. rain without thunder: the ideology of the animal rights movement. philadelphia: temple university press. frowe, helen. 2011. the ethics of war and peace. london new york: routledge. hall, lee. 2006. capers in the churchyard: animal rights advocacy in the age of terror. darien: nectar bat press. jamison, wesley v., caspar wenk, and james j. parker. 2000. “every sparrow that falls: understanding animal rights activism as functional religion”. society and animals 8 (3): 305-330. kemmerer, lisa. 2008. “just war and warrior activists”. green theory & praxis 4 (2): 25-49. mccausland, clare, siobhan o’sullivan, and scott brenton. 2013. “trespass, animals and democratic engagement”. res publica 19 (3): 205-221. milligan, tony. 2017. “animal rescue as civil disobedience”. res publica 23 (3): 281-298. morreall, john. 1976. “the justifiability of violent civil disobedience”. canadian journal of philosophy 6 (1): 35-47. murno, lyle. 2005. “strategies, action repertoires and diy activism in the animal rights movement”. social movement studies 4 (1): 75-94. regan, tom. 1972. “a defense of pacifism”. canadian journal of philosophy 2 (1): 73-86. regan, tom. 1983. the case for animal rights. london: routledge & kegan. 5 on reasonable disagreement in animal ethics see zuolo 2020. relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ almost like waging war 91 regan, tom. 2001. defending animal rights. urbana chicago: the university of illinois press. regan, tom. 2004. “how to justify violence”. in terrorists or freedom fighters? reflections on the liberation of animals, edited by steve best and anthony j. nocella ii, 231-236. new york: lantern books. zuolo, federico. 2020. animals, political liberalism, and public reason. houndmills: palgrave macmillan. relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ dialogo ergo sum: from a reflexive ontology to a relational ontology dialogo ergo sum from a reflexive ontology to a relational ontology roberto marchesini director, centre study for posthuman philosophy doi: 10.7358/rela-2016-002-marc estero@siua.it abstract knowledge is a dialogue with the world, in countless ways: art, technology, cataloguing, exploration are ultimately forms of dialogue. we learn through dreams, hallucinations, alterations of consciousness, rational focusing, motivational conjugation or emotional marking, immersion in our umwelt or denial thereof by means of technopoiesis. each dialogue brings us a true picture, not an appearance enslaved to a sensory illusion or to becoming: the resulting image is as true as that which is hidden to show itself to a different dialogical scan. this papers aims to show how culture is a relational outcome. in this sense, it is necessary to embrace a posthumanistic approach. the humanistic assumption that founds the human “juxta propria principia” – according to its own principles – must be revised. it is undeniable that this awareness will inspire new poetics and new experiences without claiming to create them from scratch. just as the infinite was before us even prior to the copernican revolution, so hybridization has always been part of the human experience and is not the outcome of infiltrative technologies. keywords: posthumanism, technopoiesis, culture, relational ontology, dialogical epistemology, darwin, umwelt, welt, anthropo-poiesis, otherness. 1. premise just as the wings of an albatross tell us of thermal and air flows, and just as the shape of a dolphin reflects the gradients of viscosity of the water, so the gills of a fish allow a liquid world to brush against them, and the size of an insect speaks of the levels of oxygen in the atmosphere. walking through the spaces of the world means encountering symphonies of biomechanical relationships, where the open, heteronomous configurations implicitly need supplemental information in order to exist. we are children of recursive and iterative relationships that geometrically recur in our flesh: muscle fibres are matched with nerve bundles, and http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 roberto marchesini 146 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ immune flows are called to neuromodulate through cytokines, because knowledge always travels on multiple tracks. phylogenesis is a long thread of relations, where every adaptation, competition, confrontation, or symbiosis is inscribed in the body, like moraines drawn by glaciers. in both the articulation of one’s bodily equipment and cognitive exercise, one’s phylogenesis is simultaneously a book to read, a storyteller, and a diary recording a billion-year-old journey. this sort of “somatic geology” is made of layers that represent the different eras of adaptive dialogues: in other words, our existential architectures bear the mark of the inventions of our ancestors. everything is summed up in this strange ontogenesis, stratified – like a novel – into constitutively different chapters, to resume a dialectics that includes otherness. suddenly, i seem to understand an enigmatic and amnesic beginning. human beings are thus a gordian knot of relational stories, insoluble and inextricable, intertwining time in a dialectical assimilation: whati-am speaks of my relations, which are folded like diachronic origami in a protein structure. each ontopoietic event already refers to an other: it is always heteroreferred. it does not imply a passive intake of the shape imposed by the world, but a morphopoietic emergence that emerges from a dialogue. my body is a theatre of representations that have preceded me, identified me and finally given themselves as kind offerings for those to come. the problem of identity comes back à la proust, like a rushing stream that overflows in the relationship between our memory and the alchemy of the world. i find the certainty of my existence in the fact that i precede this occasional presence – this happens the very moment when i am questioning myself. so why do we claim that identity can be translated as “purity”? why do we seek its essence, as if we were wrapped in a sclerotic husk that keeps us safe from dangerous contaminations, while avoiding complex, inevitable rootings? a process of identity formation that, like a motor, grinds predicates through dialectical acrobatics – in giorgio agamben’s anthropological machine (2004) or ugo fabietti’s emergence of cultures (2013) – belies the heraclitean opposition: identity assimilates, it does not reject. each dialogue serves to introject, or organize dialogue based on the interlocutor. the speed of the cheetah is the result of the dialogic confrontation with the gazelle; the shape of an orchid mirrors the bumblebee’s fury; the webbed feet of waterfowl speak of a long conversation with water. what we call adaptation should be defined, perhaps more properly, by the term “correlation”, which is the reflection of the partner in a dialogue. the genealogical interpretation, the famous “inheritance with modification” of the darwinian tradition, allows us to understand taxonomies, to http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 dialogo ergo sum 147 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ find infinite links with lives preceding us, to recognize qualities in us that have not been developed by our species. consider how our body summarizes the past in order to make us witnesses of the spectacle of the world. it is something extraordinary, like the migration of neurons along the layers of the cortex, following routes that recall avian pathways, or the bio-clocks that regulate apoptotic processes that form shapes and voids out of embryonic forms. on whichever dimension of the bios we focus our attention – whether on the complex life of a cell, an embryological rhythm, the social behaviour of the hymenoptera, or the articulated dependencies of an ecosystem – we always find long strings of information sedimented in time. we consult sorcerers and fortune-tellers about the future, but most of our ignorance concerns the past. figuratively spreading its arms, the past covers the space between the distal end of the left hand and the right, while the future is just a speck of dust on our fingernails. the past is a history of dialogues that concern us and that have much to tell us about what we feel, and the choices that we will make. as my hand types, a movement made possible by neural organizations set by its past on the chopper, and it resembles a tree-branch, in the same way that the body of a gastropod, albeit unconsciously, molds to the golden section of its shell. ontology should be a kind of relational archaeology, attentive to the fossils and the qualities that our lineage has incorporated, giving shape to those features that stand out in our family heritage. we are fortuitous outcomes of relations as remote as an echo that reverberates in this present – a cosmic big bang that we still find hard to understand. 2. ariadne’s thread of episteme knowledge is a dialogue with the world, in countless ways: art, technology, cataloguing, exploration are ultimately forms of dialogue. we learn through dreams, hallucinations, alterations of consciousness, rational focusing, motivational conjugation or emotional marking, immersion in our umwelt or denial thereof by means of technopoiesis. each dialogue brings us a true picture, not an appearance enslaved to a sensory illusion or to becoming: the resulting image is as true as that which is hidden to show itself to a different dialogical scan. this is because there is no ariadne’s thread that leads to being. it simply “does not exist”: this statement is very different from the denial of its ownership or of the possibility to own it. in other words it is not epistemic deficiency but the absence of a final form of the world. and that does not mean annihilating reality, but enhancing it in virtuality. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 roberto marchesini 148 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ we strive in a frantic search for meaning, in the desire for a descriptive look able to embrace micro and macrochaos, in the illusion of an explanatory power that, like a hawk, can seize the ultimate or fundamental causes of things at a long distance. and we think that everything can then relax on one single level – reality served on the dinner table for our meal. but perhaps speusippus as reported by aristotle (berti 2010) was right in his daydreaming about plans that are actually incommensurable with each other. that would mean the existence of a mocking reality, without instructions and without forms, virtual in defining the spaces of possibility, revealable (i.e. resistant) for what it is-not – only when it refuses to indulge in our dialogical level and ultimately says “no”. for the rest “it is as it lets itself be organized”, so that the episteme is a dialogue. on the other hand, what a paradox to affirm reality based on its resistance, namely, its stating what it is not! certainly if reality is a space of possibility, there are infinite ways to describe and explain it, as many as the potential dialogues with it. and then, as a consequence, every level of reality would be true. despite the apeiron and physicalism, reality is only manifested in dialogue. changing dialogue, a different level of reality appears to us: not invented, but phenotypically organized. however, if epistemology recalls an act of command – organizing a form, that is, a phenotypic level of reality, through a special dialogue – this should not lead to a green light to the monstrous demiurge that tempts us to be arrogant. on the contrary, it means becoming aware of the error that lies in the solipsistic pretence of an observing subject and an object that is observed. moving towards a dialogical epistemology means considering all forms of knowledge as a reciprocative act, in the knowledge of deploying in dialogue one of the many possible images of the multi-verse. having a relational concept involves many conceptual reinterpretations of aspects that have been taken for granted by humanist anthropocentrism. unknown relations intertwine our lives, sometimes making a mockery of our epistemological efforts, giving themselves accidentally in serendipity or, instead, hiding in the folds of our gaze. we must learn to accept that dialogue is above all the ability to listen, the willingness to be surprised. nature loves to build its copulae in chthonic recesses. that is why wonder is the main tone of philosophizing. lamarck gave start to evolutionism thinking that the species do not arise and do not become extinct: he could have never imagined that the debate he had given rise to would have produced, in 1859, an essay on the origin of the species (darwin [1859] 2003). he was right in what he had not guessed. occult links chase each other in the notebook of physis: it is not so easy to think that a molecule endowed with antibiosis can be found by searching for a colorant. these relations are like http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 dialogo ergo sum 149 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ dots that combine into constellations, kaleidoscopic gestalts that can bring out ordered structures from the ocean of virtuality – and yet such structures are based on previous relationships, on a way to impose order on reality. but if episteme is a dialogue with virtuality, a level of reality is not an invention, but a possible organization: this piece of furniture is real in its atomic prospectus and in the organic one, in its subsuming a time of photosynthesis and a stream of solar radiation and in being the expression of a botanic existence, in its instrumental meaning and in the model that inspired the late nineteenth century craftsman who realized it. what we discover in episteme is the kind of relationship that we are establishing with the real. however, care must be taken: the dialogue does not resemble an autopsy of reality – it has no a rudder, eludes our expectations, mocks our castles in the air and brings out different ones. this pretence of control, which makes epistemology a practice and exercise of dominion, is another one of the humanist illusions. one must surrender to relations; epistemic trails are elusive like soap bubbles. a dialogical epistemology puts the relationship at the centre of the learning process by not considering the founding act as an event of eradication of the human being from the world. it is ultimately a matter of reading the ex-stasis not as transcendence from the world but as transcendence in the world. to know is to accept to agree with the itinerary with otherness, being also able to choose one of the infinite coordinates in topographic virtuality. it means to accept ignorance as the starting point of any process of knowledge, which does not separate, but rather combines with irony. there are endless dialogues on minimum systems, chasing each other silently; sometimes they bewilder us, sometimes we cannot even perceive them. lost in a narcissistic cogito, we face our existence as if it were a reflective continuum. but is it really so? we find it hard to think of ourselves as in-relation-to, particles dispersed in the other, being alternatively (and at the same time) hearths of hestia and hermetic travellers. taken by an ideological individualism – no longer a childish egocentric temptation – we become voracious consumers of otherness (humans as “intestines of the world”), but also desperately alone recesses in the desert of the universe. indeed, if the copernican decentralization is not accompanied by an abdication from humanist absolutism, we are inevitably doomed to cosmic pessimism, abandoned in the arms of schopenhauer. shipwreck then is never sweet – it may only appear such for an ephemeral endorphinous effect, as a legacy of the vertigo of the sublime on subcortical systems. the charm of humanism lies in its ability to take our childishness and to give it a cultural basis, transforming every rejection into a test, building complex tautologies, and resorting to the petitio principii. if only we assumed a relational http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 roberto marchesini 150 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ perspective we would have immediate ontological comfort, but we would also drastically change our epistemological gyroscope and the catalogue of our values, as to both aims and obligations. as long as we stick to the individualist conception, in need of constantly affirming a centre and drawing a gestalt autonomy around it – an essence that is capable of mortifying the rest in the afterlife of the object – we will never fully understand the paths of knowledge, nor the reasons why we should avoid considering the world as a huge banquet laid for us. anthropocentrism is a way to build an egocentric complicity. as with epicycles, everything seems to add up and casting out nines apparently supports the calculation, but it is all an artefact. we are used to thinking that even techne is a solipsistic and self-sufficient act – when, on the contrary, it is what most of all realizes itself and feeds on relations. we are supported in the belief that technology is designed to produce self-sufficiency, while it causes increased conjugation and dependence. in this scenario, we can hardly question individualistic myth-making. we castle whenever the nightmare seems to vanish. loneliness is an evil that we carry with us from an indefinable cultural nebula; paradoxically, we defend it as a parasite on which we have an addiction. perhaps it is so: the fear of death demeans life; the need for transcendence loosens our radical nodes and condemns us to a black exile within ourselves. the instrument then becomes the way to take leave of the world, to invent a myth of purity – the idea that, like a glove, separates us from the burden, detaching us from fruition and giving us the thing in-itself. the open, whether we follow rilke’s sweetness ([1923] 1961) or heidegger’s arrogance ([1983] 1995), is the most infamous of scams, both when it speaks of the human and when it gives itself to the non-human. a relational being can only produce relational modes, whether in the unconscious roots of its wishes or in multiple intentional degrees, whether it realizes them transforming the body into an operational parade ground or hugely multiplying the technological interfaces. we can deny them, perjure our ontological independence, fake a detached self-sufficiency, but we can never help affirming them in every act, in any dimension of existence. our principle of individuation is a relational level, a dialogue of maturation started already in the dark cloister of gestation and then continued in the first years of life – a gradual emergence from the millefeuille of phylogenetic affiliations. and sure enough we seem to sprout from the formless fog, already beautifully dressed as by magic, but it is the usual illusion of retrospectives and a posteriori justifications. infinite notes and counterpoints were aligned in the warp through continuous additions of information from the outside, for glimmers of consciousness to finally emerge. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 dialogo ergo sum 151 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 3. towards a relational ontology life is primarily a relational system, an open window on the universe through time that has allowed for an internal order through the unusual gift of transforming solar energy into information. huge thermonuclear storms have accumulated grains of architectural and metabolic geometries tested in the atelier of existence over the course of a nearly four-billionyear odyssey. as erwin schrödinger (1992) noted with his concept of “negentropy” and ilya prigogine (kondepudi and prigogine 1998) with that of “dissipative structures”, autopoiesis was never autarky. the leaves of an oak reflect the patterns of light in the world that surrounds it, and its roots follow invisible aquifers and mineral pastures while struggling with a crowd of competitors. the foliage of a tree is the most striking example of evolutionary mirroring: the growing bud’s access to photosynthesis is also a reward in auxin, an incentive for development. life does not just waste energy in this selfish stagnation, in keeping itself in a thermodynamically unstable condition: life is expansion, access to new horizons of relationship. on the other hand, every living being not only needs a continuous supply of energy from the outside, but must also dispel the genetic and epigenetic information that phylogeny has accumulated in it. the greatest miracle is always the unraveling of the patented amino tape – a code full of loopholes that relies on external dialectics to be fulfilled. once again, we are talking about relations. every new life that is born from the mystery of birth has already a trans-specific experience so rich that the library of alexandria pales by comparison. in this respect we can speak of a recapitulation that is not only embryogenic but also existential, which means that every living thing sums up the history of its genetic line, exploiting the information capitalized over time. when konrad lorenz (1973) says that a priori elements are nothing more than phylogenetic a posteriori ones, he is telling us something that our mind’s essentialist frenzy does not always grasp. the rather obvious suggestion is to stop trying to find an ancestral common ground with animals, but rather to look for kinship at the very heart of our identity. in this sense, contrary to what suggested thomas nagel (1974), although we are incapable of echolocation, we are also bats. in our mammalian hearts, we still roam the jurassic nights; like confused reptiles in the new earthly dimension we seek a nest and an amnion able to give us back the comfort of water. jakob von uexküll’s umwelten (1957) are not separate monads, but worlds with significant areas of overlap. and these legacies do not rest in the depths of our unconscious, do not disturb our humanity in dangerhttp://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 roberto marchesini 152 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ous, feral ways. rather, they represent the driving force of the emotions and motivations that we recognize as the most authentic expression of our existence. human bipedalism reflects tetrapod rhythms and choreographies, which cannot stop the tuning of the front legs, and the responsive train of our fears – designed for freezing, alarm pheromones, faeces – still recalls the response of reptilian proto-mammals. as vestigial legacies, these features that evolved from nonhuman relations with the world represent the strength of our identity. so our nonhuman legacy in no mere appendix; it represents what we are. ninety-nine per cent of our predicates are the result of nonhuman relations. love for our offspring, our collaborative skills and empathic propensities, prosocial competences, the different levels of affection, our tendency to collect and make catalogues, our arts of mimicry and creativity, our communicative disposition and our use of arbitrary signs in representation: these are all things that were left to us by nonhuman creatures in their diachronic path of relation with the world. these dialogues preceded us, because each of us is the result of a “genealogical thread?”, that started in the mists of the precambrian and never stopped. the smallest interruption of the wire, a small delay between the billions of passengers who took the bus of existence, and we would not be here. the river of time has carved the rock, drawing shapes through relationships and tracing “geometries of relations”. you cannot understand the unstable magma of bios hollowing out the individual living being from the network of conjugations. echoing gregory bateson (1979), one should look at the “structures which connect” because it is there that meaning resides. in the thinnest outline of a relationship – a threshold more than a border – life breathes. its dispositions are nothing but conjugating operators: animal subjectivity is not rationality but desire, the true archetype of every intentionality. desires are relational verbs. be it a predator chasing, or a frugivore collecting, desires are predicative provisions that lack meaning unless they have external references. like ellipses, desires expect the rest of the world to specify/individuate them. ecology has shown the intimate interdependence of bodies, outlining trophic chains and reciprocal mutualisms, and today one hardly questions the systemic repercussions caused by any disruption anywhere along the supply chain. however, what is often misunderstood is the complexity of the relationship maintained in the river of life: its strength is also its vulnerability. homeostatic systems are joined by autocatalytic systems, divided only by a small gradient whose effects are nevertheless catastrophic, because under-threshold the system dampens disturbances, while over-threshold it emphasises them. this has already been detected in the ice ages: up to a http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 dialogo ergo sum 153 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ certain threshold irradiation is kept in check, but when the ice expands it increases the reflection of the light expanding the domain of glaciers. a very similar situation relates to the carbon cycle, although the effects are the opposite. up to a certain threshold there is a homeostatic system for capturing the carbon from the calcium carbonates of many microorganisms and from the cellulose of plants, but beyond that threshold, with the increase of temperature for the greenhouse effect, the action of capture stops and further carbon is freed by combustion and degradation. unfortunately, we completely lack the ability to preview the cumulative effects of changes in the homeostatic systems of gaia, to refer to james lovelock’s image (1987), and perhaps that’s why we continue undeterred in our action of perturbation. 4. culture as a relational outcome among the changes wrought by a relational ontology, first of all there is the poietic act, traditionally handed down as a self-sufficient achievement by a bilious prometheus. on the contrary, there is no invention that was not discovered, no culture that is not representation, and no creation that is not the result of dialogue. the stereotype of the inventor that is abstracted from the world, entirely closed-off in his pindaric access to the unreachable realms of platonic ideas, is once again the result of a nonrelational vision of our being. culture, in hindsight, does not emanate from the plotinian one, but is the result of our copulative creativity: a mimesis that leads us away from the phylogenetic centre of gravity and produces “attraction of worlds”. if this is what martin heidegger ([1983] 1995) meant by his principle of the creative power of the human, who could disagree? the mistake is to consider this creation as a solipsistic moment that brings out the ontopoietic predicate ex nihilo. the mistake, in other words, is the humanistic misreading of the human dimension as autarchic. my research in the zooanthropological field led me to read the emergence of culture as a predicative process resulting from an animal epiphany, that is, a dialogic event that decenters the human being and identifies a new hybrid condition. this epiphany is intended as a time when the human being, in connection with otherness, goes beyond the phenomenon (the animal as other-than-oneself), accessing an epiphanic event (the animal as otherwith-oneself) and finding a new existential dimension. before showing us “how to fly” – that is, techniques of flight – birds have shown us that “one http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 roberto marchesini 154 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ can fly”, ushering us into a further declination of presence in the here-andnow. on the other hand, to achieve this epiphany the human being must go beyond the phenomenon, being projected and hybridized with the bird’s body. for zooanthropology (marchesini and tonutti 2007; marchesini 2014), the archetypes of human culture – namely the areas of dance, music, cosmetics, fashion, technopoiesis, rituals, just to name a few – are not emanative outcomes of human genius, but epiphanic results of the relation with heterospecific beings. traditions followed autonomous paths – in fact, once in possession of the harmonies and phrasings of finches, human music can be born – but this archetypal emergence is a hybrid product. as i suggested, the first cry of culture is a process based on the epiphany of “animal-becoming” (deleuze and guttari 1987; abram 2010). taking on the existential guise of a heterospecific being, the human being is projected in an ex-centric position with respect to his or her phylogenetic legacy. it is a case of anthropo-decentration. but beware: this becoming-animal does not correspond to the image of ancestral regression suggested by late-nineteenth-century literature or by cesare lombroso’s physiognomy. becoming-animal in zooanthropology, in fact, is opposite to the narrative topoi that substantiate the nature of the various characters à la kurtz or mr. hyde. this is an ongoing and non-regressive process. also, it must not be mistaken for an act of mere imitation! epiphany rather reminds one of a projection into animal otherness, or an act of possession, so that the resulting morphological pastiche recalls a performance rather than a simple mimetic translation. the dialogical meaning of this predicative dimensioning thus becomes clear, since the human condition is usually figured as elevation and disjunction. therefore, culture is not an autarkic product, and it does not take human beings away from the creative-relational magma of bios. on the contrary, it is the result of the propensity of our taxon to build inclusive relationships with otherness. this means that the cultural act does not negate human nature but rather realizes it, albeit in a hybridized way (and not through a simple translation, as the sociobiological tradition would have it). culture also produces a more heated conjugation with heterospecific beings, doubling the connective links. according to this perspective, what ties us to the other species are only shared phylogenetic traits, along the three traditional vectors: (a) biological universals, due to the physical and chemical laws of the planet; (b) homologies or similarities due to common kinship; (c) analogies or similarities due to adaptive convergence  – but also cultural ones, resulting from the becoming-animal foundation of the human condition. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 dialogo ergo sum 155 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ otherness understood as epiphany, and not simply as a phenomenal counterpart, thus shows us the impossibility of understanding the human by singling it out from its relationship with the nonhuman. beside the predicates attributable to the common condition of being animals, we are also linked to other species by our hybrid predicates, now deeply included in the human condition. when francesco remotti (2002) speaks of “anthropo-poiesis”, he underlines a dimensioning that is not exclusively ontogenetic, but takes on the centrifugal tones already noted by helmuth plessner (1977). on the other hand, this being off-center, this excess – which does not allow one to explain the predicates of humanity by direct descent from the phylogenetic content – admits an external contribution. it is a dialogue, indeed, and one that is open to the introjection of nonhuman content – which relates that heterospecific beings have a foundational co-factoriality not only due to their natural heritage but also because they participate in the cultural cosmopolis. in this sense, it is necessary to embrace a posthumanistic approach. the humanistic assumption that founds the human juxta propria principia – according to its own principles – must be revised. it is undeniable that this awareness will inspire new poetics and new experiences of the sublime without claiming to create them from scratch. just as the infinite was before us even prior to the copernican revolution, so hybridization has always been part of the human experience and is not the outcome of infiltrative technologies. we have always been hybrids, even before our ancestors re-negotiated the human morphopoietic threshold by chipping flint and reshaping the architecture of the skull. on the contrary, disjunctive logic claims to build identity by opposition, denying any shared. but once we acknowledge the end of humanism, we see that dasein is not a distancing from the world: it is a phenomenological common nature. having a relational view inevitably means not giving up sovereignty but rather admitting that it has always been an illusion. we sail across the world carelessly, without a fixed goal, in blissful ignorance. coming down from the anthropocentric pedestal means having greater awareness of the dynamics that affect us. we can argue that the anthropocentric view, stubbornly blind to relational processes, is now the most serious threat to the human being, the “black hole” of the planet. accepting our relational condition, on the other hand, does not mean simply increasing our awareness, but rather freeing our ability to truly live, giving up our mania for control. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 roberto marchesini 156 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 5. relation as the mover of individual creativity we are born hungry. observing the first two years of life of a child is the most productive gnoseological operation of all. the dialogue with the mother is silent and endless, like the chain of ants along the pheromonal highway leading to the anthill, a kind of trophallaxis of looks and haptic conjugations. she is a safe shelter that, like the wind on the sail, pushed the child into the open sea of the world, so that even the most private experience becomes relational. we can call it care, investment, epimelesis, attachment … or more poetically we can warm up our hearts with the word “love”. starting from hinde (1970) and bowlby’s first intuitions (1969), today we know that our mind is a relational product. the safe shelter is not only centrifugal fuel, but also a compass/rudder in the experiential path, able to guide our familiarization with the world and operate specific evolutionary differentials. it is a real “wind rose” that translates certainties and fears, guidelines and disinterests, which she earned through her relational existence and then translated in the ontogenetic identity of her child. when choosing the rooms in which to turn on the light, based on her dispositions and memories, she orientates the child’s centrifugation and marks the content of his experiences. she is not just a safe shelter, but a guiding light and a projection, a map to reprudce maternal identity through acts of individual experience. how many acts guide ontopoiesis? it is hard to say, but surely they are many more than most disciplines are willing to admit (ethology with the notion of social learning, psychology with that of attachment, and anthropology with the coordinates of cultural tradition). mammals pair learning and parental care, so everything is traced back to the etymology of the student as the one who is fed. in the relational canon, even piaget (1970) and vygotsky (1978) can finally shake hands: since no dialogue with oneself is ever a dialogue, any epistemological enlargement is a zone of proximal growth. we do not only share genes or epigenetic information: in a symposium that starts as parental and becomes social, we climb up an endless staircase of dialogues before we reach the view of our identity, and then convince ourselves that we have always been there, at the top, enjoying the spectacle of our consciousness. the problem is that this mistake has turned into an actual doctrine with descartes, and this condemns us to being-for-death. reflective excess powers a narcissistic narcosis that, in addition to turning us into a pathology for the entire planet, has made us the sacrificial victims. inevitably, led astray by this doctrine of denial, we are left with sartre’s nausea (1965) for the daily invasion of a world that is constitutionally incahttp://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 dialogo ergo sum 157 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ pable of just being there in front of us. we are fighting against our own copulative nature and disgust is not being-in-world but rather this unremitting struggle to say goodbye. ultimately, everything would be easier if we finally accepted that we are not alone. references abram, david. 2010. becoming animal: an earthly cosmology. new york: pantheon books. agamben, giorgio. 2004. the open: man and animal, translated by kevin attell. stanford, ca: stanford university press. bateson, gregory. 1979. mind and nature: a necessary unity. new york: danton. berti, enrico. 2010. sumphilosophein. la vita nell’accademia di platone. roma bari: laterza. bowlby, john. 1969. attachment: attachment and loss. new york: basic books. darwin, charles. (1859) 2003. on the origin of the species by means of natural selection: or, the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. peterborough: broadview press. deleuze, gilles, and félix guattari. 1987. a thousand plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia. minneapolis: university of minnesota press. fabietti, ugo. 2012. l’identità etnica. storia e critica di un concetto equivoco. roma: ca rocci. heidegger, martin. (1983) 1995. the fundamental concepts of metaphysics: world, finitude, solitude, translated by william mcneill and nicholas walke. bloomington: indiana university press. hinde, robert. 1970. animal behavior: a synthesis of ethology and comparative psychology. new york: mcgraw-hill. kondepudi, dilip, and ilya prigogine. 1998. modern thermodynamics: from heat engines to dissipative structures. chichester: john wiley & sons. lorenz, konrad. 1973. behind the mirror: a search for a natural history of human knowledge, translated by ronald taylor. new york: harcourt brace jo va no vich. lovelock, james. 1987. gaia: a new look at life on earth. oxford: oxford university press. marchesini, roberto. 2014. fondamenti di zooantropologia. zooantropologia teorica. bo logna: apeiron. marchesini, roberto, and sabrina tonutti. 2007. manuale di zooantropologia. roma: mel temi. nagel, thomas. 1974. “what is it like to be a bat?”. philosophical review 83: 435-50. piaget, jean. 1970. genetic epistemology. new york: columbia university press. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 roberto marchesini 158 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ plessner, helmuth. 1977. laughing and crying: a study of the limits of human behaviour, translated by james spencer churchill. evanston, il: northwestern university press. remotti, francesco, ed. 2002. forme di umanità. milano: mondadori. rilke, rainer maria. (1923) 1961. duino elegies, translated by carlyle ferren macintyre. berkeley: university of california press. sartre, jean-paul. 1965. nausea. harmondsworth: penguin. schrödinger, erwin.1992. what is life? the physical aspect of the living cell with mind and matter e autobiographical sketches. cambridge: cambridge university press. von uexküll, jacob. 1954. “a stroll through the worlds of animals and men: a picture book of invisible worlds”. in instinctive behavior. the development of a modern concept, translated by claire h. schiller, 5-80. new york: international universities press. vygotski˘, lem. 1978. mind in society: the development of higher psychological processes. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 care and nutrition: ethical issues. exploring the moral nexus between caring and eating through natural history, anthropology and the ethics of care 103 relations – 5.2 november 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ care and nutrition: ethical issues exploring the moral nexus between caring and eating through natural history, anthropology and the ethics of care maurizio fürst sapienza university of rome doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2017-002-furs maurizio.furst@gmail.com abstract the way in which human beings eat is quite revealing of the kind of moral beings that they are. this sheds a light on how non-human animals eat as well as behave in activities regarding food. every mammal at some moment of its life depends on someone else to be fed. such activities involving food are universal and natural forms of caring. in these situations, social relationships between individuals are defined or reinforced. thus, actions that involve sharing and caring can easily be seen as moral ones. at the same time, however, since meals are natural and ordinary that it is very difficult to view them as moments of immorality. forms of injustice and domination over other genders, ethnic or social groups as well as over other species rest in the small and apparently inoffensive choices and gestures of everyday meals. keywords: morality, nutrition, care, ethics of care, naturalization, women studies, food studies, altruism, androcentrism, darwinism. 1. naturalizing care the ethics of care are a family of moral theories, insights and practices that aims to not losing sight of the experiences, activities and works involved in caring. such activities, that are embedded in the everyday ordinary life, are constantly neglected by moral and political mainstream theories. nutrition is a caring activity as it is related to many forms of domestic care and nursing. the moral issues related to food and personal relationships in the domestic sphere are hardly definable in terms of utility, rights or justice, they are a matter or care. in the words of michiel korthals, “meals belong to the extremely vulnerable and valuable meeting points where informal http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ http://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2017-002-furs mailto:maurizio.furst@gmail.com maurizio fürst 104 relations – 5.2 november 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ relationships are intensified” (2004, 17). feeding one another is a natural caring activity that creates and reinforces social bonds, precisely the kind of activity that the ethics of care seek to empower. however, nutrition carries a set of morally problematic forms of domination on some human beings and over many other animals. the theorists of care argue that such issues are particularly insidious because of their being part of “the way we eat”. something that is perceived as perfectly natural and ordinary. an ethic of care, to fruitfully address this kind of issues and underline what other moral theories are neglecting should not be an idealized theory. the ethics of care in this perspective is a naturalized approach, one that focus on matters rather than in general assumptions. naturalization, in the broad sense, is a philosophical view grounded on strictly empirical data (flanagan, sarkissian, and wong 2008, 2). there are several grounds on which the ethics of care is to be considered naturalized. first, this means that, as eva feder kittay puts it, care is “neither abstract nor disembodied: it is an ethics that begins with the reality of caring, with real women (mostly) tending to embodied beings in all their concrete particularity” (2009, 126). the ground on which this ethical frame is rooted is an anthropological one made of real, concrete experiences. second, this means that the source of the normativity is to be found in the same activity or practice to which the norms apply. there are no moral principles, no abstract theorization outside the ordinary activities and feelings emerging from caring tasks. the ethics of care, when it comes to nutrition, is generally concerned with exploring the everyday emotions, experiences or injustices felt by caregivers and care-receivers. this involves collecting empirical data which are mostly not “natural” like the ones from natural sciences. nevertheless, this does not mean that “natural” facts shouldn’t be relevant to the ethics of care. in fact, care can be enriched by this further instance of naturalization concerning “natural” empirical facts. a “natural” and naturalized concept of care does not apply nearly to a very specific group of humans (i.e. women), it goes far beyond gender and species. the caring activities related to nutrition have been crucial to the natural history of human beings. in an evolutionary and naturalized account of the concept of care, nutrition is the primal form of caring, as breastfeeding is the very first form of nurture that every new-born mammal experiences. psychoanalytical development theories have been pointing out that the lack of maternal care in human beings can seriously undermine the regular development of children. similar effects have been observed in many other mammals: harlow and suomi have (cruelly) tested rhesus monkeys in order to demonstrate that the lack of maternal caring makes young individuals http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ care and nutrition: ethical issues 105 relations – 5.2 november 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ “enormously disturbed”, unable to normally take care of themselves and socially interact with others (rachels 1990, 218). jane goodall (2000, 14850) with a much more loving and human approach describes passion, a chimpanzee mother showing a clear lack of sensitivity to her son needs and requests, the british ethologist holds that as a result to that behaviour the young ape grows up showing severe psychological and social problems. among the theorists of care, nel noddings (1984, 79-80) maintains that maternal caring is the “natural” and fundamental form of care and it is the condition for further “moral” care in human beings. the connection between care and morality in this case is a strong one: the moral nature of human beings depends on their very first nurture relationships. however, several theorists point out the risks involved in this way of considering maternal care as primal and paradigmatic. the cliché of women as selfless nurturers tends to reinforce the exclusive assignment of care tasks to women. focusing on all the positive emotions linked to motherhood can be misleading, as it deflects attention from the oppressive masculine domination structure in which those experiences take place (held 2006, 5534). nevertheless, naturalizing care helps seeing it as central to our moral nature. such awareness may prevent us from fostering the prejudice that being involved in such activities could be somehow degrading. an example of a naturalized account of care is provided by the neuroscientific work of jaap panksepp presenting care as one of the seven basic emotional systems that all mammals share: […] the roots of human empathy reach deep into the ancient circuits that engender caring feelings in all mammals, where we identify our own wellbeing with the well-being of others […]. if a young animal can only survive by initially obtaining food from another animal, there is nothing like social bonding and maternal devotion to ensure that such sharing takes place. (panksepp and biven 2012, 284-8) this way of rooting caring behaviours in the most ancient structure of the mammalian brain can have strong moral and political implications: • on one hand the brain’s structures that are active during maternal care are also active in male caregiving, thus it separates care from femininity. the devaluation of tasks that are considered “feminine” ones, as well as the stigmatization of specific social groups (mostly women) because of their being caregivers, rest in the “natural” association between care and femininity. showing that such connection is not a “natural” one could be an important starting point for the empowering of caregivers and the recognition of their social importance. • on the other hand, it suggests that caring may be something we share with a significant part of the non-human world even beyond mammals, http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ maurizio fürst 106 relations – 5.2 november 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ which might have strong moral implications. the fact that we share a set of capacities with non-humans animals that are the condition for our being social and moral beings seriously undermines anthropocentrism. moreover, the natural world presents numerous examples of forms of care that exceed family and species’ bonds: birds’ parents, for instance, are both involved in the nutrition of their offspring; orphan mammals are sometimes adopted and fed by an adult of another species and elder individuals are fed by the community. charles darwin relates the following anecdote: capt stansbury found on a salt lake in utah an old and completely blind pelican, which was very fat, and must have been long and well fed by his companions. mr byth, as he informs me, saw indian crows feeding two or three of their companions which were blind. (rachels 1990, 148) james rachels holds that in human beings these would be clear examples of moral behaviour and altruism. a significant amount of experiments on the moral capacities of non-human animals (de waal 2006) involves food sharing, which is quite revealing of the transpecific link between nutrition and morality. the fact that ethologists judge such activities explicative of how animals show altruistic behaviours suggests that the capacities that enable moral care could have emerged in that kind of interactions. this means that our eating, and more precisely our eating together, is strictly related to our being altruistic and moral beings. 2. nutrition as a way of caring in human societies there are multiple ways in which nutrition can be a form of care for others. in different care situations, such as mercy, romantic love, parental care or feeding non-human animals, different foods carry specific meanings. italian anthropologist vito teti (2015, 70-1), for example, describes the cunsulo tradition in the south of italy, which consists, when a member of the community dies, in the offering of prepared dishes for the mourning family that is not in condition to cook. teti holds that the etymology of the word “companion”, from the latin cum (together) and panis (bread), is paradigmatic of the social bond’s reinforcing function of nutrition. nutrition can also be a form of self-care. comfort foods, for example, are forms of consolation – by eating specific foods (generally high-caloric ones) charged with nostalgic and emotional meanings. in hollywood’s movies, for example, the best medicine for a rough break-up is often eating a huge ice-cream box in front of the television. food choices can also be http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ care and nutrition: ethical issues 107 relations – 5.2 november 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ seen as forms of care for oneself. a vegetarian choice, for example, can be a form of moral perfectionism. one could feel that eating other creatures’ flesh is no longer an option, it is no longer something that is compatible with the kind of person that we are, that we want to be (pollo 2016, 100). this attempt to achieve the moral transformation of oneself trough the transformation of food habits dates back to ancient greece. neoplatonic philosopher porphyry of tyre wrote on abstinence from animal food, advocating vegetarianism as a form of purity and self-improvement. likewise, the personal experience of many modern vegetarians often rests on similar thoughts. in these cases, the care for others arises from the care for oneself. similarly, some feminist vegetarians hold that meat consumption is sustained by an anthropocentric and androcentric culture (adams 1990), directly responsible for the endless suffering of billions of animals. therefore, a vegetarian could feel that, in order to morally transform herself in the person she wants or even need to be, she must stop eating animal proteins. there can be personal, moral and political reasons for changing one’s food habits. the link between morality, nutrition and personal identity is well expressed by the maxim “we are what we eat”, that we can find in many philosophical, religious and anthropological theories as well as in pop culture. even though we are certainly much more than what could be reduced to what we eat, nutrition is strongly bonded to what we are: “food is a question of personal identity” (korthals 2004, 2-11). from a very young age, children start defining themselves through their personal wishes and tastes: their perception of their own personality is mainly composed by what they like and what they dislike. a sudden change in food habits, even for grownups, is therefore a quite traumatic experience. it can generate confusion and uncertainty due to the loss of part of one’s identity and culture. changing one’s food habits for moral reasons is much more than a mere matter of choice. it means giving up something truly meaningful to human life. if we feel that the way we eat is somehow immoral because it harms other beings, we could try to change it because we care about them. we could also decide to change it because we care about ourselves and the kind of person we are. in this case, we might want to change our food habits in order to become better persons from our very own moral perspective. at the same time changing the way we eat means losing part of our culture, part of what we are, of what constitutes us deeply (butler 2004, 2-23). in human societies, the caring task of feeding one’s relatives is often, in a morally problematic way, a feminine one that includes activities such as http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ maurizio fürst 108 relations – 5.2 november 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ grocery shopping, setting up the table, cooking, doing the washing-up and many more chores. as korthals puts it “food is therefore a gender matter par excellence” (2004, 20). by responding to one’s family needs for food, women engage in a multitude of thoughts, dispositions and activities. on the other side of the table, men through small gestures and daily rituals contribute (awarely or not) to keep such culinary tasks as an exclusive feminine duty. men often do not cook because they “don’t know how to cook”, the reason (or the pretext) is that such knowledge is traditionally and exclusively transmitted from mother to daughter. therefore, the caregivers find themselves obliged by their culture to take care of those who “don’t know how to cook” by cooking and getting to know how to cook. this form of domination is a matter of daily routine. french sociologist pierre bourdieu (2013, 32-4) describes the typical behaviour of men who come home before dinner, put their slippers on, wait for the food to get prepared. during meals men tend to eat more (it is a sign of virility) – by so doing they give women, who finish their food earlier, time to clear the table. bourdieu holds that dishes like the french pot-au-feu, which requires a lot of attention and entire days of preparation, are linked to the traditional conception of women’s role: the fact that a woman who entirely dedicates herself to domestic tasks, in france, is called a pot-au-feu is quite revealing of such connection. hence bourdieu claims that the cultural preference for such kind of dishes is not independent from the androcentric desire to confine women within the domestic walls all day long. the assignment of such domestic tasks to women, according to french philosopher sandra laugier (2015, 43), resulted in the exclusion of such activities and concerns from morality and from the public sphere. care tasks are reduced to private feelings without any political or moral relevance. aurélie damamme and patricia paperman (2009, 153) have carried out a research work on this feminine experience of ordinary domestic care-giving. they interviewed many women, pinpointing their sometimes unbearable feelings of injustice, resentment and even rage. caregivers need to be taken care of as well. the main goal of the ethics of care is to let caregivers have a public voice, so that such private experiences get to be expressed and publicly heard. by doing so, such apparently ordinary and trivial tasks can come to be considered real professions practiced by individuals with needs and a legitimate political voice. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ care and nutrition: ethical issues 109 relations – 5.2 november 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 3. conclusion this short analysis of the evolutionary and ethical relationship between caring and nutrition seems to show that our way of eating is deeply intertwined with our being social and moral beings. many of the behaviours that make us social agents have probably emerged in interactions that involved food. hence meals can be seen as the daily testimony of our being moral beings but also of our being immoral. every meal is a proof that someone is taking care of us and that other human and non-human beings deserve to be taken care of. eating is sharing life, it is something we do with some beings and to some others. to decide which beings deserve to be (or not) on each side is an ethical and caring task to be performed every day. references adams, carol j. 1990. the sexual politics of meat: a feminist-vegetarian critical theory. new york: bloomsbury academic. bourdieu, pierre. 2013. “distinction: a social critique of the judgement of taste”. in food and culture: a reader, edited by carole counihan and penny van esterik, 31-9. new york london: routledge. butler, judith. 2004. undoing gender. new york: routledge. damamme, aurélie, and patricia paperman. 2009. “care domestique”. in qu’est ce que le care? souci des autres, sensibilité, responsabilité, edited by sandra laugier, pascale molinier, and patricia paperman, 133-55. paris: éditions payot & rivages. de waal, frans. 2006. primates and philosophers: how morality evolved. princeton: princeton university press. flanagan, owen, hagop sarkissian, and david wong. 2007. “naturalizing ethics”. in moral psychology, vol. i: the evolution of morality: adaptation and innateness, edited by walter sinnott-armstrong, 1-25. cambridge, ma: mit press. goodall, jane. 2000. in the shadow of man. boston new york: mariner books. held, virginia. 2006. “the ethics of care”. in the oxford handbook of ethical theory, edited by david copp, 537-66. oxford: oxford university press. kittay, eva f. 2009. “the ethics of philosophizing: ideal theory and the exclusion of people with severe cognitive disabilities”. in feminist ethics and social and political philosophy: theorizing the non-ideal, edited by lisa tessman, 121-46. dodrecht: springer. korthals, michiel. 2004. before dinner: philosophy and ethics of food. dordrecht: springer. laugier, sandra. 2015. etica e politica dell’ordinario. milano: led edizioni. noddings, nell. 1984. caring: a feminine approach to ethics and moral education. berkeley: university of california press. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ maurizio fürst 110 relations – 5.2 november 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ panksepp, japp, and lucy biven. 2012. the archaeology of mind: neuroevolutionary origins of human emotions. new york london: w.w. norton & company. pollo, simone. 2016. umani e animali. questioni di etica. roma: carocci. rachels, james. 1990. created from animals: the moral implications of darwinism. new york: oxford university press. teti, vito. 2015. fine pasto. torino: einaudi. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ethics for the living world: alternative methods and new strategies for the protection of nonhuman animals ethics for the living world alternative methods and new strategies for the protection of nonhuman animals susanna penco 1 rosagemma ciliberti 2 1 department of experimental medicine (dimes), university of genoa, italy 2 associate professor of bioethics at the science of health department (dissal), university of genoa, italy doi: 10.7358/rela-2013-002-penc susanna.penco@unige.it rosellaciliberti@yahoo.it abstract the use of animals in laboratories is a controversial issue involving much dispute between the researchers who support animal experimentation and those who are in favor of its abolishment. the former, whilst criticizing the emotional behavior of those who oppose it, consider experimentation on animals unavoidable, whereas the latter criticize animal experiments and the underlying logic as erroneous considering its methods unscientific and therefore misleading. this paper stems from the idea of researching into possible ways of developing or improving new alternative strategies for animal experimentation by finding adequate solutions beyond dogmatic opposition in the context of the current european directive 2010/63/eu (the main reference point for the experimentation on animals) for the protection of animals used for scientific purposes. more specifically the paper aims at offering the readers a working proposal, while duly respecting the protocol for the post mortem donation of their own corpses for the purposes of study and research. as we believe diseases need to be cured and not only treated, we are advocating post mortem studies on organs which could lead to the discovery of the causes of unknown etiological pathologies. the commitment to the implementation of constantly new and innovative alternatives concerning animal experimentation is right and proper, especially in the light of the ‘enormous debt’ which the italian national bioethics committee stated that mankind has towards nonhuman living beings. keywords: animal experiments, animal ethics, animal use, alternative methods, ethics committee, post mortem body donations, human tissue and human organ donation, corpse didactics, animal protection, multiple sclerosis. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ susanna penco rosagemma ciliberti 50 relations – 1.2 november 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 1. in search of new openings every year millions of animals are used in research laboratories throughout europe (matthews 2008, 95). are they an indispensable resource for science (as well as for chemical and cosmetic industries and even military research) or merely needless victims that could be saved from such practices? the controversy of animal experimentation (ae), recently brought into debate again by the european legislation (2010/63/eu), not only concerns the moral aspects of practices which cause suffering to sentient beings but also involves the scientific validity of the experimental methodology on animals, which is accused of being fallacious and misleading, as it cannot be applied to human beings (shanks, greek, and greek 2009, 2; greek, pippus, and hansen 2012, 13). can it be presumed that current medical and scientific progress would never have been achieved without the use of animals? is it still absolutely necessary to experiment on animals nowadays? do valid alternative methods exist? could such methods represent a fundamental resource not only for ethical or ‘compassionate’ reasons towards animal species, but also for scientific convenience? in this research we are reluctant to venture into the thorny debate on usefulness, or into any discussion supporting the utmost necessity of animal experimentation in scientific research, not to mention the relevant prejudices in an intrinsically ethical valuation (before even considering the legitimacy) of an attitude of domination towards other living species. in the light of the ever-increasing respect towards other nonhuman sentient beings what we intend to propose, in somewhat narrowed down terms, is an attempt to reach a rational balance between an outright rejection of animal experimentation on one hand (on the basis of the principle of human-animal inter-specific equality) and a similarly apodictic claim to freedom, self-control and responsibility of researchers on the other. the breakthroughs offered by the development of advanced research methods call for new perspectives able to strike the right balance between the necessity for scientific knowledge and respect for the lives of animals. from this perspective, by investigating the ethical and scientific reasons underlying the possibility of implementing actions capable of promoting the adoption of alternative methods (am) we intend to offer new starting points for reflection, particularly regarding the post mortem donation of corpses used for research studies and development. ethics for the living world 51 relations – 1.2 november 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 2. ethical motivation of am the question of the ethics of ae represents one of the most critical issues of the human-animal relationship about which the ongoing debates seem to be in a constant position of stalemate, between absolutely irreconcilable positions (balls 2012, 189). the complexity of these questions together with the relevance of the interests and values involved in animal experimentation brings us back to one of the most crucial questions from which bioethics originates: the tension between what is attainable and what is currently being achieved, or, in other words, the tension between technical possibilities and legal ethics. at least two fundamental issues can be identified as far as bioethics is concerned: 6. the problem of limits of ae. 7. the problem of the intrinsic legality of such a practice. the problems operate on different levels of complexity, the first of which is positioned within a discussion that presupposes the morality of animal experimentation and strives to regulate it by introducing directives and criteria. the second is an approach based on ‘the equal considerations of the interests involved’ of inter-specific equality, which criticizes and invalidates the very presuppositions on which ae is based in order to investigate its validity and evaluate the underlying motivations. the first case concerns the limits with which the spectator must comply, the duties imposed, and the measures to be enforced in order to avoid needless suffering to animals. in the second case, we wonder whether we may or we should interfere with living beings when it merely results in being advantageous to mankind and if, and to what extent, humans have the right to take advantage of the lives and the integrity of nonhumans. however, biomedical research in general does not currently seem able to reject animal experimentation claiming that it has allowed the acquisition of a substantial part of the present knowledge in biomedical fields which otherwise would not have been achieved. the achievement of important scientific results and the advancement of biomedical knowledge should not, however, imply any automatic evidence of the ethics of animal experimentation, nor diminish the obligation to reduce pain, suffering and damage to the minimum (ciliberti 2008, 253). the ever increasing possibilities that technology offers mankind to exploit and dominate other living beings imposes the need to reflect upon the ethics of responsibility which emerges from the recognition of the intrinsic value of animals (their inherent value), as completely independent of the human interest in the usefulness of animals as well as the affection or compassion towards other species is concerned (battaglia 2010). susanna penco rosagemma ciliberti 52 relations – 1.2 november 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ nevertheless, over the last ten years the development of research combined with a growing awareness of the extension of our moral duties beyond species borders urged as well the scientific sector to revise its debasing nonhuman animals to mere ‘things’ towards which humans have absolutely no sense of duty. the acknowledgement of animals as sentient beings endowed with interests has, in fact, brought about an increased interest in the well-being of animals and a growing expansion of the 3rs model (replacement, reduction, refinement), coined by william russell and rex burch. although this model sustains the priority of interests of human species in relation to those of animals it intends to proceed with a comparative evaluation in terms of a costs/benefits analysis. the ever-increasing sufferance caused, combined with both an increase in the amount and variety of animals used, prompts the formation of the so-called ‘ethical cost’ of an experiment, where the scientific advantages and potential benefits for human beings can be evaluated. the ratio between the attained benefits and the suffering inflicted on animals, as suggested by the recent european union directive, is currently the most advanced model as far as the protection of animals is concerned with respect to human awareness regarding the suffering and the quality of the animals’ lives. it has been at least welcomed on behalf of the more sensitive researchers. such principles offer a means of valuation which many researchers use in order to establish whether their experiments are justifiable from the ethical point of view. in italy (see tab. 1 and tab. 2), the national bioethics committee (nbc) explicitly refers to the 3rs model in the document metodologie alternative, comitati etici e obiezione di coscienza alla sperimentazione animale. the paper arises from the need to reconcile the different values, all of which deserve recognition, in a balanced and unanimous way, including the wellbeing of human beings, the promotion of scientific research, the reduction of the suffering caused to animals subjected to experimentation, the wellbeing of the animals used in veterinary experimentation, and respect for the delicacy of the researchers’ personal convictions (comitato nazionale per la bioetica 2009). an extremely positive sign towards the implementation of the 3rs method is the fact that the european community has increased research funding over the last few years, as can be verified in the seventh framework program (2007-2013) which provides funding for programs aimed at developing alternatives to animal testing in medical research. furthermore, the new european directive (2010/63/eu) proposes to reinforce the protection of animals still being used in scientific procedures and to provide a stronger impulse to generate an increase in the promoethics for the living world 53 relations – 1.2 november 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ tion of development, validity, acceptance and application of alternative methods. as a result, the 3rs principles may be fully applied to the use of animals in experiments with the ultimate aim of completely replacing all procedures carried out on living animals. table 1. – individual and species used in experiments in italy. species 2009 2008 2007 mice 553,817 553 556,497 rats 200,301 230,347 252,277 birds 31,798 32,241 33,209 fish 14,958 13,955 30,698 guinea pigs 12,993 13,875 11,819 rabbits 8,657 9,706 11,002 pigs 2,485 3,607 3,401 amphibia 2,304 2,432 2,996 dogs 607 943 1,201 hamsters 526 717 1,089 old world monkeys 460 344 386 cattles 453 462 391 sheep 375 469 542 reptiles 309 454 316 other mammals 173 151 244 other rodents 102 1,235 1,641 new world monkeys 42 18 30 horses 31 46 109 quails 23 249 0 ferrets 20 0 0 goats 19 41 56 cats 0 26 8 total 830,453 864,318 908,002 according to data published in the official journal no. 53 of 5/3/2011, 2,602,773 animals were experimented on in the three years 2007, 2008, and 2009 – numbers that have remained unchanged since 2000. table 2. – species and the number of individuals used in the most important areas of basic research in 2009. species br rd mt ts re mice 334,463 125,407 27,649 5,658 28,468 10 rats 73,037 41,780 70,643 162 12,923 544 birds 7,600 1,801 4 15,531 6,166 0 fish 8,093 600 0 3,050 2,490 0 guinea pigs 1,577 1,882 4,587 691 4,206 0 rabbits 715 749 4,496 518 2,108 0 pigs 632 246 0 885 102 372 amphibia 1,937 0 0 0 23 0 dogs 0 62 0 0 545 0 hamsters 349 0 0 0 147 0 old world monkeys 16 56 44 0 344 0 cattles 174 16 0 82 33 0 sheep 120 208 4 23 18 0 reptiles 309 0 0 0 0 0 other mammals 173 0 0 0 0 0 other rodents 102 0 0 0 0 0 new world monkeys 0 42 0 0 0 0 horses 0 0 0 0 0 0 quails 3 20 0 0 0 0 ferrets 20 0 0 0 0 0 goats 9 9 0 1 0 0 cats 0 0 0 0 0 0 total 429,329 172,878 107,427 26,631 57,573 926 br: basic research; rd: research and development of drugs and devices for human and veterinary medicine; mt: mandatory testing for the control of drugs for humans and animals; ts: toxicology and safety evaluation; re: research education. ethics for the living world 55 relations – 1.2 november 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 3. scientific reasons for am one of the fundamental points on which ae is based is the similarity between humans and animals, regarding the extrapolation as well as the possibility of transferring data from one species to another (van der worp et al. 2010, 514). however, medicine is not based on such generic terms: ‘similar’, in biology, is an overly vague term. the same is true even with regard to human beings: there are several undeniable factors which medicine must take into account when approaching every single case. indeed, the identity of gender, ethnic group, state of health, diet, age, life-styles, and many more aspects can strongly influence reactions to drugs in very significant ways (bernardesca and maibach 1988, 65; gear et al. 1996, 1184). moreover, the research that has been carried out on identical twins draws our attention to the possibility of different reactions to the same molecule or chemical substance and these differences increase with the physiological phenomenon of the process of ageing (fraga et al. 2005, 10604). the paper by perel and his colleagues (2007) has made an important methodological contribution to understanding why animal studies cannot predict human reactions. the authors conducted a series of systematic reviews of animal research relevant to studies in humans in six research areas: corticosteroids for head injury; antifibrinolytics to reduce bleeding; tissue plasminogen activator to reduce death and disability after a stroke; tirilazad for ischaemic stroke; antenatal corticosteroids to reduce lung morbidity and death in preterm newborns; and bisphosphonates to increase bone mineral density. in three of the above mentioned research areas the animal studies and human trials were substantially discordant; in three others the results were essentially similar. in all areas of research, however, major methodological limitations of the animal research and evidence of widespread publication bias were identified (perel et al. 2007, 197). from the analysis of 51 series of experiments on animals conducted by the university of würzburg, erlangen and regensberg in germany, it emerged that 99.7% of the results obtained from research on 5,000 animals could not be clinically applied whereas in the remaining 0.3% there was no application whatsoever. the authors concluded that the collective health benefits deriving from animal experimentation had been overestimated (lindl and voelkel 2011, 242). the renowned anti-flammatory drug, based on rofecoxib, both effective and well tolerated on animals, was consequently utilized by a large number of patients suffering from forms of arthritis. nevertheless, in 2004 it was removed from the market after having caused an estimated 320,000 susanna penco rosagemma ciliberti 56 relations – 1.2 november 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ cardio and cerebrovascular incidents worldwide and 140,000 deaths (topol 2004, 1707). similarly, cerivastatine (used to reduce cholesterol in the blood stream, causing heart attacks and strokes) was withdrawn from the market due to the highly adverse effects produced (staffa, chang, and green 2002, 539). also, hormone replacement therapy (hrt) prescribed to menopausal women has been proved to cause the risk of developing adverse effects, which can be very serious (cardiovascular disease, mammary carcinomes, thromboses, strokes, etc.). yet in the tests on rodents (mice, rabbits), pigs and even primates (monkeys) the demonstrated effects were quite the opposite, which led to these drugs being regularly prescribed by gynecologists, cardiologists and general practitioners (gps) (couzin 2003, 1136). recently the new molecule to combat multiple scleroses, fingolimod, showed a relevant cardiotoxicity, which had not emerged on animal testing. some of the patients who were prescribed this drug, in conjunction with other drugs to combat multiple sclerosis, died, hence only the lowest tested daily dose, 0.5 mg, was subjected to the approval of the fda. the fda authorized fingolimod as a front line drug, but they required 10 postmarketing research studies, during one of which a lower dose compared to the one that had been previously approved was to be administered. the european agency for drugs, ema (european medicine agency), furthermore limited the use of fingolimod, considering it a drug belonging to the second choice. the outcome was unambiguous: even though 97 clinically orientated publications containing citations of the above-mentioned publications were found (8% of all citations), only 4 publications evidenced a direct correlation between the results from animal experiments and observations in humans (0.3%). however, even in the 4 cases cited the hypotheses that had been verified successfully in the animal experiment subsequently failed in every respect (lindl, voelkel, and kolar 2005, 143). on the other hand, a considerable number of molecules which could be effective without causing damage or manifesting limited side effects on human beings are rejected as they are toxic, harmful mutagens/carcinogenic on animals (hartung 2009, 45). the animals most commonly used in laboratories are rodents (rats and mice) chosen for both the low costs and minimal upkeep incurred and also for the undeniable question of ethics. rodents are incapable of vomiting as they lack the primal defense mechanism against the ingestion of food substances and/or toxic molecules typical of human physiology. such evidence suggests that attempts to protect human health should be pursued through alternative hypotheses of study (abbott 2005, 144). ethics for the living world 57 relations – 1.2 november 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 4. what alternatives to animal experimentation exist? new prospects alternative methods which have totally replaced ae have been authorized in various establishments: e.g. pregnancy testing, mutagen testing, alternative technology for the production of monoclonal antibodies in mouse ascite through fibre bioreactors, etc. the modern techniques of imaging (e.g. computerized axial tomography and magnetic resonance) are used in the study of the human brain with minimal use of primates, in vitro culture of human cells and tissue are used in many fields of research such as cosmetology, toxicology, etc.; whereas other methods based directly on human beings (clinical research, epidemiology, statistics, etc.) have proved to be effective in the study of disease. furthermore, experiments using electronic simulation are, due to the mathematical models combined with special software, able to predict the biological effects of some chemical compositions. in the didactic field, video, computerized simulations, experiments on cellular culture and clinical practices constitute effective resources capable of significantly reducing the number of animals sacrificed. an increased interest towards such approaches, several of which have already been validated by the ecvam (european centre for the validation of alternative methods), has also prompted their application in highly innovative fields such as in surgery and microsurgery. both human and animal dummies are used and have attained such a satisfactory level that they almost perfectly simulate the various layers of the skin, including the subcutaneous layers, and internal organs with the possibility of performing operations using cleavage planes applicable to the living. these advancements, therefore, allow an evaluation of the adequacy and the effectiveness of surgical operations. other research fields deserve further development. for instance, research on spontaneous pathologies in animals would help in avoiding both any artificial reproduction of human diseases and all the implications connected to the lack of overlap of non-natural pathologies in the animals studied (hackam and redelmeier 2006, 1731; knight, bailey, and balcombe 2006, 139). clearly the time taken to develop these approaches, combined with their effectiveness, are directly proportional to the economic and human resources required to carry out innovative research capable of creating a breakthrough. as far as the alternative strategies of ae are concerned, the insufficient availability of human organs and tissues represents a crucial obstacle in developing the research. susanna penco rosagemma ciliberti 58 relations – 1.2 november 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ on the other hand, the importance of post mortem investigations has been proved by the highly relevant data obtained from the autopsies carried out on deceased bodies including those dating back to the distant past, as has emerged in legal cases or anthropological studies performed on mummies or archeological biological evidence. indeed, medical science not only sets out to find a cure, but also, and above all, to heal and consequently should make investigations first and foremost into the cause of the pathologies that afflict humanity at large. despite the fact that the system of organ donation is well organized in most european countries, there are no guidelines set out regarding the distribution of non-transplantable material for research purposes. in practice, the distribution of organs and tissue for research purposes is only obtained from inside the hospitals or directly through individual researchers and doctors via personal contacts. it is also important to add that many organs and tissues not suitable for transplants can be very useful for the purposes of research. for example, in heart transplant operations the organ is removed while still beating as death in these cases is only cerebral. the organ taken from an already dead patient cannot be utilized for transplantation but could still be used for research purposes. similar considerations can also be applied as far as the material discarded from surgical operations is concerned (e.g. staminal cells derived from adipose tissue) where the implementation could permit a greater availability of human tissue and/or organs. in the strategic research aimed at safeguarding the health of humans, post mortem investigation can assume a significant role in a large number of circumstances. it is a frequent occurrence for patients to die of metastasis before it is possible to ascertain the site of the original tumor. being aware of the cause of death of one’s own parents and/or of grandparents is important for the offspring, and for the relatives in general, as the origin of diseases, beyond the undeniable effect of the environment, is also influenced by general predisposition and family history. patients who have undergone bone marrow transplants from healthy donors, from time to time unfortunately die as the result of devastating inflammatory phenomena which cannot be controlled. the cause might be an infection (for example as a consequence of aspergillus, a fungus or a type of ascomycetes), or in other cases death might be a result of graftversus-host-disease (gvhd: when the transplanted organ ‘rejects’ the body in which it was implanted). while patients are buried or cremated without the cause of death ever having been discovered it would be sufficient to carry out an autopsy. from studies carried out on the brain of patients who died and had been suffering from multiple sclerosis (ms), ethics for the living world 59 relations – 1.2 november 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ it emerged, for example, that there were traces of a specific virus (the most important seems to be the epstein-barr virus, ebv) found in their central nervous systems. the consequent activation of specific immune cells could have resolved the problem from the main site of the disease to enable discovery of the cause, or at least the factors which were responsible for triggering it, which continue to remain unknown. furthermore, multiple sclerosis is an exclusively human disease as animals are never taken ill spontaneously, but rather it occurs as a result of a series of complex artificial maneuvers. in the study of animal models, experimental allergic encephalitis (eae) therefore results, the researchers themselves have observed, in producing disappointing and even misleading results (sriram and steiner 2005, 939). in fact, many potentially therapeutic molecules in animals function, while allowing the animal used for experimentation to regain lost mobility, prove either to be free from side effects or to provoke acceptable undesirable results. nevertheless, very few of the drugs tested in vivo are effective in human beings. the consequences of the side effects continue to gravely manifest to the extent of provoking death in patients (such as in the cases of fingolimod, or natalizumab). the relevance of testing on human organs and tissues post mortem has been verified by studies conducted at the imperial college of london, where a bank of human organs and tissues was used by a group of researchers from the institute of superior health, in 2007. they analyzed 22 conserved samples of cerebral material and the results proved the existence of a relationship between the presence of ebv and the typical inflammatory reaction of the cerebral lesions present in multiple sclerosis (magliozzi et al. 2007, 1089; serafini et al. 2007, 2899). further studies more recently coordinated by researchers at the queen mary university of london confirmed a connection between ebv and ms. according to this research, the ebv virus is involved in the triggering of the neurological disease by means of mechanisms which had not hitherto been demonstrated but only hypothesized. the post mortem brains of patients suffering from muscular sclerosis was studied, concentrating on the areas of the brain which had been the most recent to be subjected to damage. it was discovered that the ebv seemed to have infected the immune cells, prompting an inflammatory process which provoked typical neurological damage. a technique that reveals the presence of brain virus in some people suffering from ms, even when the virus is found inside the cells, was utilized for this study. although ebv is not active, chemical signals are sent through ribonucleic acid (rna) molecules which activate the immune system causing inflammation and damage to the nervous system and the susanna penco rosagemma ciliberti 60 relations – 1.2 november 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ onset of typical symptoms of ms. the results of this study are potentially very interesting. the way in which ebv is transported to the brain from the immune system has been clarified and also the location of the virus at the onset of damage to the nervous system has been demonstrated. for this research, which also aims to identify the cause, brain tissue was obtained from the thomas willis oxford brain collection in oxford (england), with the informed consent and support of the ethics committee (tzartos et al. 2012, 15). such evidence emphasizes and provides proof, as highlighted by many researchers and bioethicists, of the opportunity to promote the post mortem donation of human bodies in a similar way to organ donation. in fact, if the explanted organs can contribute to saving or immediately rendering a life more bearable, the donation of corpses and organs for the purposes of research could make a useful contribution towards expanding the vision of scientific notions, with relative benefits in all fields. on the other hand, ever since organ donation and the cremation of bodies have become morally acceptable, the procedure of being ‘buried whole’ has progressively and notably reduced. indeed, currently people are more open to the idea of being ‘useful to someone’ after death. these developments therefore make it necessary to promote a new awareness towards the importance of the donation of one’s own body as an expression of human solidarity with regard both to mankind but moreover towards all living beings. donating one’s body to research can contribute to the acquisition of valuable information with regard to human health, but would also significantly reduce the sacrifice of other living beings. the attached document 1 (see fig. 1) is intended as a guide in order to offer further information regarding this initiative, in such a way that, while still alive, potential candidates are in a position to choose the most appropriate way of body donation, in accordance with their personal wishes. we strive to make as many people as possible aware of this proposal and naturally institutions, authorities, hospitals and universities can help spread the information regarding this opportunity. 1 the document was originally written by susanna penco and massimo terrile, in charge of the movimento antispecista. protocol for body donation i the undersigned name and surname: place of birth: date of birth: residence: identity document (type: e.g. identity card): identity document number: place and date of issue: in the capacity of donor, i hereby declare the following: after ascertaining the subject as dead by carrying out an ecg and having taken samples of the organs to be transplanted, i leave my body to (specify the name of the institution to which the body is being donated supplying the relative address) so that it may be useful to science for whatever clinical and/or scientific experimental activity which from now on will be defined as ‘research’. the donation of the body post mortem is exclusively motivated by ethical principles of human solidarity towards both humans and nonhuman animals and is therefore entirely free of charge. the research will be carried out in such a way as to assure the utmost respect for the body. the results of the ‘research’ attained will be inserted into a public epidemiological research data bank. a certification concerning that my body has been used for the aforementioned purposes and a synthesis of the results obtained from the research will be handed in to the trustee representative indicated at the bottom of this document. once the procedure is completed in compliance with the terms stated below my body will be returned to the trustee (or family members) indicated by the undersigned. such disposition must not, however, prevent the funeral rights in the form which i have selected. the ‘research’ i agree  i do not agree  to visibly disfigure my body (mark selected option with an x): my body will be  returned to my family in a dignified condition at the end of the ‘research’, within a maximum period of months for the funeral rights; my body will not be returned  and must be (indicate another option) for the implementation of the above the recipient hereby accepts the responsibility of all relative expenses including the transport and the burial of the remains/corpse and/or to require the possible intervention by mortuary officials where such expenses or a part thereof will assume responsibility if covered by local regulations. it will be left to the discretion of the heirs to take responsibility for such expenses or possible additional obligations, subject to notification of the same of the amount foreseen on behalf of the recipient. in the case of the above-mentioned recipient neither having the faculties nor the possibility of carrying out the arrangements the trustee will have the full responsibility to elect another recipient (on the condition that the organization is as similar as possible to those previously established). in the case of difficulty, i authorize the same trustee to annul the hereby document. in the case of inability on behalf of the trustee to act as trustee, i request that such responsibility is assumed by one of my closest relatives, and if this is not possible or is rejected, i request the annulment of this document. the hereby document does not in any way modify the biological testament drawn up by the undersigned. the above mentioned regulations can be revoked or modified by the undersigned at any moment with a written declaration to this effect, or verbally in the presence of a witness. i nominate the trustee who must ensure the correct execution of the arrangements mr./ mrs./miss: born in on resident in: address: telephone: identity document type (e.g. identity card): identity document number: acceptance of the trustee signature: acceptance of the legal representative from the recipient institute or other structure name of the structure/institution: date: name and surname of the legal representative: signature: the donor place: date: signature: note (optional) the hereby document was registered at: (indicate the details and telephone numbers of others, not the trustee, or professionals such as a solicitor, lawyer, institution or association, etc., where a copy of the hereby document was registered). figure 1. – proposal of a procedure for body donation. susanna penco rosagemma ciliberti 62 relations – 1.2 november 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 5. conclusion in revealing the necessity to promote am, also through the donation of one’s own body post mortem, it is clearly evident that a culture strongly attached to the centrality of the ego, together with the lack of information/ education about these issues, represents a considerable obstacle in accepting that one’s own body could become a valuable biomaterial to be ‘used’ by medical science. the possibility of promoting this important gesture of human solidarity is directed toward both humans and nonhuman animals and therefore cannot overlook the accepted preconceptions of our mortality which allow us to face the moment of death peacefully. it is therefore important to comprehend that our intrinsic self-respect and the respect for our nearest and dearest is not offended by any of the contents, which on the contrary seek to express love and solidarity towards the living. in the investigation of new ways to implement am we cannot exclude the fact that the level of awareness in the constructed cultural, social and economic values are based on the idea of an apodictic legitimacy/inevitability of the exploitation of nonhumans. the conscience of an appropriate morality and legal stance towards nonhuman animals is consequently a long, arduous, and inevitably gradual journey. in recognizing the difficulties, particularly those of a cultural nature, of applying reasons of justice based on inter-specific equality, we nevertheless remain convinced that in order to make effective headway as far as animal protection is concerned, various differentiated measures are necessary in order to ensure a realistic grasp of the areas of conflict involved (ae) and a careful consideration of all the values at stake. another potentially fruitful initiative would be to offer the opportunity to a group of representatives with various outlooks from society at large to enter structures where decisions are made. in other words by seriously taking into consideration the positions regarding the prevailing interests and moral motivations it would be possible, in our view, to guarantee an evaluation of the interests in question. from this perspective we consider that an effective contribution could be represented by the work of the ethics committees. these institutions which are obligatory in italy deal solely with experimentation involving human beings, but could effectively enrich any reflections on the ethics of human responsibility towards animals used for research purposes. the workability of setting up a public place in which discussion concerning problems of ethics associated with animal experimentation can be confronted from a pluralistic and interdisciplinary perspective would, in ethics for the living world 63 relations – 1.2 november 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ fact, represent, a tangible/concrete sign of a democratic society capable of operating beyond the mere polarization of interests. in order to meet the expectations of public opinion, the european commission has advanced the proposal to set up a permanent independent authority of ethical evaluation in all structures used both for animal breeding and for hosting animals used for experiments. this authority would be in charge of promoting in-house debates on ethics, and stimulating a favorable climate for care in order 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jrsm.2007.070164. perel, pablo, ian roberts, emily sena, philipa wheble, catherine briscoe, peter sandercock, malcolm macleod, luciano e. mignini, pradeep jayaram, and khalid s. khan. 2007. “comparison of treatment effects between animal experiments and clinical trials: systematic review”. british medical journal 334 (7586): 197-200. doi: 10.1136/bmj.39048.407928.be. serafini, barbara, barbara rosicarelli, diego franciotta, roberta magliozzi, richard reynolds, paola cinque, laura andreoni, pankaj trivedi, marco salvetti, alberto faggioni, and francesca aloisi. 2007. “dysregulated epstein-barr virus infection in the multiple sclerosis brain”. the journal of experimental medicine 204 (12): 2899-912. doi: 10.1084/jem.20071030. shanks, niall, ray greek, and jean greek. 2009. “are animal models predictive for humans?”. philosophy, ethics, and humanities in medicine 4 (2). doi: 10.1186/1747-5341-4-2. sriram, subramanian, and israel steiner. 2005. “experimental allergic encephalomyelitis: a misleading model of multiple sclerosis”. annals of neurology 58 (6): 939-45. doi: 10.1002/ana.20743. ethics for the living world 65 relations – 1.2 november 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ staffa, judy a., jung chang, and lawrence green. 2002. “cerivastatin and reports of fatal rhabdomyolysis”. the new england journal of medicine 346 (7): 539-40. doi: 10.1056/nejm200202143460721. topol, eric j. 2004. “failing the public health – rofecoxib, merck, and the fda”. new england journal of medicine 351: 1707-9. doi: 10.1056/nejmp048286. tzartos, john s., gulfaraz khan, anna vossenkamper, mari cruz-sabada, silvia lo nardi, eseberuo sefia, anthony meager, androulla elia, jaap m. middeldorp, mike clemens, paul j. farrell, gavin giovannoni, and ute-christiane meier. 2012. “association of innate immune activation with latent epsteinbarr virus in active ms lesions”. neurology 78 (1): 15-23. doi: 10.1212/ wnl.0b013e31823ed057. van der worp, bart h., david w. howells, emily s. sena, michelle j. porritt, sarah rewell, victoria o’collins, and malcolm r. macleod. 2010. “can animal models of disease reliably inform human studies?”. plos medicine 7 (3). doi: 10.1371/journal.pmed.1000245. veganism: lifestyle or political movement? looking for relations beyond antispeciesism 125 relations – 5.2 november 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ veganism: lifestyle or political movement? looking for relations beyond antispeciesism niccolò bertuzzi phd, university of milano-bicocca doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2017-002-ber1 n.bertuzzi1@campus.unimib.it abstract in recent years, various issues related to non-human animals emerged as elements of interest among public opinion, also involving debates in various academic fields. if philosophy, law, economics and cultural studies can already boast relevant works also at an italian level, it is not the same for political sociology and social movement studies. in order to analyse the variegated archipelago of national animal advocacy, we stratified the phenomenon into three movement areas (animal care, protectionism, antispeciesism) with the goal to test some hypothetical differences and verify eventual convergences. our data come from two main sources: an online survey and 20 semi-structured interviews conducted with leaders and/or “relevant” activists of groups and associations. in this article we specifically focus on those questions related to dietary consumption, veganism as a philosophy/lifestyle and the use of non-human animals for human interest. an increasing number of perspectives are focusing more and more on individual lifestyles and members’/activists’ modes of consumption, shifting the action from the streets to the shops. this change of paradigm often blurs more radical and political approaches characterized by structural anti-capitalist frames and actions and that involve(d) forms of popular collective protests aimed at proposing alternatives ideas of future and societies. keywords: veganism, social movements, political sociology, antispeciesism, animal rights, animal welfare, animal advocacy, lifestyle, non-human animals, mixed methods. 1. introducion in recent years various issues related to non-human animals have become elements of interest among public opinion. debates have sprung in various academic fields, from social sciences (latimer and miele 2013) and geography (buller 2014) to political sociology (kymlicka and donaldson 2014) and economic theory (harvey and hubbard 2013). http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ http://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2017-002-ber1 mailto:n.bertuzzi1@campus.unimib.it niccolò bertuzzi 126 relations – 5.2 november 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ this changing situation must be analysed considering both the imposition of post-materialist values (inglehart 1977) and the different forms of animal advocacy conducted by numerous individuals and groups around the world. in such variety, it is primarily the issue of veganism to be interested by these dynamics. before taking into account the different perspectives of the italian animal advocates regarding veganism and other forms of advocacy (the very topic of the present article), we want to introduce our arguments focusing on more general social and sociological reflections. a vegan diet regime is growingly widespread among the general population: this is true for the majority of western countries as well as for italy. the 2016 eurispes data attest that the number of italian vegans amounted to 600.000, demonstrating a significant diffusion of the phenomenon. vegans live mainly in the north-west (2.1%) and in the north-east (1.9%) of italy, fewer are concentrated in the centre (0.5%) whilst they are practically absent from the south. the gender gap remains high (0.7% among men, 1.3% among women); looking at vegan households, couples with children (1.3%) are the most numerous, followed by single-parent families (1.1%), households without children (1%) and single people (0.4%). it should also be noted that only 30% of those who claim to follow a vegetarian or vegan diet justify it with ethical reasons, 46.7% report reasons related to their physical well-being and health, whilst 12% favour the respect and protection of the environment. this generalized interest in cruelty-free products has led to the emergence of a real new market (evans and miele 2012; miele and lever 2013). even if contrasted by a part of the animal advocates because they are presumed to transform a “disruptive” ethical instance into a new form of consumption, these phenomena are indicative of social change and attention towards non-human animals, leading some authors to speak about real “animal publics” (blue and rock 2014). it is also evident that the growing attention for non-human animals is not exclusively related to a vegan diet but also to other collective issues and more individual aspects. for example, and still referring to italy, recent data (2015) provided by assalco 1 showed a steady increase in pet ownership, a number that now approximates that of italian citizens. this survey, however, reflects the persistence of a certain anthropocentrism in the relationship with non-human animals: 74% of pet owners mainly emphasize the personal benefits experienced through their relationship with pets. in particular, their “utility” is underlined with regard to the 1 associazione nazionale imprese per l’alimentazione e la cura degli animali da com pagnia. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ veganism: lifestyle or political movement? 127 relations – 5.2 november 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ physical well-being (more than 90% of the respondents consider them as a good company for jogging and walking outdoors) and psychological well-being (43% highlights how they are able to infuse serenity and joy). finally, the same survey provides significant economic data on the food expenses sustained by italian citizens for their pets, reflecting the considerable market that this relationship creates: 544.000 tons of food each year for a value of about 1.8 billion euros, of which 992 million for cats, 838 million for dogs and “only” 18 million for the remaining species. notwithstanding this data, the extremely ambiguous nature of the relationship between modernity and animal issues should be highlighted (francione 2000; nibert 2002; hobson-west 2007). as previously mentioned, a remarkable interest in the life and welfare of non-human animals would seem to emerge among italian public opinion, an interest that should be read in the light of the process of modernization. such a process is effectively summed up by peter singer (1981) with the well-known concept of the “expanding circle”: in this sense, modernization would be characterized by an increasing number of individuals acquiring rights on a path that would bring different subjects (from women to children, from people with disabilities to the former “settlers”) to obtain identity and legal recognition. at the same time, modernity understood primarily as an expression of economic capitalism (featherstone 1990) exponentially increased the number of animals killed for food, cosmetics, science and tailoring. the meat atlas data promulgated by friends of the earth (2014) is explanatory: 58 billion chickens, 2.8 billion ducks, nearly 1.4 billion pigs, 654 million turkeys, 517 million sheep, 430 million goats, and 296 million cattle are slaughtered every year around the world. this data is characterized by a constant rise: in 2007 the fao spoke of 56 billion animals killed in that year alone. according to istat (2017), the number of animals slaughtered every year in italy is around half a billion. moreover, it must be specified that this data relates only to food consumption (and thus it does not include other types of market) and excludes fish and other marine animals: adding these categories to the count, the data would assume larger proportions and would be difficult to compute. it is exactly on behalf of the welfare, rights and liberation of nonhuman animals that the actions of animal advocates are directed. we will refer here to a broader piece of research about italian animal advocacy that explored, by means of a quali-quantitative approach (klandermans and staggenborg 2002; ayoub, wallace, and zepeda-millán 2014), various individual and collective characteristics of the subjects of our study. in the next section we will review some of the literature about animal advocacy and veganism; then we will describe the general research design http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ niccolò bertuzzi 128 relations – 5.2 november 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ and the specific aspects treated in this article. in the final section we will present data from our fieldwork in order to describe the current situation and answer the following questions: is veganism a central issue in the italian animal advocacy? are there important differences among the same population of animal advocates in conducting or not a vegan lifestyle, or eventually in the way of conducting it? is veganism a political instance or an individual choice? 2. animal advocates and vegan diet as animal advocacy (and veganism) grows, the related academic literature does too. contributions come from a variety of fields: from psychology (joy 2010) to philosophy (singer 1975; regan 2004; derrida 2006), from law (regan 1983; rowlands 2002) to sociology (cherry 2006; munro 2012). we only remind here some references from the sociological literature, useful to our empirical analysis. starting with general animal advocacy, in italy there is a lack of empirical research about the phenomenon in its complexity and internal variety. only one relevant work goes in this direction (tonutti 2007) and represents more a historical/archival research than a socio-anthropological one. other contributions are about single groups (turina 2010) or specific aspects of animal advocacy (romeo and citarella 2014; sonzogni 2015; turina forthcoming). it should be specified that we are referring to “detached”, or at least descriptive, contributions. there is also a number of more “partisan” books and papers, particularly with a philosophical (battaglia 1997; rivera 2010; caffo 2011, 2013; maurizi 2011) or juridical approach (mannucci and tallacchini 2001; pocar 2005). broadening the perspective to social movement literature, the lack of interest in animal advocacy is reprehensible, particularly in italy, a country traditionally at the vanguard in this field (della porta and diani 1997): animal advocacy has for a long time been forgotten or at least relegated as a branch of environmentalism (diani 1988; mela, belloni, and davico 2000; della porta and diani 2004). in other national contexts the situation is surely different and there is a discrete number of researches that focus on animal advocates and animal advocacy as a collective actor (see, for example: einwohner 2002a, 2002b; maurer 2002; munro 2005; cherry 2006, 2010; traïni 2011; dubreuil 2013). however, at the international level too, the issue is still at an emerging stage: the “complaint” of shapiro (1993) on the first issue of society http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ veganism: lifestyle or political movement? 129 relations – 5.2 november 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ & animals, according to whom the study of socio-political movements appeared underrepresented in human-animal studies (has), has been reaffirmed by other contributions (garner 1995) and appears to partly maintain its validity. munro (2012), drawing a review on the subject, shows that this is one of the less addressed themes in has and that a larger focus would be useful for social movements literature also contributing to new – more general – theoretical developments. focusing more specifically on the vegan diet of animal advocates, this is a quite relevant issue among scholars (beardsworth 2004; beardsworth and bryman 2004; turina forthcoming): it has sometimes been read as a precise strategy to promote non-human animals rights (beardsworth and keil 1997; ouédraogo 2000; cherry 2006; lee wrenn 2011), and other times in a perspective more linked to the ethical choices and the individual lifestyles of single activists (crnic 2013). the latter theme, namely the so-called “do it yourself” activism, is discussed by munro (2005) who compares the different advocates’ strategies: on the one hand those who adopt face-to-face convincing strategies, on the other those who consider a structural perspective more useful embracing veganism but not focusing exclusively on it. veganism is an issue at the centre of attention among animal advocates because of the growing quest for consistency (mcdonald 2000; dubreuil 2013; stallwood 2014; cherry 2015; turina forthcoming) that is also producing diffidence towards less “radical” dietary regimes, such as vegetarianism (leneman 1999; zamir 2004; dubreuil 2013; turina forthcoming). according to some authors, as well as to individuals interviewed in our research, such quest for consistency often tends to turn into an identitarian perspective that can make forget the real common “enemy”, namely the anthropocentric structure and ideology of contemporary societies (mcdonald 2000; nibert 2002; gaarder 2008; greenebaum 2012a, 2012b). in the end, a vegan (both individual and structural) perspective is often perceived as in opposition to a welfarist politics of small-wins (weick 1984). this last dichotomy, however, tends to be less strict than some years ago, partly due to the “radicalization” of certain sector of protectionism and their endorsement of a vegan diet, even if always accompanied by legal and institutional lobby activities. on the contrary, those who prefer an individual approach and face-to-face strategies typically consider that the only way to achieve effective results is the total abolition of exploitation: in their opinion this can be achieved through the development of a vegan consciousness and legislative action will have a practical and effective way only after the formation of a critical mass (francione 1996). http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ niccolò bertuzzi 130 relations – 5.2 november 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 3. data and methods as previously anticipated, the only relevant work in italian academic literature is the book i diritti animali, by sabrina tonutti (2007). starting from it, we propose to call “animal advocacy” the variegated archipelago (diani 1998) composing our population of interest. to stratify it, we identified three specific areas: animal care, protectionism, antispeciesism. animal care associations are the ones dealing with the assistance of single animals, especially pets (and, even more especially, dogs and cats); protectionism corresponds to the big national ngos that, in addition to a work of assistance, promote institutional campaigns, law proposals and lobby activity; antispeciesism is represented by grass-rooted groups (mainly with a local dimension), single-issue campaigns and more “radical” forms of activism. our data comes from two main sources. the first source is an online survey conducted in the first months of 2015 and answered by 704 animal advocates on a national scale. the second source is 20 semi-structured interviews (della porta 2010) conducted at the end of 2015 with “relevant” activists divided by the identified movement areas. we also conducted other types of analysis to better contextualize our work (a social network analysis regarding the online activities of groups, a protest event analysis regarding different form of actions, the participation in demonstrations and debates), but in the analysis that follows we focus on the online survey and the semi-structured interviews with few sporadic mentions of other sources. even more specifically we will refer to those questions regarding dietary consumption of animal advocates and themes related to veganism as a philosophy/lifestyle and to the use of non-human animals for human interest. before proposing our findings, it is correct to specify that our analysis does not have presumptions of being representative of the entire population of italian animal advocates. this is due to the specific nature of the population of interest, which is composed of a very variegated spectrum of individuals: some of them are members of one single group or association, others conduct their activity either as single activists or belong to different groups or associations. moreover, some collective actors are not officially registered because of their grass-roots approach and activities. this situation entails the absence of a complete list of both groups/associations and single activists, and the consequent impossibility to produce a representative sample, as in the case of the majority of contemporary social movements (klandermans and staggenborg 2002; ayoub, wallace, and zepeda-millán 2014) and more generally hard-to-reach or hard-to-sample populations (marpsat and razafindratsima 2010). http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ veganism: lifestyle or political movement? 131 relations – 5.2 november 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 4. analysis 4.1. dietary regimes and their different meanings as already discussed, in our study we decided to consider different types of activists (or, at least, members of associations) with different ethical orientation. this translated in the inclusion in our set of respondents of those individuals that, for example, present themselves as animal advocates but keep on eating (or generally consuming) animal products. some (vegan) respondents criticized this decision, considering incorrect to include this typology of activists in our sample. however, while accepting this and similar observations and being aware of the apparent logical-theoretical as well as personal contradictions, what we propose is a descriptive analysis rather than a prescriptive work aiming to indicate to the movement the best way to follow. the first question we consider is the one regarding the dietary regime of our respondents. our data shows a vast majority of vegans (53.1%), with lower presence of vegetarians (31.1%) and omnivorous (14.8%) activists; residual are those respondents that declare to be fruitarians and raw vegans 2 (0.6%) and those that indicated the answer “other” (0.4%), substantially coinciding with an ethical vegan perspective and diet (see fig. 1). we also considered it appropriate to focus on the association between the self-collocation on the political spectrum 3 and the dietary regime followed by italian animal advocates. specifically we wanted to test a greater politicization of those more involved in the animal advocacy, also through an adoption of different lifestyles and behaviours in individual biographies. despite the absence of specific hypotheses in the literature, we considered plausible a convergence between the following pairs of combinations: veganism/left, vegetarianism/center, omnivourism/right. before analysing these relations, we briefly introduce the general division of our respondents on the political spectrum: very generally speaking, a difference between the three identified areas emerged, especially between antispeciesism and the other two areas. the curves of animal care and protectionism take on a fairly similar pattern, with a low percentage of individuals who are at the two extremes of the political spectrum, and posi 2 the raw vegans consume only vegetables and fruits (but also other foods, such as seeds, nuts, sprouts) either raw or possibly blend. the fruitarians are those who consume only what fell from the trees, and thus mainly fresh fruit and vegetables, while excluding other foods, especially the seeds, and what might damage the course of life of the plant itself. 3 we used a scale from 1 (corresponding to “extreme left”) and 10 (corresponding to “extreme right”). http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ niccolò bertuzzi 132 relations – 5.2 november 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ tions focused particularly on the center and center-left. the antispeciesists are much more moved to the far left, or to “central” positions, which can probably be interpreted as an anti-political declaration of distance from the classic dynamic right-left; moreover, we detected a collapse of both centerleft and extreme right respondents. figure 1. – diet regime of italian animal advocates according to movement areas (source: our research on italian animal advocates). going back to the relation between political positions and dietary regime, we can say that the hypothesized combinations found substantial confirmation in our respondents, even if with some important caveats. those who are self-collocated on the left tend to adopt a vegan diet; 25% of those on the right are omnivores, but even more remarkable is their percentage among vegetarians, where they arrive to 43%. finally, about half of the “centrists’, among which are presumably placed many anti-political respondents, result as vegan (see fig. 2). http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ veganism: lifestyle or political movement? 133 relations – 5.2 november 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ figure 2. – dietary regime of italian animal advocates according to political self-positioning (source: our research on italian animal advocates). as previously stated, there are important discrepancies between the three different areas of animal advocacy in reference to the use of non-human animals for dietary human interests. in this sense, we asked our respondents to identify the priorities in the animal advocacy field, proposing them a list of typical issues involving non-human animals’ exploitation 4. in confirmation of the results referred to the dietary regime of the respondents that we have previously exposed, we highlight that especially the antispe 4 it is important to specify that the respondents could indicate two of the answers proposed (reason why the total is not 100%) and that the general results highlighted a generalized interest in the issue related to the consumption of animal products, considered as one of the two most relevant by the 52.6% of the respondents. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ niccolò bertuzzi 134 relations – 5.2 november 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ciesists consider important the issue related to the consumption of animal products and the animal usage in the dietary industry (see fig. 3), while the other two areas (animal care and protectionism) seem more interested in other kinds of issues, such as that of stray animals and fur industry (for the animal care area) and that of protected species (for the protectionist area). figure 3. – priorities in animal advocacy’s activities: percentage of affirmative answers on single items (source: our research on italian animal advocates). http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ veganism: lifestyle or political movement? 135 relations – 5.2 november 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ shifting our attention to the intense debate matured in animalist and antispeciesist arenas around veganism, we also consider the semi-structured interviews conducted among key-activists. referring to animal advocacy in a broad sense, as we have already anticipated, there is not yet unanimity on the need to adopt lifestyle and behaviours (at the table, but not only) that totally exclude animal exploitation. we reaffirm that it is not our objective to propose a criticism, but merely to highlight that there are supporters of an approach to the protection of non-human animals who do not exclude the possibility of eating them in the light of a consideration of centrality and primacy given to our species. however, even among those who have abolished from their diet the consumption of animals or animal-derived food, rather discordant positions emerge. for example, some consider as absolutely central, when conducting actions and struggles alongside other collective actors and social movements, the fact that they embrace veganism. others, on the contrary, are more tolerant, in the light of discourses related to a change in society at large and based on the need of intersections with subjects who, while continuing to pursue “carnist’ diet” (joy 2010), are in other respects extremely adverse to neo-liberal modernity. these different positions were underlined by respondents with reference to specific episodes that have seen them involved. at the animal liberation encounter held in val di susa there was an attempt to contaminate the struggles, but some things are a bit complicated […] there are principles that one can not betray, then there are surely strategies that drive you to do things that seem to betray them […] some things however are unavoidable […] now i’ll trivially give you an example: in that episode in val di susa we found that, behind the kitchen, where there was an antispeciesist talk, there were some rabbits in an enclosure. if there is no respect for this essential point, it makes no sense to go ahead: probably the time is not yet ripe for such contamination. (bertuzzi 2017) we always considered this problem from the beginning […] in our idea was: if they ask us to cook for an initiative before we make a political assembly in that space, then after the political assembly we talk about how to build together the initiative […] we have always proposed, but with one excuse or the other the political assembly is always postponed, so then depending on how it was important to be there we decided whether to make or not the initiative, so if to cook or not […] i think that it is well known that we are a political, antispeciesist, vegan collective, and not only those who cook, because we put it clear from the beginning. (bertuzzi 2017) the centrality of the vegan diet and its relationship with more general social structures and other issues of interest for a certain area of antispeciesism, are often related to the battleground of the supermarket. while some http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ niccolò bertuzzi 136 relations – 5.2 november 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ animal advocates believe that the increasingly massive supply of vegetable alternatives present on the shelves of supermarkets should be greeted with enthusiasm and as a first strong sign of change, others consider this achievement as a “pyrrhic victory”. they perceive the greater availability of vegetable alternatives as totally anthropocentric and only characterized by a consumerist approach, stressing that even a vegan approach intended in this sense would help multinational corporations, that can take advantage of a new market niche. two years ago persons would sell their mother to get vegan burgers, the same persons who prefer to eat (and these are the so-called antispeciesists) in a family-business kebab because they do not exploit the employees than at universo vegano because it could become a chain: for me it is absurd, it is disgusting […] that go into the caves and eat the berries […]. granarolo as i tell you it sucks, but it is a victory that has made vegan milk because it means that they realized that part of society is becoming vegan. (bertuzzi 2017) 4.2. events promoting veganism veganism is not the only practice of advocacy in favour of non-human animals. in our research we investigated other forms of action and protest conducted by italian animal advocates. we therefore asked respondents to indicate the most used practices of the last two years (given the administration of the questionnaire, we refer to the period 2013-2015). in this period, the main practices were the signing of petitions and the conduction of internet campaigns, generally used in abundant form among the entire spectrum of respondents (see tab. 1). table 1. – practices adopted by italian animal advocates in the period 2013-2015. type of practice never 1-2 times more than 2 times total promoting campaigns and initiatives using internet 10.6% (n = 67) 14.6% (n = 90) 74.8% (n = 478) 100% (n = 635) promoting petitions 15.6% (n = 100) 16.8% (n = 105) 67.6% (n = 436) 100% (n = 641) organizing initiatives for the promotion of a vegan lifestyle 29.7% (n = 175) 20.7% (n = 124) 49.6% (n = 294) 100% (n = 593) collecting signatures for referendum 39.5% (n = 238) 24.0% (n = 142) 36.5% (n = 219) 100% (n = 599) http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ veganism: lifestyle or political movement? 137 relations – 5.2 november 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ contacting/cooperating with single public official 53.4% (n = 295) 21.5% (n = 121) 25.1% (n = 142) 100% (n = 558) contacting/cooperating with single politicians 58.8% (n = 327) 19.4% (n = 108) 21.8% (n = 122) 100% (n = 557) presenting petition to magistrature 77.8% (n = 418) 12.8% (n = 69) 9.4% (n = 51) 100% (n = 538) source: our research on italian animal advocates. on the contrary, the organization of events promoting a vegan lifestyle is the form of advocacy that sees the sample more differentiated: it occurs mainly among antispeciesists, whilst it is less present among the other two areas, especially in that of animal care. however, confirming an evolution of the animal advocacy towards greater awareness as well as greater consistency and radicalization, 49.6% of respondents said that they participated to the organization of events of this kind more than twice in the period 2013-2015 (see tab. 2). table 2. – organization of initiative promoting a vegan lifestyle in the period 2013-2015. never 1-2 times more than 2 times total antispeciesism 17.5% (n = 28) 18.8% (n = 30) 63.7% (n = 102) 100% (n = 160) animal care 47.4% (n = 83) 21.7% (n = 38) 30.9% (n = 54) 100% (n = 175) protectionism 24.8% (n = 64) 21.7% (n = 56) 53.5% (n = 138) 100% (n = 258) total 29.5% (n = 175) 20.9% (n = 124) 49.6% (n = 294) 100% (n = 593) source: our research on italian animal advocates. to confirm these results, we also asked the respondents to express themselves in reference to practices perceived as the most effective (and therefore not necessarily to those carried out). the effectiveness of veganism seems, once again, to meet equal favour among antispeciesists and protectionists, demonstrating the encompassing approach to this issue. the promotion of veganism, despite being historically a typical characteristic of antispeciesism, is also spreading among some subjects of other areas. although the ethical/political considerations, we simply point out http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ niccolò bertuzzi 138 relations – 5.2 november 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the growing importance assumed by this type of events, even in relation to those linked to other animal welfare/rights issues. however, it is evident that this change, even if extremely relevant and important, is still far from being a generalized phenomenon. 5. conclusion in this article we have highlighted that the promotion of a vegan lifestyle is occupying an increasingly important role among the italian animal advocacy (both at an individual and in a collective level), after a period characterized by structural anti-capitalist frames and actions (tonutti 2007; maurizi 2011). this change of paradigm often tends to transform the radical demand for social change in forms of alternative consumption and to blur more radical and political approaches, that involve(d) forms of popular collective actions aimed at proposing alternative ideas of the future and societies. the insistence on individual choices, or at least on critical consumption activity, is nowadays often considered the best tactic for advocacy, thus shifting the action “from the streets to the shops” (forno and ceccarini 2006). in the light of our fieldwork, we try to propose some reflections in reference to the importance assumed by veganism in the literature of social movements, and more generally in sociological theory. starting from this last point, the centrality assumed by a specific diet/lifestyle can be read at different levels. the phenomenon shows a typical dynamic of modernity, namely the increasing interest in lifestyles and individual ethical choices, something that not only challenges the boundary between public and private sphere, but that often becomes an instrument of power and control on the biographies of contemporary subjects (foucault 1976). on the other hand, the flip side of this same coin is represented by the “reduction” of radically critical instances like the antispeciesist ones to the conduction of a lifestyle: this is the classic operation of neutralization of the most radical instances typical of the new spirit of capitalism (chiapello and boltanski 1999), through partial concessions that do not affect the social order. in this sense, classic examples are the operations of pinkwashing or greenwashing adopted toward feminist/lgbti and environmentalist issues, but we can see the same dynamics also in operations of veganwashing. moving on to the literature of social movements, the theme of veganism (especially when connected with a vision of speciesism in terms of prejudice, as in the so-called first antispeciesism) seems to be read, in part, as a http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ veganism: lifestyle or political movement? 139 relations – 5.2 november 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ classic form of collective individualized action (micheletti 2003; micheletti and mcfarland 2010). not all the animal advocates, instead, pursue (at least consciously) forms of political consumerism (tosi 2006; rucht 2007; pleyers 2011) by conducting their diet and lifestyle. in the same antispeciesist area, the one with a higher percentage of vegans and individuals with a more “political” approach to animal issue, different members and groups appear to be distant from that kind of approach, and is therefore more accurate to simply identify their adhesion to veganism as a form of personalization of protest (inglehart 1977; giddens 1991; mcdonald 2002; micheletti 2003). references assalco. 2015. zoomark 2015 report on the feeding and care of pets pet: first class citizens. accessed july 10, 2017. http://www.assalco.it/index.php?action= 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“small wins: redefining the scale of social problems”. american psychologist 39 (1): 40-9. zamir, tzachi. 2004. “veganism”. journal of social philosophy 35 (3): 367-79. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ contesting the radical monopoly: a critical view on the motorized culture from a cyclonaut perspective 173 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ is sn 2 2 8 0 -9 9 5 3 beyond anthropocentrism 1 • january 2013 inside the emotional lives of non-human animals a minding animals international utrecht 2012 pre-conference event special issue (genoa, italy, 12-13 may, 2012) edited by m. andreozzi, r. bennison, a. massaro, s. tonutti capabilities approach and animal bioethics • michele panzera animals and our emotions. how to approach the study of an interspecific community? • sabrina tonutti advocacy and animal rights • kim stallwood the emotional lives of animals: a christian perspective • alma massaro – gianfranco nicora animalia: ontology and ethics in weak antispeciesism • leonardo caffo the contemporary debate on experimentation • susanna penco – rosagemma ciliberti non-human animals and genetic engineering • arianna ferrari the relationship between humans and other animals in european animal welfare legislation • paola sobbrio human’s best friends? • matteo andreozzi elationsre l a t io n s . b e y o n d a n t h r o p o c e n t r is m 1 • 2 0 1 3 r 6.2 november 2018 energy ethics: emerging perspectives in a time of transition special issue edited by giovanni frigo part ii studies and research contributions energy ethics: a literature review 177 giovanni frigo contesting the radical monopoly: a critical view on the motorized 215 culture from a cyclonaut perspective damien delorme desiring ethics: reflections on veganism from an observational 233 study of transitions in everyday energy use alice dal gobbo ethical risk and energy 251 bertrand andre rossert coal feeds my family: subsistence, energy, and industry in central 269 appalachia m. joseph aloi human energy: philosophical-anthropological presuppositions 287 of anthropogenic energy, movement, and activity and their implications for well-being roman meinhold http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ relations. beyond anthropocentrism 174 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ comments, debates, reports and interviews energy ethics outside the box: carl mitcham in conversation 301 with giovanni frigo carl mitcham giovanni frigo energy equality and the challenges of population growth 313 andrea natan feltrin the energy of ethics / the ethics of energy: a dialog with irigaray, 321 varela and jullien federico battistutta reviews alex epstein, a review of the moral case for fossil fuels (2014) 331 adam briggle author guidelines 335 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 215 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ contesting the radical monopoly a critical view on the motorized culture from a cyclonaut perspective damien delorme institut de recherches philosophiques de lyon (irphil), université lyon iii france institut romand de systématique et d’éthique (irse), université de genève switzerland doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2018-002-delo damien.delorme@unige.ch abstract in our motorized societies, the “radical monopoly” (illich) of the automobile is the evidence that our engine culture dominates. at the socio-technical level, we are all beginning to be “motorcentric”, in the same way that we are egocentric, ethnocentric, and anthropocentric. i argue that traveling on a bicycle – i.e. becoming a “cyclonaut” – engenders per se a decentering experience. it fosters a critical outlook on the norms and usages of engine culture. the cyclist perspective can provide a phenomenological experience that introduces levels of consciousness (sensitive, ethical and political), typically neglected in the status quo dominated by automobiles. the automobile radical monopoly contributes to the dependency on fossil fuels driving climate change. from an environmental virtue ethics standpoint, a cyclonaut’s experience promotes a new paradigm for mobility based on the re-appropriation of bodily-powered autonomous movement that broadens our social imagination and contributes to facing our current environmental crisis. it also promotes a positive shift in our value system that enables us to be an example of a richer experience. contrary to the current irrational waste of energy, cycling can offer a joyfulness that reconnects us with the fundamental aspects of existence – self-awareness, connectivity to the world, nature, and beauty. this paper is based on reflections developed during the “untaking space project”. a 6,000-mile philosophical cycling trip, from miami to vancouver, occurred between january and august 2016 (http://www.usproject2016.com). keywords: environmental ethics; environmental virtue ethics; field philosophy; automobile radical monopoly; motorcentrism; cyclonaut; ecological self; voluntary simplicity; mindfulness; ecotopies. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ http://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2018-002-delo mailto:damien.delorme@unige.ch damien delorme 216 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 1. introduction in january 2016, i began a 7-month, 6000-mile philosophical cycling trip that would take me across north america from miami to vancouver 1. as a “field philosophy” (frodeman and briggle 2016) experiment, the “untaking space project” was not only a personal adventure but a way to develop new perspectives over environmental philosophy issues, from a decentering experience: the experience of a traveling cyclist in a motor dominated society – what awarded swiss writer and traveler claude marthaler calls a “cyclonaut’s” (marthaler 2017) experience. what philosophical insights can a cyclonaut’s perspective provide to energy ethics? in our motorized societies, the “radical monopoly” (illich 1974, 45) 2 of the automobile is evidence that engine culture dominates. at the sociotechnical level, we are all beginning to be motorcentric, in the same way that we are egocentric at a psychological level (piaget and inhelder 1966), ethnocentric at a cultural level (lévi-strauss 1952), and anthropocentric at a metaphysical and ethical level (descola 2005; callicott 2014). the analogy shows the same attitude: we value first and foremost what we are part of, what we identify ourselves with. then, to reinforce this valuation, we stigmatize “the other” as necessarily inferior, less valuable, justifying our opposition, hatred and domination. the most interesting point in these various types of “centrism” is that they all start to be unconscious. critical thinking aims to relativize such insularities. we – as members of modern western societies – have so deeply incorporated the practical yet imaginary benefits of being transported by motorized vehicles, that we now fail to see the normative aspect of this car “driven” society. “l’idéologie sociale de la bagnole”, as gorz ([1973] 2008) stated, has become a ruling pattern. the norms, values and creative abilities incorporated as habitus (bourdieu 2001) become a second nature. we suffer from a “speed stunned imagination” as illich precisely wrote in chapter 3 of energy and equity (1974, 23). not only do we fail to envision ourselves out of the “habitual passenger” (illich 1974, 24-5) role, but we fail to perceive the consequent narrowing of our social imagination. today, we 1 https://usproject2016.com/. 2 “this profound control of the transportation industry over natural mobility constitutes a monopoly much more pervasive than either the commercial monopoly ford might win over the automobile market, or the political monopoly car manufacturers might wield against the development of trains and buses. because of its hidden, entrenched and structuring nature, i call this a radical monopoly. any industry exercises this kind of deep-seated monopoly when it becomes the dominant means of satisfying needs that formerly occasioned a personal response” (45). http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ https://usproject2016.com/ contesting the radical monopoly 217 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ are mostly unable to conceive what was the norm in our societies only 50 years ago: that one could travel far away, long distances, cross country, by themselves, without an engine – with a bicycle, for instance. i argue that travelling by bicycle is a decentering experience that offers a critical perspective on the norms and usages of our motorized culture. from a phenomenological perspective,  it introduces levels of consciousness (sensitive, ethical and political) typically neglected in the status quo of the engine-dominated culture. the reappropriation of bodily powered autonomous movement allows potential shifts in our value systems. the cyclonaut therefore contributes to environmental virtue ethics by promoting a value-decentering subjective experience. traveling as a cyclonaut creates an alternative value system and enhances new paradigms in social imagination. contrary to the current irrational waste of energy, cycling can promote a joyfulness that reconnects us with the fundamental aspects of existence – self-awareness, connectivity to the world, nature, and beauty. 2. critical perspectives what are we typically neglecting due to our motorcentrism? and what kind of critical perspectives can traveling through the us as a cyclonaut’s provide? 2.1. “that energy you can develop!” the first obvious realization when i am traveling with my bicycle: i move mainly thanks to my bodily energy, and it is a long-lasting energy allowing me to move 8 to 12 hours a day – which i did not thought possible until experiencing it myself 3. with such a physical effort, nutrition is crucial, as it is the main source of physiological energy. i mostly had a vegan diet: some cereals, fruits and nuts for breakfast, crisps, avocados, bananas and dry fruits for a quick lunch, 2 to 4 clif® bars and lots of water during the day; then a big dinner based on soup and rice, tofu and “hippie dust” 4 (and all available variations of this combination!). we can 3 obviously, each body is different, and has its own limits. but my point is that we may usually underestimate the amount of energy a body can actually grow. 4 this is a nickname for nutritional yeast. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ damien delorme 218 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ adapt ourselves for physical endurance, and as such the body develops an astonishing efficiency. as evolutionary biologist l. liebenberg suggests, endurance may have been a key development ability for hominids to acquire techniques like persistence hunting and intelligence through the “art of tracking” (liebenberg 1990, 62). i then realize as well that the meteorological conditions, the way i breathe, whether i was tensed or relaxed while cycling, the psychological aspect of motivation, the landscape, the traffic around me, are all parts of the energy i gather to move, in a very complex ecosystem. you can neither reduce food to your sole energy provider, nor reduce your available energy to food. aside from nutritional qualities, food is a cultural product intertwining aesthetics, symbolic, technical, economic, political and moral relationships. moreover, the vital energy at hand relies on a holistic process that includes, for humans, motivations, affects, breathing energy, and stress levels, all of which interact with the nutrients to make our own organism work. 2.2. the organization of space traveling by bicycle, especially on roads, quickly creates an awareness of the social organization of space. as a cyclist crossing the us, you mainly find yourself on shoulders turned into bike lanes, very rarely on bike trails dedicated to non-motorized vehicles, and sometimes on roads that have none of these facilities and are not at all organized to welcome cyclists. obviously, the most comfortable situation is on bike trails, and the most dangerous is on roads without shoulders. but, during my trip, i was mainly a shoulder wanderer, a free-rider sidelined to the margin of the road – a space designed for the motor-vehicle, where the engine exerts its dominance. here are three teachings from the shoulders. first, one must face some aggressive, intentional or non-intentional, attitudes from roaring vehicles, especially when they are compelled to reduce their speed, or to wait before passing, in short, when they have to share the road with the cyclonaut. honks, yelling, excessive bursts of speed, verbal outbursts, disregard for safety distances when passing and, once, a “rollin’ coal” are symptoms of aggressiveness, usually being a defense strategy against a disruptive element. we can have a psychological interpretation of those attitudes alleging drivers’ contingent and personal excess of tensions, stress and anger. but the “normality” of these reactions shows a sociological and structural defense strategy expressing the dominant normativity: the roads belong to motorized vehicles and they intend to rule the space. from a socialist perspective, gorz denounced http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ contesting the radical monopoly 219 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ “the selfish, aggressive and cruel driver, who every minute symbolically assassinates ‘others’, whom he perceives as material constrains and obstacles to his own speed” ([1973] 2008). i don’t know whether this can be interpreted as “the advent, a consequence of quotidian automobilism, of a universal bourgeois behavior” [“l’avènement, grâce à l’automobilisme quotidien, d’un comportement universellement bourgeois”] (gorz [1973] 2008). but i agree that there is more than a mere contingent anger. as a cyclist, occupying the shoulders, you are contesting the motor vehicles’ “radical monopoly”. you are abnormal. you are an iconoclast. you are contesting an overpowering normative value system, and you don’t fit the normal social imagination. therefore, you provoke some defensive response from the social body, and you become an opportunity to manifest what is there, latent: their fight for a motorized usage of the road that you seem to challenge. delusion of domination through motorized power, external signs of virility and willingness to crush any kind of opposition: it has become a topos that powerful cars are signs of social distinction, and part of the social imaginary of virility. in this perspective, the roaring engine can appear as the typical “phallogocentrism” noise as derrida brilliantly said, precisely exploring other margins, the “marges de la philosophie” (1972). by contrast, the vulnerability i feel as a cyclist facing this phallogocentric yelling reinforces the understanding of being a minority, being dominated, being abnormal. which is an interesting experience: being a european white man and yet feeling what it is to deal with a dominant value system wanting, sometimes literally, to crush you. second teaching from the shoulders: as a margin-wanderer, i pay attention to what is there. i have a chance to look at what i usually don’t pay attention to when i’m enjoying the center of the road. it is said that speed reduces the field view. not only that, but every perception is selectively enhanced according to our pragmatic interest. the dominant motorist pays attention to what is in the center of the road, and not to the margins where only what is left behind remains or, better said, is left aside. what you can find in the margins is actually quite interesting: gravels, pieces of glass, nails and screws, litter of every kind, and lots of carcasses. the shoulders are the realm of carcasses 5: tire frames, sofa structures, and lots of animal carcasses, of course. when you start to pay attention to them, you find them everywhere, the presence of death several times a mile, announcing their presence with their stench, dead bodies without sepultures, in contrast with the roadside cross symbolizing dead humans, warning other drivers with some mindful announce 5 https://usproject2016.com/2016/02/09/compagnons-de-bas-cotes/. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ https://usproject2016.com/2016/02/09/compagnons-de-bas-cotes/ damien delorme 220 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ment, “drive carefully”. the cyclonaut notices that only humans seem to deserve sepultures or memorials, while the killing of all other animals found on shoulders goes neglected, rejected out of any consideration  – quite unfair indeed. these carcasses reveal the violence of the road, and of the motorized vehicles which power causes – well-named co-lateral damages. third teaching from the shoulders: by sharing this marginal position and the vulnerable situation of a non-motorized user of the road, crossing many “ghost bikes” like white memorials and ghostly silhouette of departed cyclists, i developed an unexpected compassion for those “shoulder companions”. this affective sense of community manifested itself as sadness and despair i felt when passing dead companions, as well as joy when i discovered weeds in the cracks, vividly contesting the concrete and resisting the odor of death floating all around. it was then that i realized that, as a cyclonaut, i belonged to an “off the road” community, a slow and fragile member of the non-motorized ecosystem. this recognition of an existing commonality, this shared space (and the affective response to its practical implications), yields the realization that we can actively cultivate a trans-species community. the experience of shoulderwandering yields a broadened trans-species imaginary, experienced in an affective disposition of compassion (and other affective responses), that presumably is embodied in certain actions (attentiveness and care to the shoulder-dwellers, etc). this makes it a virtue ethic that encompasses perception, disposition, and action. being a proactive and engaging adventure, cycling across the country is an exploration of the margins, and therefore an experience of the social construction of space as a field as bourdieu conceptualized it – i.e. as a system of social positions structured by power relationships (bourdieu 1992; hilgers and mangez 2015). as a cyclonaut, shaped by an alternative perceptual and affective regime, i can feel and understand immediately the repressive effects of some kind of social domination, the violence of central powers over marginal inhabitants, the negligence of an anthropocentric instrumental value system. for example, when entering los angeles from the east, passing through suburban industrial areas, and leaving highway shoulders for bike lanes following the canalized los angeles river, i met my fellow cyclists who were mainly homeless people carrying their belongings on trailers, living under bridges and colonizing islands. then going north along highway 1, i regularly faced not only the winds but the aggressiveness of nervous drivers forgetting that the coastal road is narrow and that my vehicle was far more vulnerable than their trailers. the most charitable explanation is that they don’t know http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ contesting the radical monopoly 221 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ how dangerous it is to be grazed by trucks, but, obviously, they neither paid attention to nor cared about my presence on the road. and, when stopping at a service area to refill my bottles with water, and reading the announcement warning people of rattlesnakes, i realized that the analogous signs potentially announcing “rattlesnakes in danger crossing the roads” did not exist and that no one was counting dozens of crushed snakes lying down on highway 1’s shoulders. being a minority fosters attentiveness to other minorities, thereby broadening one’s field of vision. 2.3. environmental disconnection one main difference between traveling in an enclosed car and traveling by bike is the connection with the elements. i was not observing the landscape behind the window, i was part of it. so, in general (a partial exception made perhaps for cabriolets), engine culture tends to isolate people from the environment. like the enclosed helmet of motor-bikers suggests, it is easier to be an “ego in a bubble” on a motorbike or in a motorcar than on a bicycle. even when practicing motor sports in nature, the position is a strange “in but out” relationship with the environment, as if one wanted to be in but one still manage to be out, enjoying the environment filtered through the engine’s speed, power and whine. going along the pacific coast trail in california, two examples of this “schizophrenic” model of motorized outdoor recreation struck me. the first one was the oceano dunes state vehicular recreation areas 6, a motorized vehicle dedicated beach. trucks, buggies, quads and rvs are driving along the beach. the dune is full of traces, like scarves on a soft matter. the speed is limited at 15 miles per hour, checked by radar, but the noise seems to cover the sound of the waves. some pedestrians are walking between the roaring vehicles, breathing the exhaust gas. i saw people comparing their “diesel”, displaying their trucks on the beach. the power of their engines seemed to captivate all their attention. were they aware of being evolving in a marvelous environment 7? the second one was the chandelier redwood tree drive-through near leggett. it’s a tourist attraction that offers you to take a picture of 6 “this off-road area is among the most popular and unique of california state parks. the 5 1/2 miles of beach open for vehicle use and the sand dunes available for off highway motor vehicle recreation are attractions for visitors from throughout the united states” (https://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=406). 7 cf. https://usproject2016.com/2016/06/10/guadalupe-piedras-blancas/. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ https://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=406. https://usproject2016.com/2016/06/10/guadalupe-piedras-blancas/ damien delorme 222 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ you driving your car through a millenary giant sequoia 8. as a cyclist, i wonder what kind of culture can make the action of driving through a tree, a desirable experience? you don’t see the tree, you see information about its age, height, diameter and then you take a picture, not of the tree but of yourself penetrating a living being as a motorist. as far as i am concerned, it gives a clear image of a delusional anthropocentrism that aims to be controlling, dominant, separated from nature instead of taking care of it within the frame of “partnership ethics” (merchant 1996; plumwood 2002). environmental impacts of cars on a beach or on sand hills are disastrous. the chandelier tree shows an admirable resilience but is weakened. but most of all, driving on the beach, keeps you away from breathing the ocean, feeling the sand under your feet, watching the horizon far away, observing seaweeds and shells. by driving through a tree, you cannot see neither the unique shapes of its branches nor the top of its majestic presence, you cannot embrace its tortuous bark, you cannot smell the spicy sap, you cannot observe ants and birds. in both cases, i wonder if the natural environment does not tend to become a pretext for egotistic excitements, where comparison between engines and cars are more important than connecting with the tree or the beach living ecosystem. 2.4. the motorcentric urban infrastructure as a cyclist, vulnerable, looking for safety in the urban traffic, you become a kind of “urban bike facilities” expert. ed deaton, an environmental activist, pedestrian and bicycle advisor for tallahassee city council, showed me two big multi-level parking lots on florida university campus dedicated to the students’ cars. he told me that this investment was debated, and, with this money, they could have bought bicycles for every able-bodied student of tallahassee and built bike lanes! i realized that choices in urban infrastructure were not only a matter of money, but firmly a matter of political decisions which in turn reflect underlying value systems that overwhelmingly favor large investments in car facilities. by contrast, cities such as portland and vancouver have engaged in a green revolution, developing miles of bike lanes and other facilities to enhance cyclist urban transportation. one major event symbolizing this “eco-mobility” awareness is the world naked bike ride. in port 8 cf. https://usproject2016.com/2016/07/06/pacific-road-abalone-point-burlingtonhike-and-bike-camp/. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ https://usproject2016.com/2016/07/06/pacific-road-abalone-point-burlington-hike-and-bike-camp/ https://usproject2016.com/2016/07/06/pacific-road-abalone-point-burlington-hike-and-bike-camp/ contesting the radical monopoly 223 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ land, for instance, this event gathers more than 10,000 naked cyclists, crossing the city at night for a unique procession. not merely an exotic emancipatory parade, this event connects the pleasure of riding a bike with political claims: playing with what is common decency to reveal the indecent exposure of cyclist to the traffic dangers and the outrageous exposure of the society to environmental and political dependency on a car-dominated culture. beyond the iconoclast gesture, it is a way to raise awareness about the organization of public space. public space is not only shared space, but contested space – space subject to conflictual usage. the problem is not merely how to share the space but also how to prevent any uses of public space that could exclude others’ possibilities to evolve in that public space. in this respect, this event addresses the theme of individual and collective liberty: the over-exposed vulnerability of cyclists, through the analogous exposed bodies, promotes an alternative urban policy that values care, attention, listening, awareness of the weakest. as a cyclonaut, i thus become aware of the hegemonic norms of a motorculture. because i don’t observe these norms, i contest their necessity, in a way. because i build a new habitus, i can realize what was hidden by the usual and massive conformity to the car-driven society. first, the amount of energy the average human body can develop is forgotten, and we usually adopt as a need the driver or passenger roles that rely on a stunning dependency to fossil fuels 9. second, people usually don’t realize how public space is designed around the hegemonic use of cars. the allowance of new ecomobilities demands we rethink the organization of space, which is also an organization of social power. third, we don’t realize how much a car tends to disconnect us from the environment and promotes a phallocentric culture of dominating nature. fourth, we usually don’t appreciate how dangerous a car can be toward others roads-dwellers; people generally don’t know how vulnerable a cyclist is, especially an urban cyclist. thus, this cyclonaut’s perspective brings positive insights as a phenomenological analysis of motorcentrism. it reintroduces levels of consciousness (sensitive, ethical and political), typically neglected in the status quo. what about the positive practical alternative that the cyclonaut’s experiment promotes, especially in the context of multiple environmental crises? 9 this, of course, does not include disabled people with very specific needs that have to be addressed. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ damien delorme 224 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ i argue that, from an environmental virtue ethics standpoint, a cyclonaut’s experience promotes a new paradigm for mobility based on the re-appropriation of autonomous movement that broadens our social imagination. it also promotes positive transformations of value system that enables an example of a rich experience. contrary to the current irrational waste of energy, cycling can promote a joyfulness that reconnects us with the fundamental aspects of existence – self-awareness, connectivity to the world, nature, and beauty. 3. contribution to environmental virtue ethics 3.1. awareness of the self while travelling by bicycle and moreover riding alone, i become very sensitive and very aware of what is going on inside myself. as i am using my body daily to move, i develop a fine perception of my changing balance of powers: i can feel whether i am in shape or not, and the slight variations of energy throughout the day of cycling, but also on a larger scale along the trip. i feel the pains and the signals that my body generates to inform me on how to adapt my effort: when to drink, when to eat, when to stop. even if i do not search for performance, i can feel how my body adapts to endurance. the normality becomes to move constantly and not to stay still in a place. therefore, i feel some discomfort when a pause leaves me inactive for a while. sensation, emotions and energy dynamics are thus part of my daily activity and become essential parts of my vital process. so being a cyclonaut is one means to becoming very present to a body’s life. as far as i’m concerned, while cycling all day long, i became very mindful, especially about my stream of consciousness. i could feel mental activity’s variations: from rehashing 10 to silence, passing through reminiscences, reveries, and the emergence of new ideas. thus, cycling can easily become a spiritual path. the reason for that is simple: as you cycle, it becomes really difficult not to be aware of your breathing. but, many spiritual paths recognize breathing as a central aspect of the practice. therefore, while cycling, it is easy to feel that i am in a favorable practice 10 what zen master thich nhat hanh calls metaphorically “a radio called nst, non-stop thinking!” (nhat hanh 2015). http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ contesting the radical monopoly 225 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ to become present to what is going on within my body and within my mind. i can feel how i open myself to the world and how i can find a space to be present to myself, to others, to the world and to life. as i reconquer an autonomous way of moving and adopt a nomadic life, i eventually realize that freedom is not the absence of constraint, but rather the ability to affirm actively some norms in which i can recognize myself. a feeling of joy arises due to intensification of one’s vital experience, reconnection with nature and mindful relationships with oneself, with others and the world. i experiment what arne næss describes as ecological self-realization – opposed to ego-trips: the meaning of life, and the joy we experience in living, is enhanced through increased self-realization, that is, through the fulfillment of potentials that each of us has, but that are never the same for any two living beings. whatever the differences between beings, increased self-realization implies a broadening and deepening of the self. (næss 2008, 82) “broadening and deepening the self” means, to næss, going beyond the identification of the self to ego or social self, going beyond the dualistic separation of the self and the world, and experiencing the intertwined relationships with all the other beings that constitute our real self. 3.2. environmental awareness the cyclonaut perspective not only provides self-awareness but also environmental awareness, that may implement this self-realization as “ecological self” (næss 2008). first, travelling by bicycle immediately immerses us in the environment. like a sailor, a paraglider or an alpinist, our movements rely on meteorological conditions, especially winds, temperatures and precipitations. feeling the winds, adapting myself to temperature’s changes, protecting myself from rains and snow, or sun and heat, breathing all day long a changing air and drinking more than 1 gallon of water per day, i develop an extreme sensitivity to the quality of the different environments i am exposed to: i can feel the differences in air quality, water quality, silence quality. one feels how unbreathable the contaminated air of a crowded highway is, or around a refinery, a tree nursery constantly sprayed, or an industrial animal farm, as opposed to the crisp air of the jemez mountains in new mexico or the salty air of the oregonian coast. while drinking new water several times a day, one can taste the chemical treatments in it. environmental variations constantly affect the cyclist. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ damien delorme 226 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ one can be saddened by the way humans neglect their environment and their common necessities. by contrast, after a hot day in the californian mountains, a sip of fresh water coming from a stream becomes pure bliss. one of the most precious experiences of being a cyclonaut is the resynchronization with cosmic and circadian rhythms, particularly the sunrise and the sunset. they are not only breaks or activity signals. these are promises of wonder and beauty, every day. as a cyclonaut, you realize your presence to the environment’s beauty, to the surrounding, to what is welcoming you for a night or an instant: earth, plants, animals. it is like a daily appointment with our common home. the affective communion with this ecosystem, developed here by the daily outside movement and the immersion in and dependence on the environment that it implies, goes beyond anthropocentrism, because we value what we are part of, and we no longer identify with a “hyper-separated” (plumwood 2002) human culture. as an outdoor person, i become very aware of my vulnerable companions, on the side of the road and around my campsites. how many dead animals on the shoulders? how much plastic on this beach? how much littering in this forest? during the journey, i developed a strong sense of belonging to this ecological community, and all those relationships were affecting me at sensory and emotional levels. i would argue that this is a structural aspect of the cyclonaut’s experience. because you are evolving within the environment and with the elements, you do not feel separated and, therefore, you can recognize yourself within the living community you belong to and open up to the beauty of your surrounding and the beauty within 11. 3.3. broadening social imagination and alternative value system practical habits and norms, implemented in the cyclonaut’s way of life, can promote a value system as an alternative to productivity and consumerism inherent to neoliberal capitalism. of course, while riding his bike a cyclonaut is not writing a political manifesto. nevertheless, he is implementing a value system, even minor, which can join other social and political experiments like “alternative places for social experimentation” that i call “ecotopies” 12. thus, the value system which is realized by the 11 “the ’everything hangs together’ maxim of ecology applies to the self and its relation to other living beings, ecosystems, the ecosphere, and the earth, with its long history” (næss 2008, 87). 12 an “ecotopy” is a place where people are resisting, through imagination and action, to the hegemonic capitalist system and are inventing new relationships with http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ contesting the radical monopoly 227 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ cyclonaut’s way of life takes place in a multi-locational rhizomatic (or “weedy”, after callenbach 2009) movement contesting the hegemonic norms of capitalistic consumerist systems. as an interlocking network of alternative value systems, these eco-movements broaden the social imagination for how human beings live in and with their environments. i will focus on two dimensions of these ethical effects of being a cyclonaut: voluntary simplicity and mindfulness. those attitudes and the norms that they promote are not arbitrary. they emerge from very simple, practical and material conditions which are the daily practice of being a cyclonaut. they are part of the ordinary cyclonaut’s practical and theoretical imagination. 3.3.1. voluntary simplicity traditional virtues like temperance are being reappropriated in the west in response to contemporary environmental crises as values of voluntary simplicity and sobriety. in a way, “voluntary simplicity” – or “voluntary sobriety” as arnspenger and bourg (2017) prefer to say – reactivates western traditions of auto-limitation, to address the anthropological and sociological problem of unlimited desire, which lead to excessive ecological footprints in western capitalist societies. but, “voluntary sobriety is meaningful only as a differential and transitional concept: to choose deliberately moderation, frugality or autolimitation is questioning and overcoming a dominant way of life where waste and excess are ruling” (arnspenger and bourg 2017, 107). gorz was already seeing “autolimitation” as an “ecosocial project” (gorz [1992] 2008, 65) seeking the “sufficiency norm” [“norme de suffisance”] (gorz [1992] 2008, 61) which can’t exist in the capitalistic growth oriented system. voluntary simplicity is thus a critical concept but also a positive way to affirm that capitalist values of accumulating possessions are not fulfilling their goals of fully realizing human potential or meaning in life. as a cyclonaut, you carry with you all you need to be safe and autonomous in terms of water, food, clothes, camping gear. you can’t stock extra “stuff” because everything you carry weighs extra kilos that cost you extra effort on every single pedal push. since everything has a weight that will affect your movement, you ask yourself: “what do i really need?”. therenature. that’s a “singular collective” concept that can relate places as different as ecovillages, national parks, urban farms, philosophy departments, … this concept, inspired by e. callenbach particularly in one of his last lectures, was a key concept in the untaking space project. cf. callenbach 2009; delorme and tedde 2016. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ damien delorme 228 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ fore, the needless accumulation of “stuff” becomes a very clear realization that connects to a more minimal way of life. as far as i’m concerned, i progressively got rid of fears that tend to make me carry more stuff than i really needed. i could physically feel what it meant to have an ecological weight and i felt the freedom to be light on earth, while moving or dwelling for a night in sites that welcomed me. 3.3.2. mindfulness every day, as a cyclonaut, i could realize that spiritual values like admiring a sunset, being present to the beauty of a tree or to the solitude of an old man in a small village in texas became clearly much more important than what is usually valued in the capitalist-consumerist system (like possessing things and showing his power or success). thus, the enduring question of what is essential in life receives an answer when you go back to some kind of nomadic way of life within our modern societies: “stuff” is overcrowding, and if you go light you will discover real excitement and real joy every time you feel present, connected, active, free, overwhelmed by beauty and generosity. this is where, i think, a cyclonaut’s experience connects with mindfulness. not only are you breathing, and connected to the environment, but the effort puts you in some state of silence and full présence 13 to every sensation, emotion and thoughts arising. thich nhat hanh (2015) describes mindfulness in this poem: the practice of mindfulness is very simple. you stop, you breathe, and you still your mind. you come home to yourself so that you can enjoy the here and now in every moment. so, mindfulness is a meditative state of consciousness which aims to still the body, emotions and mind (full of fears, memories and projections), to enjoy being fully in the here and now. full presence is not only a gate to real joy, it’s also silence or space to be sensitive to “beauty’s call” everywhere. all the wonders of life are already here. they’re calling you. if you can listen to them, you will be able to stop running. what you need, what we 13 the french word “présence” is interesting in its polysemy because it means at the same time, the phenomenological awareness to the present things, but also the temporal hic et nunc, here and now. both aspects are related in mindfulness. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ contesting the radical monopoly 229 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ all need, is silence. stop the noise in your mind in order for the wondrous sounds of life to be heard. then you can begin to live your life authentically and deeply. (nhat han 2015) as i described before (2.1), mindful cycling is an easy practice because the cyclonaut spends a lot of time by himself. mindfulness brings wonderment, and wonderment brings joy. this joy has a very special flavor for the cyclonaut, who in many ways engages himself, feels his limits and feels fully alive, since at the threat of the road every day, he can feel his vulnerability. thus, living, breathing, moving freely, enjoying peace and beauty has a taste of the miraculous at every instant. it does not mean that he goes beyond natural order, but rather that he becomes aware, within all these living relationships and stories, that his daily vital process relies on a very fragile balance that warrants wonderment. 4. conclusion one who crosses the us, from southeast to northwest, enters the road trip imaginary. today, this is mainly a modern motorcentric imaginary. choosing the cyclonaut’s perspective is a way to question this hegemonic cultural pattern, and while travelling cross-country, as a vulnerable nomadic cyclist, one produces some kind of distortion in the usual road trip imaginary. this critical insight affords a possibility of an alternative value system. dependence on fossil fuel for mobility, motorcentric organization of space and the disconnection of motorcentric urban infrastructure from the environment reveal themselves as contingent, historical, politically built choices, unsustainable as far as ecological crisis is concerned. even if we assume that in twenty years, all cars will be electric, most of the eco-social constraints of motor-centricity will remain. the cyclonaut’s perspective offers an opportunity to reconnect with the moving body and mind, with the environment, with the vulnerability of our existence and with the joy of belonging to this community of gaia’s co-inhabitants. here, behavioral and normative changes to face the environmental crisis are not due to an abstract rational decision about what is morally good or wrong, nor on a consequentialist reasoning about our interests. new experiences, working on the radical level of affects, sensations and emotions, produce transformations in ethical behaviors because the self has changed. becoming more aware, more present, more connected, in a word, wiser, the cyclonaut tends to resist anthropocentric attitudes like the modern tendency to separate ourselves from nature in http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ damien delorme 230 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ order to dominate and instrumentalize it. this, therefore, broadens social practical and theoretical imagination toward new relationships with ourself, the fellow co-inhabitants of our “écoumene” (berque 2004) – which means our intertwined social and natural environment – and our desires. it promotes a virtue ethic of voluntary simplicity and mindfulness in response to ecological issues, at a very personal level. being a cyclonaut is one way of being fully alive, feeling miraculously alive and becoming aware of horrors and beauties all around while passing by, briefly, on earth. as we face a global environmental crisis and the confusion it produces, cycling around may be a good start. references arnspenger, christian, and dominique bourg. 2017. écologie intégrale. pour une société permacirculaire. paris: puf. berque, augustin. 2004. écoumène. introduction à l’étude des milieux humains. paris: belin. bourdieu, pierre. 1992. les règles de l’art. genèse et structure du champ littéraire. paris: éditions du seuil. bourdieu, pierre. 2001. langage et pouvoir symblique. paris: édition du seuil. briggle, adam, and robert frodeman. 2016. socrates tenured: the institutions of twenty-first century philosophy. london: rowan & littlefield international. callenbach, ernest. 2009. “from capitalism to ecotopia: a successionist manifesto [delivered as a lecture for the carl-schurz-haus in freiburg, germany]. http://www.ernestcallenbach.com/lectures. callicott, j. baird. 2014. thinking like a planet: the land ethic and the earth ethic. oxford: oxford university press. delorme, damien, and aurélien tedde. 2016. “qu’est-ce qu’une écotopie”. https:// usproject2016.com/2016/02/04/entretiens-1-quest-quune-ecotopie/. derrida, jacques. 1972. marges de la philosophie. paris: gallimard. descola, philippe. 2005. par-delà nature et culture. paris: gallimard. gorz, andré. (1973) 2008. “l’idéologie sociale de la bagnole”. in écologica. reprint, paris: galilée. gorz, andré. (1992) 2008. “l’écologie politique entre expertocratie et autolimitation”. in écologica. reprint, paris: galilée. hilgers, mathieu, and eric mangez. 2015. bourdieu’s theory of social fields: concepts and applications. london: routledge. illich, ivan. 1973. energy and equity. new york evanston san francisco london: harper & row. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ http://www.ernestcallenbach.com/lectures https://usproject2016.com/2016/02/04/entretiens-1-quest-quune-ecotopie/ https://usproject2016.com/2016/02/04/entretiens-1-quest-quune-ecotopie/ contesting the radical monopoly 231 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ lévi-strauss, claude. 1952. race et histoire. paris: unesco. liebenberg, louis. 1990. the art of tracking: the origin of science. claremont: new africa books. marthaler, claude. 2017. zen ou l’art de pedaler. genève: éditions olizane. merchant, carolyn. 1996. earthcare: women and the environment. new york: routledge. næss, arne. (1987) 2008. “self-realization: an ecological approach to being in the world”. in ecology of wisdom: writings by arne næss, edited by alan drengson and bill devall. berkeley: counterpoint. nhat hanh, thich. 2015. silence: the power of quiet in a world full of noise. new york: harper collins. piaget, jean, and bärber inhelder. 1966. la psychologie de l’enfant. paris: puf. plumwood, val. 2002. environmental culture: the ecological crisis of reason. new york: routledge. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ethical risk and energy 173 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ is sn 2 2 8 0 -9 9 5 3 beyond anthropocentrism 1 • january 2013 inside the emotional lives of non-human animals a minding animals international utrecht 2012 pre-conference event special issue (genoa, italy, 12-13 may, 2012) edited by m. andreozzi, r. bennison, a. massaro, s. tonutti capabilities approach and animal bioethics • michele panzera animals and our emotions. how to approach the study of an interspecific community? • sabrina tonutti advocacy and animal rights • kim stallwood the emotional lives of animals: a christian perspective • alma massaro – gianfranco nicora animalia: ontology and ethics in weak antispeciesism • leonardo caffo the contemporary debate on experimentation • susanna penco – rosagemma ciliberti non-human animals and genetic engineering • arianna ferrari the relationship between humans and other animals in european animal welfare legislation • paola sobbrio human’s best friends? • matteo andreozzi elationsre l a t io n s . b e y o n d a n t h r o p o c e n t r is m 1 • 2 0 1 3 r 6.2 november 2018 energy ethics: emerging perspectives in a time of transition special issue edited by giovanni frigo part ii studies and research contributions energy ethics: a literature review 177 giovanni frigo contesting the radical monopoly: a critical view on the motorized 215 culture from a cyclonaut perspective damien delorme desiring ethics: reflections on veganism from an observational 233 study of transitions in everyday energy use alice dal gobbo ethical risk and energy 251 bertrand andre rossert coal feeds my family: subsistence, energy, and industry in central 269 appalachia m. joseph aloi human energy: philosophical-anthropological presuppositions 287 of anthropogenic energy, movement, and activity and their implications for well-being roman meinhold http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ relations. beyond anthropocentrism 174 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ comments, debates, reports and interviews energy ethics outside the box: carl mitcham in conversation 301 with giovanni frigo carl mitcham giovanni frigo energy equality and the challenges of population growth 313 andrea natan feltrin the energy of ethics / the ethics of energy: a dialog with irigaray, 321 varela and jullien federico battistutta reviews alex epstein, a review of the moral case for fossil fuels (2014) 331 adam briggle author guidelines 335 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 251 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ethical risk and energy * bertrand andre rossert world bank group, washington, dc usa doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2018-002-ross brossert@worldbank.org abstract defining ethical violations as acts or situations excluding individuals from choices, and ethical deterioration as an increase in intensity or number of ethical violations, the ethical risk is defined as the risk of ethical deterioration. ethical deteriorations and improvements often coexist and share the same causes, and the net ethical impact is often difficult and controversial to assess. in the energy sector, the ethical risk appears to have five key determinants: (i) personal accountability, i.e. our responsibility in decisions and actions; (ii) fairness, i.e. the consequence on the choices of others; (iii) usage, i.e. the impact on the social and natural environment; (iv) addiction, i.e. the dependence that is created as energy is used over time and (v) danger, i.e. how the force of energy sources can be unexpectedly unleashed and what effort is made to mitigate these. keywords: ethics; ethical violation; ethical deterioration; ethical improvement; risk; risk management; energy ethics; accountability; responsibility; energy. 1. introduction the concept of ethical risk is emerging in the business ethics literature. for instance, tremblay et al. (2016) or merle (2016) use the concept to explain that if a situation is left unmanaged, it will lead to ethical criticisms or be assessed by at least some, as unethical. ten years ago, hermansson and hansson pointed out that “ethical aspects are crucial in the analysis of risk, but they have often been neglected” in part because of the “lack of operational tools for the ethical analysis of risks” (2007, 129). besides the lack of tools for assessing the ethical risks, there is not yet a * the views expressed in this paper are solely those of the author and cannot be attributed to the institution he works for. errors and omissions remain the sole responsibility of the author and cannot be attributed in any way to the institution he works for. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ http://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2018-002-ross mailto:brossert@worldbank.org bertrand andre rossert 252 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ consensus on what is meant by ethical risk, and the concept itself may need refinements and qualifications. the stakes are high: a good definition of ethical risk would create a bridge between business ethics and risk management, and allow incorporating ethical considerations into a risk management framework. it is also a possible path towards developing ethical considerations into sectors of human activities that have not yet, or barely, developed a specific ethics. while there is bioethics, genetic ethics, or the ethics of artificial intelligence, the ethics of the energy sector and activities is in its infancy. i will give examples from this sector specifically, to illustrate how the application of the concept of ethical risk can constitute an early step of developing an ethical framework. in the energy sector, many risks have an ethical dimension. for instance, an offshore oil platform blowing out or a sinking oil tanker will lead to oil spillage, contamination of the marine flora and fauna, and potentially contamination of a whole stretch of seashore. an oil spillage is significant by its collateral effects first, and by its impact on the production of the well, or the loss of revenue from the sinking ship, second. in other words, the impact on others exceeds the impact on the organization that owns the platform or the ship. it is, as a result, a social and ethical issue. therefore, the risk of oil spillage is in part an ethical risk of offshore oil operations. how to isolate the ethical risk from other types of risks will also be discussed. the present paper proposes to explore the concept of ethical risk and its components, taking specific examples from and focusing specifically on the energy sector. examining how the ethical risk should be managed in the energy sector should constitute the bulk of ethical considerations regarding energy-related activities. 2. defining ethical risk the definition of ethical risk requires additional concepts and needs to be built gradually. i will start by defining the concept of ethical violation, will then proceed to define ethical deterioration and its nearly complete opposite (ethical improvement) and then define ethical risk. the conceptual build up can be summarized graphically in the following way (fig. 1): http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ethical risk and energy 253 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 2.1. defining ethical violation most of business ethics is geared towards addressing ethical violations or breaches of rules. in the same way, most of the corporate social responsibility is geared towards preventing certain corporate actions or behaviors. however, the notion of ethical violation is often used without definition, by claiming that a situation is obviously wrong. in other words, ethical violation is often gauged by the sentiments that it provokes in interlocutors. this “gut feeling” is triggered by empathy with a situation in which one would not wish to be. what, then, are the situations that human beings would often wish to avoid? these are situations where the individual is “cornered”, has no choice, and is thus either instrumentalized or excluded. as soon as we have a choice that allows us to get out of a situation, then it is tautology to say that this situation is no longer imposed on us. the notion of instrumentalization comes directly from the kantian deontology principle of not treating someone as a means to an end. it is also part of the kantian principle of not subjecting others to what one would not wished to be imposed upon oneself. this can also be expressed in terms of choice: if i am subjecting others to something that i do not wish for myself, i am using others, because i am putting them in a situation where i have chosen not to be. instrumentalizing is different from using someone. for instance, if i have fallen into a deep ditch and someone helps me get out, i am using that other person but (i) the other person will generally be willing to help and (ii) i have no choice and would otherwise get injured or die. instrumentalizing consists in restricting the choice of someone else for an advantage that is limited compared to the consequences it entails for the other person. if i employ someone and pay a salary which that person is willing to receive, we are both using figure 1. – conceptual map. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ bertrand andre rossert 254 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the other in some way, but it is not an instrumentalization as long as both have a choice, and both willingly chose to enter into this relationship. the term of exclusion is rarely defined. excluding etymologically means “leaving outside” or “not letting in”. most frequently it means not giving access, either to a relationship or to some goods or services that are supplied or distributed. some exclusions are legitimate. families of patients are excluded from the operating theater while the surgeon is making a surgical intervention on their relative, in order to prevent infections and to allow the surgeon to focus on an urgent and difficult task. some exclusions are a necessary consequence of social interactions. if a sales attendant is processing my purchases at the cash register in a supermarket, the attendant cannot help someone else at the same time. in addition, the goods that i purchase are for use by my family: the purchase excludes other from using what i bought. yet, there are also unnecessary, artificial exclusions, based on prejudices, abuse of power or overabundance of means. it could be argued that such exclusions could also be called injustices. there is no injustice without unnecessary exclusion, and reciprocally, there is no situation where it is just to exclude someone unnecessarily. many discussions of justice will hinge on whether an exclusion is or is not necessary. i define ethical violations as situations where some individuals are unnecessarily instrumentalized or excluded. instrumentalizing is actually a form of exclusion: whoever is instrumentalized, is excluded from the community of human beings who have multiple choices; they have to do what they are told, or to follow the only choice left to them. an ethical violation is therefore what causes individuals to be unnecessarily excluded from choices, now or in the future. one of the most important choices is the choice of whether or not to exercise a choice. reducing the possibility of choice is therefore an ethical violation. this definition is consistent with the conception of justice as fairness presented by rawls (1971). arguably, further reducing the choices of those who are already excluded from many choices carries greater consequences than reducing the choice of those who have many. exclusion, or injustice, is therefore cumulative. the definition of ethical violation should not be construed as requiring self-sacrifice. an ethical violation is a not a trade-off between one’s own preferences and the preferences of others. it is an absence of tradeoff: what is given to the others comes at no costs (and even sometimes as a benefit) or at a cost that is considered minimal in regard of the benefit created. this is where, in the humean tradition, ethics is inseparable of human sentiment and in fact, more specifically, of preferences. an ethical http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ethical risk and energy 255 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ violation occurs when the preferences of others would be fulfilled while the situation after helping others would still be preferred to the situation before helping by the person who helped. an ethical violation is not an unequal resolution of a zero-sum game; it is leaving rewards on the table in a non-zero-sum game. how does this apply to energy? for instance, extracting natural resources can constitute an ethical violation if it does not leave enough resources for future generations. if using wood as a fuel leads to deforestation, i.e. to the destruction of the forest with no prospect of it growing back, this has to be defined as an ethical violation, as it is depriving future generations from the choice of using wood, as a fuel or for other purposes. an ethical violation is always defined in a specific epistemic context: if i do not know that releasing smoke into the atmosphere can be harmful in some ways, then it is not an ethical violation. however, if someone releases, say, gaseous chlorine in quantities that will make it impossible for neighbors to breathe, and this is done in full knowledge of the consequences, then it is an ethical violation. an ethical violation can exclude human beings from choices in the future. for instance, injuring someone is not only considered an ethical violation because of the pain it creates, but because of the loss of future opportunities, either during the recovery period or even afterwards if the injuries have long-term effects such as brain damage or the loss of a limb. as an aside, our definition of ethical violation is consistent with the general prohibition to inflict pain unnecessarily, because someone in pain has less choices than someone who has no pain: someone with a headache will not think with the same clarity, will not want to listen to music, etc. someone with a foot injury will hesitate to perform any activity that involves walking, etc. as ethical violations apply to future choices, there is no reason to restrict these violations to existing individuals. for instance, if someone were to destroy all possibility of life in a place that is normally inhabited, this would not only violate the choices of the existing population but of all future populations of this region. in this sense, multi-generational anthropocentrism may not share the same assumptions and intentions as biocentrism, but it may lead to outcomes that are close to what biocentrism would produce. it is a sort of intermediate between the outcome that an exclusive focus on the current human population would produce, and the situation that a biocentric approach would generate. another important feature is that an ethical violation is not necessarily the withdrawal of the possibility of choosing a specific alternative. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ bertrand andre rossert 256 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ it can be that this alternative has been blocked in the past and continues to be blocked. it is enough for someone to block the emergence of a new possibility to create an ethical violation. i propose to call active ethical violation the fact of blocking an existing possibility and to call passive ethical violation the fact of not opening up a possibility when this would be easy. for instance, an electricity company that would cut off consumers solely because they do not like the customers would commit an active ethical violation, while an electricity company that would take over the business of another company and would continue to refuse to connect to the grid some customers who, as in the previous example, were refused connection on discriminatory grounds, would, in its turn, commit an ethical violation. however, as this would be the continuation of a violation rather than the creation of a new one, it would be a passive ethical violation. this distinction shows that the precautionary principle is not a fullproof method to avoid ethical violations. the precautionary principle requires to avoid doing what could have adverse side effects and that has not been sufficiently studied to know whether this is actually the case. in other words, the precautionary principle states that the epistemic risk, the risk of not knowing the consequences of an action, must be avoided above all else. however, it is possible that stopping or slowing down the development of an activity will stop or slow down the development of new possibilities of choice. there is always a risk that the precautionary principle will result in a passive ethical violation. 2.2. ethical deterioration the notion of ethical violation is insufficient to define ethical risk. we need the intermediate concept of ethical deterioration, broadly defined as a worsening of the ethical conditions in which a population lives due to pervasive ethical violations. this deterioration can be the result of two series of events: either (i) the number of ethical violations increases or (ii) the intensity of the ethical violations increases. the number of ethical violations can increase because (1) the population affected by the ethical violations increases and their frequency remains the same, or (2) the population affected remains the same, but the frequency of violations increases, or (3) the population affected and the intensity of the violations both increase. let us take the example of electricity plugs that would be considered unsafe. the issue might be that people touching the plugs are getting http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ethical risk and energy 257 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ an unpleasant or even dangerous electric shock. if the number of occurrences of such incidents increases, the pain inflicted to the overall population increases and, whether in a strict utilitarian framework of pain and pleasure, or by most if not all ethical standards, it would be considered unethical for a plug manufacturer to lower standards consciously to the level where more people are gaining painful shocks. it would also be unethical to sell a batch of faulty plugs that would give electric shocks (thus intentionally increasing the size of the population affected). these are examples of active ethical deteriorations. if the number of unsafe plugs remained the same but the population using them would grow, this would be a passive ethical deterioration. there is also an entirely different type of ethical violation. continuing with the electricity plug example, it may be that people will generally not feel any pain when touching the plug, but on very rare occasions, the plugs will be installed in such a way that people will get electrocuted and faint unconscious. it would be unethical for the plug manufacturer to modify the design so that people who get electrocuted get a lethal shock. anything lethal is an ethical violation because it reduces the choices of the individuals who get killed, which seems disproportionate with the additional profit a plug manufacturer can make as a result. this example shows two entirely different types of ethical deteriorations: an increase in the amount of small ethical violations, or the same number as before, but more serious violations. 2.3. ethical improvement on first examination, one would expect ethical improvement to be the opposite of ethical deteriorations, that is: • the number of ethical violations decreases; • the population affected by the ethical violations is reduced, assuming the frequency of ethical violations per person is not increased; • the intensity of the ethical violations goes down and does not affect a broader population. however, this leaves one category unaddressed: it is possible, through innovation for instance, to create new possibilities, new alternatives within an existing choice, or to create new situations of choice for existing individuals or for future individuals. for instance, some decades ago, i had only three possibilities to regulate the temperature in my house: (i) i could have a thermostat and let the thermostat do the work or (ii) i could stay at home and do it myself or (iii) i could ask someone http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ bertrand andre rossert 258 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ to come to my house and do it. then, a new possibility appeared with the development of phone technology: i can now connect my thermostat to my phone, and modify the temperature remotely. if this possibility exists and a manufacturer can offer it at no cost, and customers value it, then it would be unethical not to provide it to customers. this can occur passively (the manufacturer has never offered it and continues not to) or actively (the manufacturer blocks the functionality). an extreme version of the duty to avoid excluding people unnecessarily is the following: if i have so much bread that i cannot eat or store it and would have to throw it away, it is unethical to destroy it rather than to give it to hungry people if they happen to be present. said differently: when altruism is costless, it is unethical not to be altruistic. as money is a proxy for a variety of choices, a cost is, in effect, reducing choices. therefore, another formulation would be: when altruism does not reduce my own choice to an extent comparable to the increase in choice for others, it is unethical not to be altruistic. an extreme version of it is: if i do not value something, it is unethical not to provide it to others; in other words, wasting resources is unethical. the difficulty is that i can only compare my choices to the choices of others, from my own preferences and my own vantage points. preferences are not transferrable and thus we all impose a significant personal filter on ethical decision, which explains that what is immoral not to do for one individual, might be generous and altruistic for another, and simply unrealistic for a third. the cost formulation is more restrictive but more observable. in particular, when a company can provide possibilities at no cost to itself, and customers value such possibilities, it would be unethical not to provide these. more generally, ethical improvement can result from individual efforts that do not only benefit oneself. however, the world is rarely as simple as that, and efforts can result in benefits for some and costs for others. the net effect of efforts on the overall environment would be difficult to assess. individuals will usually make their decisions on the basis of a narrow reflective equilibrium, if we apply the rawlsian terminology. individuals will go back and forth between their assessment of the situation, the assessment of the impact of their efforts, the principles that guide such efforts, and the tentative broadening of their perspective to take more aspects of their environment into account. i will usually talk about ethical improvement when there have been some benefits in some way, of the action of an individual, a set of individuals or an organization, and talk of ethical progress if such improvement is not mitigated by new ethical violations. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ethical risk and energy 259 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ similarly, there are many situations where actively pursuing the disappearance of an ethical violation can potentially create other types of ethical violations. energy transport specialists are well aware of this debate: there are many situations where new energy transportation infrastructure, such as power lines or pipelines, addresses the exclusion of some communities from access to cheap, safe and reliable energy such as electricity or gas, but creates environmental damage of varying extent in the process which itself excludes populations from choices. it becomes an issue of justice. the cases where the arithmetic of ethical improvement and deterioration can be established are rare or arbitrary, as they would rely on valuations of life, of injury, of psychological upset, of modifications of the ecosystem. what is the value of the disappearance of a specific type of butterfly? once again, the underlying algebra of choices is problematic because there is not a good gauge to measure the value of a change through the choices that it makes possible (and that may not all be visible) and the choices that it will eliminate (which also may not always be immediately obvious). preferences are not epistemically transferrable and cannot be added or multiplied across individuals. an analysis of both the extent and significance of the exclusion that creates an ethical violation may sometimes allow some comparisons between ethical violations. for instance, if less people are affected by the new violation and the violation is less significant for the individuals affected, then the change has constituted an ethical improvement. yet, the more frequent situation will be one of uncertainty. 3. ethical uncertainty and risk in complex situations since knight (1921), economists distinguish between risk and uncertainty. while the risk is measurable, the uncertainty is not. this is therefore an epistemic distinction: if i have no idea about meteorology, i am uncertain about whether it is going to rain or not; if i am a meteorological expert, i might be able to assess the risk of rain. so, is it an abuse of language to talk about ethical risk rather than ethical uncertainty? our discussion of ethical deterioration and improvement has defined the concepts in very simple situations. in reality, ethical deteriorations and improvements coexist. there are situations where the severity of ethical violations will decrease but their occurrence will increase, or viceversa. should these be categorized as ethical deteriorations or improvehttp://www.ledonline.it/relations/ bertrand andre rossert 260 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ments? the short answer is that they constitute situations of ethical uncertainty. trying to turn uncertainty into a well-assessed risk is what risk professionals do and, in my view, it would be unethical not to try to establish a risk framework for ethics, because it would prevent from prioritizing the ethical violations and ethical deteriorations that need addressing. in other words, there cannot be an ethics policy without a rigorous assessment of the ethical risk, or at least an analysis of all the ethical uncertainties that can be measured. the ethical risk is the risk that ethical deterioration or ethical violation will occur. it is either linked to an intention, or at least to a lack of attention that demonstrates a lack of care or concern i.e. a lack of heideggerian sorge where the recognition of the needs of others is an essential step in the understanding of what being human means. this is also where the definition of ethical violation (as exclusion from choices by intention or omission), takes all its sense: it is through the discovery of our ethical being, through the search for ethical improvement not only of situations, but of our own behaviors, that we reveal our humanity. this is true of individuals and, in my view, also of organizations, including corporations. there have always been private firms that were incorporating ethical objectives into their strategies. some firms even developed corporate strategies in order to fulfil ethical objectives (for instance chocolate manufacturing in the uk developed in the nineteenth century as an ethical alternative to alcohol consumption). yet, there were also many firms that did not include ethical considerations in their activities or strategies. on this point, however, the tide seems to be turning and corporations have to give increasing attention to ethical issues, partly as a result of regulations (e.g. anti-corruption rules) and of the impact of civil society (corporate responsibility). arguably, the incorporation of ethical risk in an overall risk management strategy is the next step in this historical evolution. in this sense, being able to assess ethical uncertainty in a risk framework, and thus including it with the same priority as other strategic or operational risks, is the entry door for ethics into corporate strategy and corporate operations. the integration of ethics in strategy also allows a dynamic of ethics to develop. while a set of rules that need to be checked against will freeze a conception of ethics, and thus a conception of the community of reference (whose needs have to be taken into account), strategic ethics allows the deployment of a dynamic reflective equilibrium. confronted with an increasing frequency and violence of natural disasters, society is coming to terms with the need to progress from anthropocentrism to biocenhttp://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ethical risk and energy 261 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ trism and beyond. this cannot be done by decree or by a set of rules that would limit what to do. it has to occur through a change of social and cultural dynamics, where, through the reflective equilibrium process, organizations adapt their principles and define their social roles in a way that does not simply avoid ethical violations but create ethical improvement and ethical progress. ethical risk, like any risk, has three key characteristics: the probability of realization, the significance of the ethical deterioration when the risk realizes, and the level of difficulty in mitigating it. the assessment of the significance of the potential ethical deterioration is possibly the most fundamental for integration in corporate strategy. the assessment of the readiness and ease to mitigate feeds directly into the risk of reputation. let us consider the case of an offshore oil well to identify what the ethical risk really is. the ethical risk is not the safety risk. the risk of an oil spill is composed of an epistemic risk and an ethical risk. the epistemic risk is that large-scale explosions or leaks may not have occurred in similar situations before and so may not be entirely predictable or controllable. the ethical risk revolves around the decisions where the oil company’s own interest may differ from the interest of society as a whole, or in a biocentric approach, of nature as a whole. the decision to go ahead or not with the drilling includes an ethical risk. similarly, the decision to implement or not each spillage mitigation measure will have an ethical risk component. finally, the decision when to retire the well, and how, will also have ethical components. a practical recommendation would be for energy companies to subject their activities to the review of an internal but independent ethics committee that would focus on applying energy ethics to its operations, in the same way as the ethics committee of a hospital focuses on bioethics in its activities (i.e. in addition to any existing ethics committee of the board of directors, focusing on ethical issues related to governing bodies). at present, however, the onus cannot be on energy companies but on ethics research: when energy ethics is as developed as bioethics is today, then energy companies will be able to take it into account. in the meantime, developing the concept of ethical risk is perhaps the most practical and direct way for energy companies to incorporate ethical considerations into their strategies and operations. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ bertrand andre rossert 262 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 4. how the ethical risk develops: conflicts of interest and conflicts of purpose why would an organization not care and put at risk the future of a community? i will review two types of considerations: those related to epistemic psychology and those focusing on the governance of ethics in organizations. behavioral science has shown that one tends to be less attentive to arguments that do not fit with one’s own opinion or analysis than to arguments than reinforce this opinion, what is generally called a confirmation bias and can be traced back to 17th century philosophers francis bacon as pointed out by nickerson (1998). it has also been shown that information that is more readily and frequently available tends to be given more consideration as discussed in gilovich et al. (2002). the ways in which collective behaviors lead to epistemic failures is a fascinating topic which goes beyond the scope of this paper. it is important to bear in mind that organizations and the governance of organizations do not always “decide” to disregard the consequences of their actions. sometimes, they simply do not see what the result of their actions will be. in other words, what can at first appear as an active ethical violation can in fact be a passive one. it is easy, in complex situations, to take the forest for the tree or to be oblivious to the existence of impediments. other explanations are less frequently discussed and have to do with the governance of ethics situations. sometimes, organizations fail to address ethical risks because of unaddressed conflicts of interest, especially in the private sector where the regulation of conflicts of interest is still, in many ways, underdeveloped. many private organizations argue that conflicts of interest do not apply to them because they have, by definition, private interests. however, many such organizations have shareholders who have entrusted their investment to the governing bodies and executives of the organization. in such a context, the conflict of interest is embedded in the structure of the organization, leading to what i will call a “conflict of purpose”, i.e. situations where the fact of occupying a position in the organization requires to pursue several, contradictory, objectives. for instance, a negotiator is inherently in the situation of trying to make things easier for himself by agreeing to what he knows his company can accept, rather than pushing the negotiation position a bit more, to the point where the interlocutor is at the limit of what her company can accept. the concept of conflicts of interest is a direct challenge to virtue ethics. if an individual were systematically able to give priority to the http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ethical risk and energy 263 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ common good, even over and above personal interests, then “temptation”, which in effect is what a conflict of interest creates, would not matter. yet, explanations that would purely be based on greed, selfishness, or other similar sins, would be unsatisfactory in my view because they would be too systematic and lead to tautologies (such as “people do not care about others because they only care about themselves”). resorting to conflicts of interest introduces a sort of probabilistic approach to character flaws or unethical intentions: while there is increasing evidence that people are happier when they intend to be or are altruistic, there are moments when they are not. the concept of conflicts of interest needs to be extended to address not only a conflict between private interests and the interests of the organization, but between private interests inside the organization and the broader interests of the organization. risk managers are very familiar with this situation. let us imagine that the development of a new gas field is essential to the profitability of an organization. let also imagine that the risk manager has information showing that the project is too risky and should be abandoned. there is a good chance that the risk manager will face a “shoot-the-messenger” situation if she argues against the project. there is also a chance that the firm would close down immediately, whilst the banks have otherwise given two years of lines of credit to develop the new field. she can therefore have two more years of employment under current conditions. the risk manager is facing an internal conflict of interest. in all those mechanisms, the fact of naming a risk is an important first step towards mitigating it. 5. applying ethical risk in energy: identifying categories of issues when a risk receives a specific name, it becomes a concept that can be put in relation with others. as soon as i say, for instance, “risk of explosion”, i muster a body of knowledge related to what an explosion is, what is required for an explosion to take place and therefore … what is required for an explosion not to take place. there would be benefits therefore, in developing a family of concepts that would all relate to the overall notion of ethical risk, i.e. in building a taxonomy of ethical risks. one of the key instruments of risk-management is the checklist, and it starts with the identification of the categories of risk. gawande (2009) takes the example of hand washing to justify the need to create checklists. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ bertrand andre rossert 264 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ every health professional knows the importance of hand washing. yet, gawande provides multiple examples of situations where health professionals were failing to wash their hands. he finds the answer in the method developed by bomber aircrafts to avoid accidents: a checklist. arguably, the same is required in the field of practical ethics. because of heuristic or availability biases, because of the pressure that one part of an organization may impose on another, and generally because of the multiplicity of potential brain stimuli in the world at any one time, there is a risk that individuals would develop increasingly narrow reflective moral equilibria, where problems would be assumed away rather than resolved. the ethics checklist maintains a broad scope in the assessment of situations. the checklist can either be a list of things to do, or a list of things to think about, with the possibility of deciding to ignore some of them, after deliberating. in the latter case, the checklist is basically a taxonomy of issues. risk managers frequently develop checklists. so, what would an ethical risk checklist for energy operations look like? energy operations have intended and unintended consequences. the intended consequences can also entail an ethical risk, because what was planned is not necessarily what is effectively realized. for instance, one might know that drilling a gas filed may create noise and pollution for the immediate neighborhood but expect that the benefits of producing the gas will overcompensate this in the community at large. however, it sometimes happens that the geological assessment is proven wrong, and that no gas is found. then, all what is left is the negative consequences of drilling unnecessarily. there are also unintended risks. for instance, if a gas platform explodes, it is the unintended consequence of a series of actions. the challenge is then to isolate the ethical risk from other risks, so as to avoid double counting, or twice mitigating risks. here we have to recognize that some risks have an ethical component that is not always well treated and that should be part of the analysis of ethical risk. for instance, the risk of physical injury related to the use of the very potent chemicals that constitute most energy sources, has an ethical component related to the level of risk mitigation that is put in place. low level of protection against the risk of physical injury is a form of carelessness when applied to oneself, and of lack of care and empathy when applied to others. we are back to our definition of ethical violations as exclusions: has the risk realized by pure chance, or as a result of excluding oneself or others from our preoccupations? if injuries to myself have been excluded from the scope of precautionary measures, i have mistreated myself. this, in my view, is not more acceptable than mistreating others. restricting the choice of a person, including oneself, is restricting how much that person http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ethical risk and energy 265 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ can contribute to the world, and hence the ethical improvements that this person can create in an immediate or distant environment. another way in which it is unethical to exclude oneself, is when disappearing under the veil of anonymity to avoid accountability or responsibility. this is part of what heidegger was criticizing as the “they” as in “they have not foreseen the accident” or “they do not give this group access to energy”. so, one key dimension of the ethical risk is what i call a personal accountability component which requires to think, when making any decision, what my span of power, and thus of accountability is, and whether i am taking all of it into account when making a decision. a second fundamental component of the ethical risk is the fairness component. poor access to energy should not be inherited from one generation to the next. in modern society, access to electricity is becoming almost as vital as access to air and water. it has become a precondition of knowledge acquisition, to be able to read at night and, beyond a certain level of learning, to use a computer. in our decisions, we need to wonder “who am i excluding, by taking this decision?”. this is not always easy to identify, and this is one area where, as rawls defined it, a reflective equilibrium develops (1971). a third component of the ethical risk is the usage component: my decision will make use of part of the world. should i behave, as descartes suggested, as “master and possessor of nature?”. the usage component raises the kantian question of what can be turned into a means to an end. as our understanding of the global impact of single actions develops, the question becomes increasingly problematic and the dichotomy human/ non-human increasingly blurred. the risk approach allows to view our actions as producing a series of concentric circles, as when we throw a stone in a lake: as the consequences are further remote from the center, the intensity of the impact is reduced. in the energy field, much more individual and organizational thinking is required on the usage component. many energy savings do not take place, because the consequences appear too remote, i.e. they are excluded from our mental model and from the resulting reflective equilibrium. this is where we cannot continue to think of the consequences of our actions as isolated individuals, but have to recognize the cumulative impact of our decisions. while, for instance, many office employees do not think much of leaving their electricity light burning when they leave for the night, the impact of several hundreds of millions of office workers is enough to waste significant resources. a fourth component of the ethical risk is the addiction component: my decision to use electricity today conditions the way i will organize my http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ bertrand andre rossert 266 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ life in future as well, and what i will enjoy. any reader of these lines is, like me, addicted to electricity: we simply cannot do without it and would start having withdrawal symptoms if we were exposed to its absence for too long. an addiction restricts my choices for the present and the future, and, in this sense, is a form of ethical violation towards myself. finally, a fifth component is the danger component. it is possible that by using something, one is taking an uncalculated risk. one important ethical aspect is the range of population affected. here again, the ethical criterion is the requirement to avoid excluding others. the more people can be put in danger, the less acceptable the risk is. this is very different from the trolley problem of jarvis thomson (1976) because the inevitability of the trolley dilemma is not necessarily present in energy decisions. here, we can decide whether to start the trolley or not. still, the energy sector exposes decision-makers on a regular basis to a combination of the trolley problem with the reasoning presented by derek parfit (1984). if the well-being of 100,000 people depends on 5 risking to be killed by an energy operation, do you take the decision to start this energy operation? the decision is only delegated to the market up to a point. there are choices beyond those enabled by the profits that are made. boards of energy companies and energy engineers take such decisions on a daily basis. in other words, addressing the ethical risk in energy is a daily reality, not a form of ethereal abstraction. the question then is whether the management of the ethical risk can be delegated to common sense. as g.e. moore argued, common sense does not necessarily depart from what ethical theories would produce. however, even if we accept that ethical theories are grounded in common sense, i would argue that ethical theories form the guide that avoids individual decisions skidding away from ethics and veering into ethical violations. 6. conclusion the concept of ethical risk is likely to be a useful instrument to develop the ethical dimension of strategic decision-making and risk management. the energy sector is well-suited to the development of a risk framework applied to ethics. doing so is likely to deliver on two promises: a better present and a better future. yet, there is no practical framework for analyzing ethical issues related to operational situations in the energy sector. this paper suggests that the interface between ethics and risk management, namely the conhttp://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ethical risk and energy 267 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ cept of ethical risk, may constitute a fruitful and practical approach. it also suggests that an ethical risk is composed of five elements: personal accountability, fairness, usage, addiction and danger. they can be turned into the skeleton of a risk-management checklist that would need to be designed specifically for each type of energy operation or for families of strategic or policy decisions. in the field of energy, there is an added sense of urgency in addressing ethical issues, as there exists in that sector what nick bostrom (2013) calls “existential risks”, that can put into question the very existence of humanity. life could be wiped out of a region of the world by a nuclear disaster. even a very large oil spill or the explosion of a refinery could make an area inhabitable. the same argument has led to the fruitful and rapid development of bioethics. it is time that a risk approach is used to develop energy ethics. references bostrom, nick. 2013. “existential risk prevention as global priority”. global policy 4 (1), february. descartes, rené. 1937. discours de la methode. in oeuvres et lettres. paris: gallimard. heidegger, martin. (1927) 1996. being and time, translated by joan stambaugh. albany: state university of new york press. hermansson, helene, and sven ole hansson. 2007. “a three-party model tool for ethical risk analysis”. risk management 9 (3), july. hutchinson, brian. 2001. g.e. moore’s ethical theory. cambridge: cambridge university press. gawande, atul. 2009. the checklist manifesto. new york: metropolitan books. gilovich, thomas, dale griffith, and daniel kahneman, eds. 2002. heuristics and biases: the psychology of intuitive judgement. cambridge: cambridge university press. jarvis thomson, judith. 1976. “killing, letting die, and the trolley problem”. the monist: philosophical problems of death 59 (2), april: 204-17. doi: 10.5840/ monist197659224. knight, frank. 1921. risk, uncertainty, and profit. boston, ma: schaffner and marx. merle, ojasco. 2016. “csr reporting, stakeholder engagement and preventing hypocrisy through ethics audit”. journal of global entrepreneurship research 6 (14). moore, george edward. 1959. “a defense of common sense”. in philosophical papers. london: george allen and unwin. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ bertrand andre rossert 268 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ nickerson, raymond s. 1998. “confirmation bias: a ubiquitous phenomenon in many guises”. review of general psychology 2 (2). noe, thomas h., and michael j. rebello. 1994. “the dynamics of business ethics and economic activity”. the american economic review 84 (3), june. parfit, derek. 1984. reasons and persons. oxford: oxford university press. rawls, john. 1971. theory of justice. cambridge: harvard university press. svensson, goran, and greg wood. 2003. “the dynamics of business ethics: a function of time and culture – cases and models”. management decision 41 (4). tremblay, maryse, marie vandewalle, and heidi wittmer. 2016. “ethical challenges at the science-policy interface: an ethical risk assessment and proposition of an ethical infrastructure”. biodiversity and conservation 25 (7), june. van der burg, wibren. 2003. “dynamic ethics”. journal of value inquiry 37. wang, yan fu, yu lian li, biao zhang, pei na yan, and li zhang. 2015. “quantiative risk analysis of offshore fire and explosion based on the analysis of human and organizational factors”. mathematical problems in engineering 2015. https://www.hindawi.com/journals/mpe/2015/537362/. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ https://www.hindawi.com/journals/mpe/2015/537362/ max scheler e la possibilità di una nuova forma di antispecismo 5 is sn 2 2 8 0 -9 9 5 3 beyond anthropocentrism 1 • january 2013 inside the emotional lives of non-human animals a minding animals international utrecht 2012 pre-conference event special issue (genoa, italy, 12-13 may, 2012) edited by m. andreozzi, r. bennison, a. massaro, s. tonutti capabilities approach and animal bioethics • michele panzera animals and our emotions. how to approach the study of an interspecific community? • sabrina tonutti advocacy and animal rights • kim stallwood the emotional lives of animals: a christian perspective • alma massaro – gianfranco nicora animalia: ontology and ethics in weak antispeciesism • leonardo caffo the contemporary debate on experimentation • susanna penco – rosagemma ciliberti non-human animals and genetic engineering • arianna ferrari the relationship between humans and other animals in european animal welfare legislation • paola sobbrio human’s best friends? • matteo andreozzi elationsre l a t io n s . b e y o n d a n t h r o p o c e n t r is m 1 • 2 0 1 3 r 9.1-2 november 2021 animals: freedom, justice, welfare, moral status, and conflict cases edited by francesco allegri studies and research contributions pigs vs. boars: the ethics of assisting domesticated 9 and wild animals beka jalagania the chincoteague ponies and what it means to be free 27 alexis flower beyond the fairy tale of the shape of water: reimagining 41 the creature viktorija lankauskaitė max scheler e la possibilità di una nuova forma di antispecismo 59 enrico r.a. calogero giannetto distributive justice and animal welfare 75 paola morreale unitarianism or hierarchical approach for moral status? 91 a very subtle difference francesco allegri relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ relations. beyond anthropocentrism 6 comments, debates, reports and interviews animals and justice: the unfinished journey 111 paola fossati author guidelines 123 relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 59 max scheler e la possibilità di una nuova forma di antispecismo enrico r.a. calogero giannetto università degli studi di bergamo doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2021-0102-gian enrico.giannetto@unibg.it abstract this article presents the ethical thought of max scheler, beyond its anthropocentric specificity, as a possible basis for the philosophical elaboration of an anti-speciesist ethical phenomenology, of christian origin, which in turn presupposes for the self-understanding of our human existence a vegan and anti-speciesist ethical praxis, as a concrete form of active love as care for every life. keywords: animals; antispeciesism; christianity; ethics; history of ethics; love; max scheler; ontology; phenomenology; veganism. 1. introduzione la questione dell’etica animale, come è noto, fra xx e xxi secolo, ha attraversato varie fasi di elaborazione. nata all’interno di una prospettiva di etica applicata di carattere utilitaristico (singer 1975) e di una prospettiva dei diritti degli animali (regan and singer 1976; regan 1983; regan and linzey 1988), dopo la pubblicazione postuma del libro l’animal que donc je suis di jacques derrida (1930-2004) si è trasformata in una problematica di filosofia teoretica: derrida ha operato una decostruzione delle filosofie che relegavano l’animalità in uno stato di minorità e l’ha associata ad altre decostruzioni importanti come quella del maschilismo e della razionalità umana, nella critica di ciò che ha chiamato “carnofal-lo-go-centrismo” (derrida 2006). la decostruzione teoretica ha così assunto una connotazione etica (resta 2003), ma non di un’etica teoretica positiva; piuttosto di una prassi, nell’impossibilità di una teoresi. dopo, si è compreso che è possibile fornire differenti fondamenti all’antisperelations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2021-0102-gian mailto:enrico.giannetto@unibg.it https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ enrico r.a. calogero giannetto 60 cismo, e soprattutto si è cercata una fondazione ontologica o biologica, risalendo anche a filosofie precedenti: si è seguito un percorso in parte invertito rispetto alla storia dell’etica generale, in cui si era passati da una fondazione religiosa e poi metafisica e ontologica a un’autonomia totale dell’etica in socrate, cui platone, subito dopo, cercò di ridare una fondazione ontologica e metafisica (calogero 1932). un pensiero interessante su cui poter elaborare una prospettiva antispecista vegana è quello della fenomenologia etica di max scheler (1874-1928), nonostante il suo antropocentrismo. 2. la fenomenologia etica di max scheler max scheler è un filosofo ancora oggi quasi del tutto frainteso, trascurato e sottovalutato. molto spesso si presenta la fenomenologia di scheler solo come un approfondimento di quella di edmund husserl (1859-1938): scheler si sarebbe occupato, fra tutti gli atti intenzionali umani, degli atti intenzionali etici, cioè di quelli volti a tenere un comportamento etico. sua specificità sarebbe stata quella di legare gli atti intenzionali etici non all’attività di una razionalità pratica kantiana che governerebbe la volontà che si esplica nell’azione, né all’attività di una razionalità teoretica husserliana che, in quanto disinteressata, fonderebbe direttamente e intellettualmente anche la razionalità pratica etica; ma piuttosto all’attività intenzionale della dimensione affettivo-emotiva della personalità umana: l’etica non si fonda sulla razionalità pratica o teoretica, ma sulla “sensibilità”, sul “cuore”, in un richiamo a blaise pascal. già questa svolta verso una “fenomenologia trascendentale etica del cuore” (scheler 1916), rispetto all’etica razionalista dominante, sarebbe importante e poco riconosciuta, ma certamente non è tutto. scheler (scheler 1917, 1921), analizzando la filosofia teoretica platonica, mostra che la prospettiva teoretica non è assunta a priori come disinteressata, ma è piuttosto la conseguenza di un’attività etica che si qualifica come disinteressata in quanto volta a una contemplazione distaccata, a distanza, delle cose: è legata cioè a una vita contemplativa (bios theoretikos) che è considerata la massima pratica etica perché, nella teologia e nella religione popolare greca astrale, è attribuita alle stelle-dèi che stanno a guardare, a distanza, con distacco, le vicende del mondo ed è questo l’atteggiamento che permette di essere felici. la filosofia era cioè legata a una pratica di vita, coinvolgeva l’essere umano nella sua interezza, nella sua esistenza, costituiva un modo di vivere etico, come la sapienza antica richiedeva: il raggiungimento della verità richiedeva una relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ max scheler e la possibilità di una nuova forma di antispecismo 61 vita etica, che sola poteva assicurare una considerazione delle cose stesse, non finalizzata a vantaggi personali o umani. questa consapevolezza porta scheler a ribaltare la prospettiva della filosofia teoretica husserliana e dominante in generale la filosofia: l’etica, come disciplina che si occupa degli atti intenzionali etici, come parte della filosofia pratica, costituisce la “filosofia prima” su cui si deve fondare la filosofia teoretica e non viceversa; e, ancora di più, l’etica come disciplina richiede una vita etica. si possono comprendere gli atti intenzionali etici solo in una vita etica. l’intenzionalità etica non riguarda più solo la coscienza come l’intenzionalità husserliana, ma indica un coinvolgimento di tutto l’essere umano (cosa su cui lo seguirà heidegger con il suo essere-nel-mondo, pur neutralizzando l’aspetto etico) (heidegger 1927). si potrebbe dire che c’è un’immanenza del mondo e degli altri nel cuore dell’essere umano, un’immanenza nell’amore come atto. tuttavia, nella storia e nella varietà delle etnie, delle culture e delle religioni, si danno differenti ethos, cioè differenti prassi di vita, e differenti etiche; e si può così comprendere la varietà delle filosofie come derivata da una varietà di ethos. scheler non condivide l’ethos greco e antico della vita contemplativa: questo implica il distacco dalle cose e dagli altri per preservare una felicità individuale egoistica. scheler trova nel cristianesimo originario un’altra prassi etica, che considera come attività etica massima non la contemplazione intellettuale, ma piuttosto una vita activa guidata dal cuore e che si compie in un amore quale cura attiva nei confronti delle cose e degli altri. questa prassi etica porta anche a un’altra forma di comprensione non meramente intellettuale: si comprendono effettivamente le cose e gli altri quando ci si avvicina, eliminando ogni distacco e ogni distanza, nell’amore. scheler si rende conto che la prassi etica cristiana non è mai stata elaborata in una filosofia corrispondente: il cristianesimo ha piuttosto assunto come propria dottrina la filosofia teoretica greca, platonica e aristotelica, con lievi modificazioni soltanto. per scheler, le intuizioni di agostino sono rimaste vincolate a una filosofia neo-platonica e la prospettiva di pascal sulle “ragioni del cuore” non è stata ulteriormente sviluppata (scheler 1914-1916, 1915): “l’uomo, prima di essere un ens cogitans o un ens volens, è un ens amans”. scheler opera così un secondo ribaltamento nel ribaltamento, che sta nel rovesciare il rapporto gerarchico fra intelletto e ragione, da una parte, e “sensibilità” e “cuore” dall’altra. se è il “cuore”, cioè la sfera affettivo-emotiva, alla base della vita etica e dell’etica, lo sarà anche alla base della filosofia: si tratterà di sviluppare una “fenomenologia etica”, in relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ enrico r.a. calogero giannetto 62 cui gli atti teoretici avranno la loro base negli atti pratici etici, radicati nel cuore. se la comprensione si realizza nell’amore vissuto, la filosofia come teoria, in quanto trasposizione linguistico-razionale di tale comprensione, resterà, appunto, sempre su un meta-livello rispetto al processo dell’effettiva comprensione delle cose con il cuore, che avverrà sul piano pratico dell’azione etica d’amore (scheler 1923). scheler condivide così con la psicoanalisi la priorità della dimensione affettivo-emotiva su quella intellettuale e la determinazione delle teorie quali razionalizzazioni superficiali di una sfera più profonda, che però non è sede solo di istinti egoistici di piacere o di loro rimozioni patologiche, ma piuttosto anche di “sentimenti” consapevoli, eticamente orientati in modo tale da permetterci un accesso alle cose e agli altri, “coinvolto” e “disinteressato” solo nel senso di essere privo di interessi egoistici negativi. scheler condivide altresì con le scienze sperimentali la priorità della dimensione pratica su quella teorica e una gnoseologia (una teoria della conoscenza) basata sull’azione e non sul pensiero puro: non però di una pratica tecnica, ma di una pratica etica. scheler reinterpreta così la metodologia gnoseologica della fenomenologia di husserl nei termini di una “metodologia etica”, cioè di un discorso che permetta di trovare la “retta via” in senso etico, perché è questa che ci consentirà di accedere e tornare alle cose stesse. l’intuizione categoriale-eidetica, che ci permette di comprendere l’“essenza” delle cose, i fenomeni nella loro “purezza”, non è più considerata come un’in tuizione intellettuale, ma piuttosto come un’intuizione “sentimentale”, un’intuizione “del cuore” che si ha nell’azione etica d’amore, un’intuizione etica: si tratta di una “categoria del cuore” (non dell’intelletto) che impronta la nostra comprensione delle cose. questa intuizione “del cuore” permette di cogliere nelle cose la dimensione del “valore”, cioè quella dimensione di tutte le cose, di tutti i viventi e di tutti gli umani, che richiede il nostro rispetto e la nostra cura ugualmente come nei riguardi di noi stessi. qual è l’“essenza” delle cose svelata da questa intuizione etica? che cosa sono i fenomeni nella loro “purezza”? queste risposte risultano più chiare dalla reinterpretazione scheleriana della “riduzione fenomenologica” in senso etico. essa si effettua attraverso tre tipologie di azioni etiche: l’auto-controllo delle pulsioni, l’umiliazione dell’io e l’amore. non si tratta affatto, cioè, di deprivare le cose dalla loro realtà e dalla loro singolarità per enucleare un eidos ideale e universale come in husserl, ma piuttosto si tratta, prima di tutto, di depurare le cose, per come si manifestano a noi quali fenomeni, da tutte le connotazioni soggettive e antropocentriche con cui noi li ricopriamo: ci sono connotazioni che derivano relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ max scheler e la possibilità di una nuova forma di antispecismo 63 dalle nostre pulsioni istintive egoistiche, da cui ci libera l’auto-controllo; ci sono connotazioni ulteriori che derivano dal fatto che cogliamo le cose da una prospettiva che è di fatto, inevitabilmente, la nostra realtà individuale-egoica vitale e umana nella nostra storia esistenziale individuale e collettiva, da cui ci libera l’umiliazione dell’io. e, liberati i fenomeni da queste connotazioni soggettive, è l’amore che ci permette positivamente di cogliere le prospettive di tutti gli altri e, al di là della relatività e della parzialità di tutte le connotazioni soggettive e umane, di aprirci così alle cose stesse nella loro intrinsecità, di partecipare al loro essere nell’unione amorosa con esse: l’amore ci permette di cogliere anche gli altri nella loro totalità (al di là delle differenze di etnia, di genere, di cultura e di specie), al di là delle loro pulsioni e delle loro azioni egocentriche e antropocentriche o biocentriche negative, come possibili soggetti etici d’amore. rapportarsi a tutte le alterità come possibili soggetti d’amore significa comprenderle concretamente nella loro reale “idealità” e nella loro singolare “universalità” etiche, e mai intellettuali, frutto di astrazioni. scheler supera così il soggettivismo della fenomenologia husserliana: la realtà non è costituita dall’attività noetica del soggetto umano, ma anzi è necessario depurare i fenomeni dalle connotazioni soggettive umane per accedere alle realtà che si dona solo nell’azione etica al soggetto e però mai esaustivamente. scheler cerca di superare precedenti concezioni dell’amore e dell’etica, ma riuscendoci solo parzialmente e cadendo in varie incoerenze. scheler vuole fondare un’etica non meramente formale e vuota come quella kantiana, ma che abbia dei contenuti effettivi e materiali, pur restando trascendentale e apriori; vuole spezzare le due identità, da una parte, fra razionale, formale e apriori, dall’altra, fra sensibile, materiale e aposteriori: vuole fondare un’etica trascendentale (apriori), della sensibilità e materiale dei valori. i valori si mostrerebbero all’intuizione eidetica sentimentale forme a priori oggettive delle cose. anziché fermarsi alla considerazione del “valore” etico intrinseco inestimabile (cioè non traducibile in alcun economico valore d’uso o di scambio) di ogni singolo essere vivente o di ogni singola cosa esistente riconoscibile dall’intuizione etica, scheler pensa ad un ordine gerarchico, dato a priori, di varie tipologie di valori che vanno dal piacevole all’utile, dall’utile al vitale, dal vitale allo spirituale, e dallo spirituale al sacro come il più elevato. l’atto etico è quello che preferisce il valore più alto, e lo stesso amore è definito come un movimento verso il valore più alto. i valori sono distinti dalle cose-beni che ne sono i concreti portatori, perché esisterebbero in sé a prescindere dai beni concreti mutevoli come un mondo eterno dall’ordine immutabile: l’esempio potrebbe essere la distinzione fra un amico relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ enrico r.a. calogero giannetto 64 concreto empirico che si può perdere per tanti motivi, mentre il valore dell’amicizia resta immutabile e valutabile apriori rispetto agli amici concreti che per noi l’incarnano. il “mondo dei valori” di scheler è un nuovo “mondo delle idee” platonico. da questo punto di vista, è chiaro che i valori così intesi costituiscono delle astrazioni che conducono a una idealità e a una universalità intellettuali nel cuore dell’etica del sentimento: queste astrazioni intellettuali ricadono ancora in un razionalismo etico soggiacente il sentimento e sono strumentali a una fondazione aprioristica, trascendentale dell’etica. ma c’è di più: in questa teoria, seppure l’amore è il “sommo bene”, è ridefinito come ciò che comporta un movimento, una trasformazione verso valori più alti; e, se questi sono ordinati in una gerarchia fallace come quella posta da scheler (un ordo amoris che considera i valori del sacro come i più alti), si hanno gravi contraddizioni in cui scheler medesimo ricade. così, l’amore potrebbe comportare – a mio parere inaccettabilmente – la pena di morte, l’uccisione in guerra, perché il valore stesso della vita è gerarchicamente inferiore, nell’ordine di scheler, al valore spirituale giuridico-statale o al valore sacro-religioso per cui si possono effettuare dei sacrifici di vite. d’altra parte, scheler aveva introdotto quest’ordine gerarchico dei valori per rifondare l’ordo amoris di agostino, che si basava su un ordine gerarchico dei beni, che portava a sua volta a gravi incongruenze (scheler 1914-1916). per agostino, come spiega bene hanna arendt (1906-1975) nella sua tesi di dottorato del 1929 (arendt 1929), l’esistenza umana è contraddistinta platonicamente da un eros che ha come fine il raggiungimento della felicità individuale nell’ottica greca di un’etica eudemonistica: l’eros platonico era un movimento ascendente dai beni particolari del bel corpo e della bella anima all’idea universale ed eterna del bene. agostino sostituisce all’idea platonica del bene il “sommo bene” che è dio, e alla contemplazione dell’idea di bene la contemplazione di dio, che sola ci può rendere felici: l’eros rivolto verso i beni terreni transeunti è terreno, negativo e viene indicato come cupiditas, e l’eros rivolto verso il sommo bene divino eterno è celeste, positivo e viene indicato come caritas. per quanto agostino accetti lo specifico cristiano “amore del prossimo”, questa forma d’amore ha difficoltà ad essere inserita in questa sua prospettiva platonica, perché il prossimo risulterebbe un bene terreno, dal quale bisogna distogliere l’eros: così, l’amore del prossimo tende ad essere ridotto al desiderio che anche gli altri raggiungano la propria felicità individuale nell’amore di dio. secondo agostino, le cose-beni del mondo sono per essere utilizzati da noi (uti), mentre dio come sommo bene è per essere relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ max scheler e la possibilità di una nuova forma di antispecismo 65 posseduto e goduto da noi (frui): in ogni caso, la prospettiva dell’etica eudemonistica greca e platonica volta al raggiungimento della propria felicità individuale è fatta propria da agostino, per cui tutti i rapporti con le cose e con dio sono comunque strumentali alla propria felicità. quest’etica agostiniana dei beni non coglie quindi l’essenza dell’amore cristiano quale agàpe, che si distingue dalla pagana “cura di sé” volta alla propria felicità individuale. l’agàpe è “cura attiva e concreta degli altri”, volta alla felicità di tutti gli altri, quale dono della propria vita agli altri, anche se questo dono può implicare per sé sofferenza e morte. nella prospettiva originaria cristiana, essendo dio l’amore (i giov. 4.8 e 4.16), non solo l’amore è un’attività indice di pienezza di realtà e non un’attività indicante una mancanza, ma non ci può essere amore di dio senza l’amore del prossimo, perché l’amore di dio non è amore di un oggetto ad esclusione di altri, ma piuttosto è amore dell’amore di tutto e di tutti, che si dà solo nell’amare gli altri in quanto tali. la sostituzione da parte di scheler dell’ordine gerarchico agostiniano dei beni con un ordine gerarchico dei valori gli permette di superare il problema agostiniano dell’amore del prossimo: tutto può essere amato. tuttavia, come già detto, in scheler c’è una gerarchia dell’amore subordinata a un ordine di valori: il problema platonico-agostiniano si riproduce su un altro piano in cui alla gerarchia dei beni si sostituisce una gerarchia dei valori. il ribaltamento cristiano della prospettiva platonica sull’amore consiste nel fatto che l’amore non è il movimento ascendente verso il sommo bene, ma l’amore è lo stesso bene: è il bene in sé ed è volto alla felicità altrui nella loro totalità. scheler comprende questo ribaltamento parzialmente: definisce l’amore come il movimento ascendente verso il “sommo valore”, e, sebbene il fine dell’azione non è la propria felicità individuale, il sommo valore non coincide con lo stesso amore: il sommo valore può essere quello collettivo, a cui si può sacrificare la vita di un individuo o di molti, come nelle guerre. scheler comprende che l’amore cristiano è amore personale quale amore nei confronti degli altri come soggetti, ma lo qualifica come puramente spirituale e acosmico confondendolo con l’amore ideale platonico: l’amore cristiano, l’agàpe, come dio, si fa carne, non si limita a un piano spirituale. è in essenza e forme della simpatia (scheler 1913, 1923) che scheler sviluppa una fenomenologia della sfera affettivo-emotiva rilevante per l’etica, distinguendo gerarchicamente le varie forme di sentimento verso gli altri, quali unipatia, empatia, simpatia/compassione, filantropia e amore personale: solo la forma più alta del sentire, l’amore può fondare l’etica. nel tentativo di distinguere antropocentricamente in maniera netta le caratteristiche umane da quelle degli altri animali, scheler pone un’opporelations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ enrico r.a. calogero giannetto 66 sizione assoluta fra vita e spirito (scheler 1928), che resta un presupposto teoretico-metafisico puro rispetto alla sua fenomenologia etica dell’amore: una fenomenologia che si svincoli da tutti i presupposti non avrebbe potuto distinguere nell’azione etica dualisticamente una realtà della vita e una realtà dello spirito. questo dualismo lo porta a un dualismo fra eros platonico-greco come amore vitale e agàpe cristiana come amore personale-spirituale: da un lato, l’eros non basta per la fondazione dell’etica, ma neanche l’agàpe, se ridotto ad amore puramente spirituale, è sufficiente. tuttavia, questa soluzione porta a considerare positivamente l’aspetto eudemonistico-egoistico dell’eros, non permettendo di comprendere anche l’amore fisico come forma di amore effettivo dell’altro (cioè come effettivo agàpe cristiano originario, che è amore totale fisico-vitale-spirituale). in questo modo, scheler non riesce a vedere nel cristianesimo un’etica cosmica, universale, onnicomprensiva e rivolta al rispetto di ogni vita e anche al rispetto della natura: per scheler, l’etica cristiana comporterebbe anzi una volontà di dominio della natura e una prospettiva acosmica spirituale e quindi antropocentrica; e, laddove l’esempio di san francesco d’assisi, introdotto nella seconda edizione del 1923 di essenza e forme della simpatia (scheler [1913] 1923), attento a tutta la natura e comprendente, in maniera non gerarchica, la fraternità e la sorellanza di tutte le creature, contraddice questa sua visione, si inventa che la posizione di san francesco si può spiegare solo come caso di una fusione di eros greco e di agàpe cristiana. scheler immagina così un’influenza dell’eros della poesia provenzale (a sua volta determinata, secondo scheler, da influenze arabe) su francesco; ma scheler, anche ammessa questa influenza, non tiene in conto il fatto che quasi certamente la poesia provenzale si è formata a partire da influenze catare: l’eresia catara era diffusa nell’area provenzale. i catari, che derivavano la loro prospettiva cristiana dall’eresia manichea e che riprendevano il nome dall’eresia dei katharoi del terzo secolo, erano vegetariani e predicavano proprio una uguaglianza di tutte le creature viventi di fronte a dio. che questa fosse proprio la prospettiva del cristianesimo originario e di gesù è dimostrato da alcuni agrapha (asin et palacios 1917, 1926; deleanu 2002, 25-35, 48) e, fra molte altre, dalla testimonianza di eusebio nella dimostrazione evangelica (eusebio 2000, libro iii, 74). per negare questo respiro cosmico all’etica di gesù – certamente presente come si vedrà più avanti – scheler si improvvisa maldestramente esegeta del nuovo testamento, non tenendo conto dei testi originali o delle varianti. la com-passione cosmica cristiana autentica si basa su un brano del vangelo di matteo in cui gesù, identificato con il “figlio dell’uomo”, con il re-pastore e con il signore, consapevolmente si auto-comprende relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ max scheler e la possibilità di una nuova forma di antispecismo 67 come tutt’uno con tutte le creature che soffrono e identifica amore di dio e amore di tutte le creature: matteo 25.31-46: 31quando il figlio dell’uomo verrà nella sua gloria con tutti i suoi angeli, si siederà sul trono della sua gloria. 32e saranno riunite davanti a lui tutte le genti, ed egli separerà gli uni dagli altri, come il pastore separa le pecore dai capri, 33e porrà le pecore alla sua destra e i capri alla sinistra. 34allora il re dirà a quelli che stanno alla sua destra: venite, benedetti del padre mio, ricevete in eredità il regno preparato per voi fin dalla fondazione del mondo. 35perché io ho avuto fame e mi avete dato da mangiare, ho avuto sete e mi avete dato da bere; ero forestiero e mi avete ospitato, 36nudo e mi avete vestito, malato e mi avete visitato, carcerato e siete venuti a trovarmi. 37allora i giusti gli risponderanno: signore, quando mai ti abbiamo veduto affamato e ti abbiamo dato da mangiare, assetato e ti abbiamo dato da bere? 38quando ti abbiamo visto forestiero e ti abbiamo ospitato, o nudo e ti abbiamo vestito? 39e quando ti abbiamo visto ammalato o in carcere e siamo venuti a visitarti? 40rispondendo, il re dirà loro: in verità vi dico: ogni volta che avete fatto queste cose a uno solo di questi miei fratelli-sorelle creature più piccole, l’avete fatto a me. 41poi dirà a quelli alla sua sinistra: via, lontano da me, voi artefici del male, nel fuoco dell’eone futuro, preparato dal diavolo per i suoi messaggeri. 42perché ho avuto fame e non mi avete dato da mangiare; ho avuto sete e non mi avete dato da bere; 43ero forestiero e non mi avete ospitato, nudo e non mi avete vestito, malato e in carcere e non mi avete visitato. 44anch’essi allora risponderanno: signore, quando mai ti abbiamo visto affamato o assetato o forestiero o nudo o malato o in carcere e non ti abbiamo assistito? 45ma egli risponderà: in verità vi dico: ogni volta che non avete fatto queste cose a uno di questi miei fratelli-sorelle creature più piccole, non l’avete fatto a me. 46e se ne andranno, questi nel dolore all’eone futuro, e i giusti alla vita futura eterna. è stato albert schweitzer a mostrare per primo che il termine solitamente tradotto con “minimi fratelli” aveva una connotazione non meramente umana (schweitzer [2001] 2002, 56), ma si riferiva a tutti i viventi e che quindi implicava in gesù una consapevole forma di consapevole unipatia cosmo-vitale nella sofferenza: questo brano implica anche che non c’è differenza in gesù fra amore di dio e amore del prossimo, e smentisce su tutti i fronti l’interpretazione del cristianesimo di scheler (san francesco sicuramente si è ispirato a questo brano). questa forma di unipatia presente in gesù è mostrata anche da altre testimonianze. negli atti apocrifi di giovanni 94-96, è riportato un inno di gesù: ci ordinò di fare un cerchio tenendoci l’un l’altro per mano […] poi prese a cantare un inno, dicendo: “[…] ti ringraziamo, luce, nella quale non abita alcuna tenebra […] la grazia danza […] danzate tutti. amen […] il numero dodici delle stelle danza in alto. amen. il tutto partecipa alla relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ enrico r.a. calogero giannetto 68 danza e colui che danza appartiene al tutto. amen. colui che non danza ignora ciò che è accaduto. amen […] rispondi ora alla mia danza, vedi te stesso in me che parlo […] tu che danzi comprendi ciò che faccio, 96.32. giacché è anche tua questa sofferenza di tutti gli esseri innocenti che io sopporterò […] io sono la parola che ha danzato con tutte le cose […]”. (moraldi 1971; corsivo aggiunto) nel vangelo copto di tommaso, logion 77, è detto da gesù: “io sono la luce che è su ogni cosa. io sono il tutto: il tutto è uscito da me e il tutto a me è ritornato. spaccate un legno, io sono là; alzate la pietra e là mi troverete”. similmente, nel papiro di ossirinco1, gesù dice: “alza la pietra / e là mi troverai. / spacca il legno / ed ivi io sono” (moraldi 1971). che anche questi brani vadano interpretati non nei termini di una mera onnipresenza divina, ma piuttosto di una consapevole unipatia nella sofferenza e capacità di com-passione, è testimoniato dall’interpretazione cristiano-manichea di uno iesus patibilis, in particolare di fausto di milevi: “gesù, la vita e la salvezza degli uomini, è appeso a qualsiasi legno (patibilis iesus, suspensus ex ligno)”, come discusso polemicamente in agostino, nelle esposizioni sui salmi (agostino 1978-2009a, vol.  xxviii/2, 140, 12): […] qui autem, inquiunt, agricola est, multum laedit crucem luminis. quaeris quam crucem luminis? membra, inquiunt, illa dei quae capta sunt in illo proelio, mixta sunt universo mundo, et sunt in arboribus, in herbis, in pomis, in fructibus. gesù (o dio in gesù) nella sua vita, e massimamente sulla croce, partecipa a tutto il dolore del mondo, non solo umano, ma di tutti gli esseri (agostino 1978-2009b, vol. xiii/1-2, xiv). in ogni caso, scheler definisce la prospettiva di francesco quella di un amore che costituisce una forma di consapevole spiritualizzata unipatia cosmo-vitale: l’unipatia (einsfühlung) è considerata soprattutto una originaria e primitiva, inconscia, capacità di auto-identificazione dell’individuo con il resto dell’universo, di “sentire” all’unisono con l’universo. mentre le religioni orientali arcaiche valorizzerebbero una forma di unipatia inconscia “negativa”, basata sulla capacità di sentire come propria la sofferenza di ogni vivente e del mondo considerato vivente (la filosofia buddhista della com-passione ne sarebbe una razionalizzazione), differentemente la religione greca panica valorizzerebbe una forma di unipatia inconscia “positiva”, basata sulla capacità di sentire lo stesso eros in tutta la natura (la metafisica dell’eros di platone e poi di aristotele, fino al loro inglobamento in agostino, in tommaso e da questo in dante che scrive l’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle, non ne sarebbe che una razionalizzazione). tuttavia, in questa distinzione, scheler non sottolinea abbastanza che, mentre la prima forma orientale di unipatia si è tradotta relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ max scheler e la possibilità di una nuova forma di antispecismo 69 nell’affermazione consapevole di una solidale forma di co-sentire (mitfühlen, sympathisieren), di com-passione, la seconda forma occidentale di unipatia effettivamente si è tradotta nell’affermazione consapevole non di un effettivo co-sentire, ma piuttosto di una meramente comune pulsione individualistica ed egoistica. certamente, la critica da parte di friedrich nietzsche (1844-1900) al sentimento della com-passione ha evidenziato che in alcune forme religiose, esemplarmente nel buddhismo, questa si riduce a un atteggiamento distaccato di superiorità e di “mera pietà” nei confronti di chi soffre, provato mentre si è assorti nella meditazione, e non è affatto un coinvolgimento nella sofferenza di un effettivo co-sentire e meno che mai un amore attivo nella cura delle sofferenze; tuttavia, nietzsche non tiene conto che già in arthur schopenhauer (1788-1860) la com-passione ha inglobato in sé elementi cristiani di com-passione non riducibile a quella buddhista e che non possono essere oggetto della stessa critica (la confusione in nietzsche ha la sua radice nell’interpretazione di schopenhauer che mischia cristianesimo e buddhismo). scheler continua, però, in qualche modo e con un senso positivo, il tentativo di nietzsche di mostrare come sia l’etica a determinare la metafisica: nietzsche aveva mostrato come l’etica di platone fosse alla base della sua metafisica del mondo delle idee per assicurare che la ricerca del bene avesse come esito la felicità individuale (eudemonia). scheler mette così in evidenza che schopenhauer ha dedotto dalla com-passione la sua metafisica monistica della volontà unica universale che soggiace alle apparenti volontà individuali, e, allo stesso modo, che eduard von hartmann (1842-1906) ha dedotto dall’amore la sua metafisica monistica. ma la fenomenologia del sentire di scheler mostra che solo considerando l’unipatia nella sua forma inconscia si sarebbe potuti arrivare a una metafisica monistica, mentre la com-passione e l’amore, che implicano un’unipatia consapevole dell’alterità e non una mera identificazione in cui l’io e il tu restano indistinti nell’inconscio, non possono definire una metafisica monistica, perché l’altro non può essere riassorbito nell’egoità e la com-passione e l’amore implicano l’irriducibilità dell’altro. scheler si chiede, allora, a quale comprensione nuova dell’essere delle cose ci apra l’amore come forma più alta di co-sentire; e la risposta è che il nostro essere in realtà non è un essere individuale ma è un conessere, un con-essere-l’uno-con-l’altro: la nostra identità non coincide con la nostra egoità, ma contiene in sé gli altri, anzi, nell’unipatia cosmovitale consapevole, comprende in sè tutto l’universo vivente; il noi, che si può estendere all’universo intero, precede l’io, e l’io nasce solo da una separazione indebita dagli altri. relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ enrico r.a. calogero giannetto 70 ralph acampora (acampora 2006) cerca di sviluppare una prospettiva simile, non tenendo conto di scheler e della sua fondazione etica del l’ontologia, restando paradossalmente più vicino a una prospettiva ontologica heideggeriana, che aveva neutralizzato ontologicamente il con-essere scheleriano. scheler così fonda una nuova “ontologia etica”. questo con-essere è quindi più precisamente un con-amare, che costituisce la nostra “natura” più profonda che abbiamo tradito e continuamente tradiamo: l’essenza va compresa in termini temporali di originarietà da cui ci siamo allontanati; tutto è originariamente amore. certamente questa prospettiva scheler l’ha derivata dal cristianesimo: da una parte, dio come agàpe è considerato come trinità, cioè come tre persone ma una sola sostanza (essere); dall’altra, in san paolo, ripreso anche da agostino, si parla di un unico corpo mistico-cosmico di cristo di cui gli individui sono membra, realizzata anche attraverso l’eucarestia che, come cibo non-violento, ci trasforma in unico corpo comunione d’amore. il mistero della trinità o del corpo mistico di cristo non sono considerati come meri dogmi, ma come aperture a una nuova comprensione della realtà. secondo scheler, è quindi la fenomenologia dell’amore che ci rivela nel con-essere l’impronta del dio-amore cristiano: la prova dell’esistenza di dio-amore non ci può certo essere data da una dimostrazione razionale metafisica, ma dall’amore stesso. il nucleo del pensiero di scheler è quindi etico, ha le sue radici nel cristianesimo e nel pensiero romantico tedesco dell’ottocento: anche se li critica, scheler riprende a suo modo schopenhauer e eduard von hartmann (letteralmente “l’uomo-cuore”); mentre la fenomenologia ne costituisce il metodo. tuttavia, scheler è all’origine anche della “fenomenologia ermeneutica” o dell’“ermeneutica fenomenologica”, che poi sarà sviluppata da martin heidegger (1889-1976). scheler abbandona la fenomenologia della percezione di husserl e la sostituisce con una fenomenologia della comprensione (scheler 1913, 1923), facendo una sintesi del pensiero di husserl con quello di wilhelm dilthey (1833-1911). per scheler il nostro incontro originario con le cose e con il mondo non è percettivo di dati materiali: per noi le cose e il mondo si presentano primariamente non nella loro mera materialità, ma anche nella loro psichicità e nella loro spiritualità, nel loro senso e non loro “valore” etico: quando c’è, per esempio, un uomo con le mani giunte o rivolte verso il cielo, noi non vediamo soltanto il suo corpo materiale e poi da questo deduciamo logicamente che sta pregando, ma interpretiamo e comprendiamo direttamente la sua psichicità, la sua spiritualità, il senso e il valore del gesto. la comprenrelations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ max scheler e la possibilità di una nuova forma di antispecismo 71 sione effettiva è una partecipazione etica del nostro essere all’essere delle cose e del mondo, non una spiegazione razionale che da percezioni materiali inferisce altre qualità. secondo scheler, non è vero quanto affermato da cartesio, e rielaborato da husserl, che si abbia solo un’auto-percezione immediata dell’io dalla cui primaria certezza tutto il resto si deve inferire: possiamo “percepire-comprendere” gli altri nello stesso modo immediato dell’io, possiamo “percepirne” immediatamente i sentimenti e i pensieri come nostri, e la distinzione fra io e tu è meramente secondaria. se per fichte anche l’esistenza degli altri doveva essere dedotta da un postulato etico del l’io, per scheler invece nella intuizione etica immediata dell’amore ci auto-comprendiamo primariamente come un noi cosmico al quale apparteniamo e di cui partecipiamo. all’eudemonismo individualistico corrisponde un egoismo e un solipsismo metafisico, all’etica dell’amore corrisponde un con-essere universale in una “unipatia cosmico-vitale” dell’uomo anche “con le nuvole e col vento”, con le piante, ma soprattutto con gli altri animali. da qui, la possibilità di una nuova forma di etica del rispetto della vita, che, se integrata con una fenomenologia della vita vegetale e animale e delle loro differenze (le piante non soffrono per la raccolta del frutto, che costituisce piuttosto una forma di dono in cui si stabilisce una simbiosi evolutiva con gli animali che se ne nutrono), può declinarsi in una nuova forma di antispecismo vegano. riferimenti bibliografici acampora, ralph r. 2006. corporal compassion: animal ethics and philosophy of body. pittsburgh: university of pittsburgh press (trad. it. a cura di m. maurizi e m. filippi, fenomenologia della compassione. etica animale e filosofia del corpo, sonda: casale monferrato, 2008). agostino, aurelio. 1978-2009a. esposizioni sui salmi. in opera omnia, edizione con testo latino a fronte, xxviii/2. roma: città nuova. agostino, aurelio. 1978-2009b. polemica con i manichei. in opera omnia, edizione con testo latino a fronte, xiii/1-2, xiv. roma: città nuova. arendt, hannah. 1929. liebesbegriff bei augustin. versuch einer philosophischen interpretation. berlin: julius (trad. it. a cura di l. boella, il concetto d’amore in agostino. saggio d’interpretazione filosofica, milano: se, 2001). asin et miguel palacios, edd. 1917, 1926, 1990, 2003. logia et agrapha domini jesu – apud moslemicos scriptores, asceticos praesertim, usitata i et ii. in patrologia orientalis, t. 13, fasc. 3, n. 64 (1917) e t. 19, fasc. 4, n. 94 (1926). turnhout (belgium): brepols. relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ enrico r.a. calogero giannetto 72 calogero, guido. 1932. etica. in enciclopedia treccani (1932), xiii, 447b-454a; 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nuova edizione italiana a cura di f. volpi sulla versione di p. chiodi con le glosse a margine dell’hüttenexemplar [esemplare della baita] di heidegger, longanesi: milano, 2005; trad. it., con testo tedesco a fronte, di a. marini, essere e tempo, milano: mondadori, 2006). moraldi, luigi, a cura di. 1971, 1994. apocrifi del nuovo testamento, i-iii, prima edizione torino: utet; poi casale monferrato: piemme. regan, tom. 1983. the case for animal rights. berkeley: university of california press (trad. it. di r. rini, i diritti animali, milano: garzanti, 1990). regan, tom, and andrew linzey. 1988. animals and christianity: a book of readings. new york: crossroads (trad. it. gli animali e il cristianesimo. per un’etica compassionevole, casale monferrato: sonda, 2012). regan, tom, and peter singer. 1976. animal rights and human obligations. englewood cliffs (nj): prentice hall (trad. it. di p. garavelli, diritti animali, obblighi umani, torino: edizioni gruppo abele, 1987). resta, caterina. 2003. l’evento dell’altro. etica e politica in jacques derrida. torino: bollati boringhieri. scheler, max. 1913, 1923. wesen und formen der sympathie. bern: cohen (trad. it. di l. pusci, essenza e forme della simpatia, roma: città nuova, 1980; trad. it. di l. oliva e s. soannini, a cura di l. boella, milano: francoangeli, 2010). scheler, max. 1913-1916, 1921, 1927. der formalismus in der ethik und die materiale wertethik. neuer versuch der grundlegung eines ethischen personalismus, herausgegeben von m. frings. bonn: bouvier, 2009 (trad. it., con testo tedesco a fronte, a cura di r. guccinelli e con una presentazione di r. de monticelli, il formalismo nell’etica e l’etica materiale dei valori. nuovo tentativo di fondazione di un personalismo etico, milano: bompiani, 2013). scheler, max. 1914-1916, 1933. ordo amoris. in schriften aus dem nachlass, i: zur ethik und erkenntnislehre, 227-261. berlin: der neue geist (trad. it. a cura di e. simonotti, ordo amoris, brescia: morcelliana, 2008; trad. it., con testo tedesco a fronte, a cura di l. iannascoli, ordo amoris, roma: aracne, 2009). relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/i_diritti_animali https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/peter_singer https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ max scheler e la possibilità di una nuova forma di antispecismo 73 scheler, max. 1915, 1963. liebe und erkenntnis. in m. scheler, gesammelte werke i-xiii, vi: schriften zur soziologie und weltanschauungslehre, herausgegeben von maria scheler, 77-98. münchen bern: francke verlag (trad. it. a cura di l. pesante, amore e conoscenza, padova: liviana, 1967; trad. it., con testo tedesco a fronte, a cura di l. iannascoli, liebe und erkenntnis. amore e conoscenza, roma: aracne, 2010). scheler, max. 1917, 1921. vom wesen der philosophie und der moralischen bedingung des philosophischen erkennens. in vom ewigen im menschen. leipzig: reinhold verlag der neue geist; poi in gesammelte werke, v, herausgegeben von maria scheler, 61-99. bern münchen: francke verlag, 1954, 2000 (trad. it. di ubaldo pellegrino, l’essenza della filosofia, in l’eterno nell’uomo, milano: fabbri, 1972 e roma: edizioni logos, 1991; l’essenza della filosofia, a cura di c. amicantonio, catanzaro: rubettino, 2001; poi l’essenza della filosofia, in l’eterno nell’uomo, trad. it., con testo tedesco a fronte, a cura di p. premoli de marchi, 222-305, milano: bompiani, 2009). scheler, max. 1928. die stellung des menschen im kosmos. darmstadt: o. reichl (trad. it. a cura di r. padellaro, la posizione dell’uomo nel cosmo, in la posizione dell’uomo nel cosmo e altri saggi, milano, fabbri, 1970; poi a cura di m.t. pansera, 115-191, roma: armando, 1997; trad. it. a cura di g. cusinato dall’edizione originale del 1928, la posizione dell’uomo nel cosmo, milano: francoangeli, 2000, 2009). schweitzer, albert. 2001. predigten 1898-1948, herausgegeben von r. brüllmann und e. grässer. münchen: beck (trad. it. parziale a cura di e. colombo, predica della domenica 2 marzo 1919, servizio mattutino a st. nicolai, in la melodia del rispetto per la vita. prediche di strasburgo, milano: paoline, 2002). singer, peter. 1975, 1990. animal liberation. new york: avon books (trad. it. di p. cavalieri e e. ferreri, a cura di p. cavalieri, liberazione animale, milano: mondadori, 1991). relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ relations_9-1-2-2021_00b_sommario.pdf studies and research contributions pigs vs. boards beka jalagania the chincoteague ponies and what it means to be free alexis flower beyond the fairy tale of the shape of water viktorija lankauskaitė max scheler e la possibilità di una nuova forma di antispecismo enrico r.a. calogero giannetto distributive justice and animal welfare paola morreale unitarianism or hierarchical approach for moral status? a very subtle difference francesco allegri comments, debates, reports and interviews animals and justice paola fossati author guidelines renewable energy issues in africa contexts 117 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ renewable energy issues in africa contexts 1 diana-abasi ibanga centre for environmental governance and resource management nigeria department of philosophy, university of calabar, cross river state nigeria doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2018-001-iban ibanga.letters@gmail.com abstract the relationship between energy and ethics is gaining attention in policy rooms around the world. how does one respond to the competing interests of the environment and posterity while also addressing the energy needs of the present human generation? in western philosophy, this question is currently subject of debate and research. however, the african philosophical analysis that is required to address this concern is generally absent from discourse/literature on energy ethics. this article aims to bridge this gap, by providing broad analysis that has been lacking from the african context. in a way, it seeks to answer such questions already raised in western philosophy but from african perspectives. this approach is significant given the fact that western oriented energy humanities and energy ethics seem to be inappropriate or inadequate to understanding energy dynamics in the african context. therefore, this paper aims to inform global debate and facilitate african-specific understanding of the complex nexus of human-environment-posterity by building the discourse on braai filosofie. it discusses specific principles that can be deployed to address trade-offs between ethics and energy, thus providing guide to investment decisions on renewable energy projects in africa. keywords: energy ethics; braai; environmental ethics; renewable energy; african philosophy; land ethic; diep gesprek; future people; diep ondervraging; energy humanities. 1 a version of this paper was first presented at the 6th annual conference of the national association for energy economics (naee) at sheraton hotel in lagos, nigeria on 22nd april 2013; and a revised version was later delivered as lead paper at 16th conference of the business ethics network of africa (ben-africa) at stias wallenberg research centre, stellenbosch university, south africa on 9th november 2017. i thank participants at the two conferences for their feedbacks, particularly mr. lukhanya ndube, mr. wandile ganya, mrs. liezl groenewald, dr. peter obutte, dr. chigbo ekwealo, dr. peter osimiri, dr. bryan robinson, dr. minka woermann, prof. douglas anele, prof. piet naude, prof. arnold smit, prof. johan hattingh. this is an improved version from the two conferences. i also thank the editor, giovanni frigo, for critical/insightful comments. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ http://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2018-001-iban mailto:ibanga.letters@gmail.com diana-abasi ibanga 118 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 1. introduction renewable energy is taking up a central role in the global energy discourse because of its likely significance to meeting development and climate objective in the sustainable development goals (sdgs). such likely impact has already been simulated and analyzed by several researchers (national academy of science 2010; vezmar 2014; irena 2016; lehr et al. 2016; schwerhoff and sy 2017; york and mcgee 2017). due to this promising development, there is increasing investment in renewable energy. in a report jointly released by frankfurt school, united nations environment, and bloomberg new energy finance, in 2017, it was indicated that renewable energy added 138.5 gigawatts (gw) at $24.6 billion in 2016; 9% increase from 127.5 gw in 2015 roughly equaling world’s 16 largest existing power plants combine, and in the process prevents estimated 1.7 gw of co2 emissions. the report further states that even though global investment in renewable energy went down by 34% in 2016 from record high in 2015, annual installations were still up at $27.6 billion 58% up from 2015; corporate acquisition activity in clean power sector rose 17% to $110.3 billion. impact on the greenhouse is significant as international energy agency (iea) reported in 2017 that switch to renewable energy was the main reason for greenhouse gas emission staying flat in 2016, for the third year running, despite 3.1% growth in global economy. in africa, african development bank reported, in 2017, that $1.4 billion has already been invested in renewable energy projects across the continent; developing 453 megawatt (mw) of installed capacity of electricity. (this is independent to installation purchases by individuals and small communities and major hydropower projects). the continent’s investments in renewable energy will likely grow the years ahead, following global fear that if africa’s multiple renewable energy capacity is not harnessed (despite her posing a very low carbon threat at the moment) by the end of the century the continent shall become a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. the continent’s focus on renewable energy is also due to the opportunities associated with renewable energy in terms of job creation, welfare, gender equality, facilitating sdg, and its cheaper cost per kilowatt. in 2016, the international renewable energy agency (irena) reported that for every job created in the fossil energy sector, the renewable created double per unit of generation. generally, reducing environmental impacts is the main motivation for the shift from non-renewable energy to renewable energy. despite this, turning to renewable energy would not address all environmental concerns. as we shall see later in this work, renewable energy has created new envihttp://www.ledonline.it/relations/ renewable energy issues in africa contexts 119 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ronmental and social issues particularly as it concerns land use. therefore, to develop sound policies, policy-makers and corporate advisors need to understand the environmental impacts of renewable energy beyond what is known in western science and philosophy. for the african context, this is essential in order to enable policy-makers and firms to proactively identify and pursue designs, decide on project site and operations, and secure the most effective approach to ethical trade-offs that synchronizes with philosophical dispositions and cultural attitudes in africa. in this direction, this article provides african philosophical analysis on the ethical issues surrounding renewable energy program in the african context in order to facilitate an understanding of how indigenous wisdom may shape the energy industry. 2. a non-western concept of energy and energy ethics in western scholarship and thinking, energy is a property domiciled in biological and ecological forms which must be transferred to another object or converted into another form to perform work. there are various forms of energy which human beings depend on to stay alive and function in the world. however western oriented science sees energy as a property that is stored or preserved in inanimate forms to be exploited for use by human beings. this is the thinking that has governed the development of energy science in the west. in the light of this, earth and other natural forms have been exploited (often forcefully) for energy without due care to the wellbeing of those energy sources. in african thinking, energy is not a property domiciled, stored or preserved in some objects for human use mainly. energy is viewed as “force” – n–tú in bantu language and utú. in annang language. this is the property that animates things and enlivens them to functionality (unah 2002). this property permeates both the animate and the so-called inanimate world (ekwealo 2017). all existents participate in the same force or energy. it is also force (energy) that holds the universe in balance when it is at its proper equilibrium, and can rock the balance when this equilibrium is disregarded (unah 2002). the “balance of forces” is maintained through complementarity, relationality and sharing. this means that energy relation is not based on exploitation of other natural forms but on relating to them in mutual sense. that is, recognizing the place of every being in the scheme of things. by recognition it means one must work to protect and care for them. the idea of complementarity implies holism. this means that energy is a holistic force that is all embracing, multidirectional and interpenetrative. all beings http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ diana-abasi ibanga 120 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ have a stake in the force (or energy). the force (energy) in turn affects all beings in differing inter-directional ways such that what happens at one aspect of the balance must affect all other aspects. in this context, energy ethics is designed as a field of study to produce a set of values or principles that would preserve this balance and facilitate its restoration where necessary. energy ethics also aims to produce philosophical analysis on the issues in energy science for the purpose of creating rigorous cultural contexts for scientific laws, theorems and principles of energy. however, one must note that such philosophical analysis must be based on differing philosophical traditions. it is from this recognition that one can draw out what i may call “african energy ethics”. african energy ethics can be defined as the analysis that deals with the fundamental governing principles that defines human energy use based on african worldviews, by analyzing the basic concepts such as human and nonhumans, animate and inanimate, and examining the processes by which they (ought to) relate to energy/force within the context of an environment it shares with nonhumans and future people. this definition projects energy ethics as: a set of governing principles and a philosophical study. further, this definition constructs energy ethics as analysis of the basic concepts employed in understanding the notion of energy. this implies: one, to critically examine energy-related ideas embedded in african traditional cultures, and two, to appraise energy science based on african philosophical discourse. the purpose is to provide a rigorous indigenous ethics for energy transitions in africa. 3. theoretical framework this analysis is based on the conceptual scheme of braai filosofie. what is braai filosofie? a saying in south africa states: “if, as a south african citizen, you don’t know what a braai is, you should not have been given that citizenship in the first place”. i am not going to define the word “braai” in a banal sense as it is widely used (although i will do so midway). what i am going to do here is to lead us into the discussion of the “filosofie van braai” (philosophy of braai) – we can also call it “braai ethic” for purpose of convenience. braai ethic, or simply, braai, is an aspect of afrikaanse filosofie that is based on the afrikaanse (afrikaners) culture. the concept of “braai ethic”, in the context of its usage, throws up a number of questions, if not ambiguities. it looks more like a paradox (or contradiction) to associate “braai” with “ethics” in the manner i am doing it here, that is, in ecological sense. if anything the word “braai” paints a http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ renewable energy issues in africa contexts 121 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ picture of vleis (meat) roasting over pieces of charred vuurmaakhout (firewood). this is exactly the picture some environmentalists appear to resist. however, braai is more than just a picture of braaivleis (grill). braai holds deep meaning about life in general, or human life in particular. we can place the word “braai” side by side with ubuntu in terms of relevance to addressing issues of social justice and ecology; but braai is even deeper than ubuntu. and as we shall soon see, braai ethic, despite its controversial appearance, is rooted in deep ecology. one can also see braai as “a clearing”, in the manner that word is used by martin heidegger to explain dasein. viewed this way, braai is therefore a place (or clearing) that allow waardes (values or ethos) to emerge. generally, ethics is derived from the word “ethos” – which means “the ways of a place, the characteristic spirit of a people or community” (janz 2009, 181). it is a set of values (or virtues) of a place or the finest heritage of a culture or community – usually accepted as best practices (or principles) to guide behaviors in a place. the way i define ethics here may cause people to think of braai ethic as an “ethic of place”. to some extent, such thinking may be correct because ethics are generally about places and apply to places (but i am not using the word “place” as it is widely understood as gps reading or spatiality). we often think of ethics as “abstract principles” and tend towards denying its context of place. when we think of ethics as placeless or as abstract principles it tends to lose its relevance in terms of its application and historical references. braai ethic is not some abstract principles or universal maxims that decree how human beings ought to behave in a place; a characteristic that tends to projects ethic or values as those principles external to a place. braai filosofie projects waardes as existing within a place, which comes into “a clearing” (manifest) when prompted. this places ethics in lived experience; yet as something that billows during gesprekke (conversations). that is the reason i said braai ethic is rooted in deep ecology because of its propensity to engender diep ondervraging (deep questioning, i.e. self-reflection) following gesprekke. braai is a social process that brings people together often to share the same kaggel (fire-place), i.e. energy, in the process they involve in gesprekke that span social, political, economic, ecological, and cultural themes. sometimes, they may find themselves asking about the type and source of the vleis and vuurmaakhout involved in the braai. these are questions about the environment even though they seem banal or the answers are not constructed in eco-logic manner. braai ethic demands for diep gesprek (deep conversation) with the other about the braai, energy and environment. the ondervraging may lead to discovery of more facts, concepts, values, http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ diana-abasi ibanga 122 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ etc. moreover, in attempting to provide answers, the persons who had come together for a braai would ultimately develop ethical thinking, and eventually act sustainably towards other existents in nature and towards themselves. braai cut across cultures, ethnicity, race, and class. julia moskin (2016) observes that it is the only indigenous south african word that is recognized in all the eleven official languages in the country. braai is held regularly on the beaches, backyards, picnic grounds, verandas, and front porches of peoples’ homes for any reason and/or no reason at all. during braai, people gather around a kaggel to converse while braai is going on. although braai involves a lot of plumb and romp; but as tom le grange (2009) notes “a braai is much more than cooking food; it is about the atmosphere, the experience and the people that you share it with”. in addition to the basic pleasure, braai reflects african tradition of spending evenings together in gesprekke around wood fires or big trees (moskin 2016). some have said that in south africa it has always been the norm to invite people you just met over for a braai. basically, all that braai stands for is a social process that brings people together to share the same space and resources, and participate in fireside conversations. it is from this braai philosophy of unity, hospitality and conversation that i derive the central maxim of braai ethic – which can be formulated thus: a thing or action is right if it allows other existents to share one’s space and resources; it is wrong if it tends otherwise. that is, the less a thing brings existents together in complementary sense the less right it is. the more an action disperses entities by isolating them the less ethical it is. the maxim can be interpreted as “live and let live”, and it is inter-intuitive with most african philosophical inspirations including ibuanyidanda (asouzu 2011), iheniile-di bu mma ndu (ogbonnaya 2016), and ndu mmili ndu azu (ekwealo 2017). there is the idea of “sharedspace” embedded in african thinking which projects “ecological space as a place to be jointly lived by humans and non-humans, and of which humansanimals-plants jointly constitute in gestalt sense” (ibanga 2017a, 1883). an annang proverb states: “ade agwo okot inuen okot” (humans and animals depend/share the same resource). no existent (human and nonhuman) can claim sole ownership of the land and/or its resources. land is a resource jointly possessed/shared by humans and nonhumans, and it is construed as being designed mainly to serve the wellbeing of humans and nonhumans in terms of creating conditions for satisfying primarily their biological needs. this is considered in a concentric sense, from a decentralized-to-global perspective – based on the annang proverb “ese etongo ke esa ekwok eka anen” (one should deal from hither to thither). this concentric model prohttp://www.ledonline.it/relations/ renewable energy issues in africa contexts 123 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ jects land as designed to first satisfy the need hither and afterwards extends to serve the need thither. in braai ethic, the idea of sharing space with “other existents” (humans and nonhumans) also implies sharing resources not just with “distant people” (people distant by geography) but equally includes “future people” (people distant in time). this is inter-intuitive with the general practice of “kolanut breaking” which impresses upon the living people (usaak anyin) to share their space with the ancestors or living-dead (uda’ya idap) on the reason that they jointly own the community (francis 2016a); for which reason their thoughts are consulted or valued. braai ethic also overlaps with the annang maxim “adia mkpo. ’no. isong koro isong adehe ayaka ’gwo” (share your resources with the land/ecosystem because we are all relations). that is, humans should always share their supplies with the land/ecosystem (including animals, plants, and the inanimate) for we share common heritage. braai ethic proposes that the space (including the resources on it) is not just jointly owned by the ancestors but that the future people and nonhuman existents have a stake to the claim of joint ownership. interestingly, both the “living-dead” and the “future people” are described with the same word “uda’ya idap” or hibernatus (being/ those in a state of hibernation or hiatus), and this concept is based on cyclic conception of time in african cultures. so, the idea of shared-space embedded in braai ethic is not limited to merely humans as expressed in ubuntu maxim but extends to include nonhuman existents and future people as well. to use land/space, therefore, should be based on recognition of the joint-ownership and space-sharing principle. most importantly, braai ethic impels existents sharing a space to engage in diep gesprek. let me summarize this section by showing in three interrelating contexts the power and promise of braai ethic to contribute to sustainable energy development. braai ethic sits on a tripod, namely – unity, hospitality and conversation. in terms of “unity”, braai ethic urges for inter-disciplinarity and multi-disciplinarity in the search for energy sustainability. this means that it recognizes that every discipline and sector has something to contribute to energy development. this also implies that situating energy infrastructure and policy on one-size-fit-all framework is problematic and probably wrong. this interconnects with ibuanyidanda philosophy captured in the statement: “to be is to be in mutual complementary relationship (ka so mu adina) and its negation is to be alone (ka so mu di)” (asouzu 2011, 42). ibuanyidanda places premium on unity of differing entities and dimensions. energy infrastructure that is recognized as having sustainability credentials should be multidimensional and multi-sectorial in nature. in other words, it should consider its significance and/or implications for http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ diana-abasi ibanga 124 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ cultures, ecosystems, communities, human rights, social justice, values, animal rights, etc. in terms of “hospitality”, braai ethic encourages accommodation of the other and sharing of resources; not necessarily because the other lacks it but also for purpose of resource economy and coming together. this interlinks with the ubuntu maxim that “a person is a person through other persons”, that is, we all interdependent on one another’s. ubuntu reinforces the notion that we all have common humanity. the idea of interdependence gives rise to the notion that there is need for communities, cultures, races, groups, disciplines, people, to come together to find solutions to a common problem such as climate change triggered by irresponsible energy consumption habits. (this loops back to the first leg of the tripod). the closest example of how the hospitality “leg” of braai ethic can contribute to sustainability is car-pooling. when neighbors are hospitable towards others (or have ubuntu) they may likely pool themselves into one car rather than driving individually to work thereby contributing to emission reduction. in terms of “conversation”, braai ethic enjoins people coming together to share space to converse and ask one another deep questions about society and environment. such diep gesprek that may raise our consciousness about our place in nature/environment, in terms of the structure of our relationship to nonhumans, future people and less advantaged humans – and our obligations to them. this aspect of braai ethic overlaps with deep ecology. ferdinand nwaigbo (2015, 238) avers that “deep ecology raises the searching questions about human life, society and nature; [and] asks what type of human life, or society would be best in maintaining a particular ecosystem”. it asks sustainability questions about our source of energy, consumption habits, lifestyles, and social structure. these are essential questions we should frequent ly raise at gesprekke while we braai. braai filosofie calls for diep ondervraging of our everyday beliefs, probing of our mental attitudes, to dialogue differences and to synthesize common ideations towards shaping the africa of the future. braai filosofie urges for frequent summoning of “the others” for purpose of engaging in diep gesprek which should often lead to diep ondervraging towards facilitating deconstruction and reconstruction of mental attitudes in pursuit of futurity. jonathan chimakonam (2014) rightly avers that philosophical conversations will allow for critical analysis and logical examination of relevant substantive issues in a culture, and facilitate generation of ideas to address the perceived inconsistencies. braai filosofie provide “a clearing” for researchers to raise deep questions about the status quo hence help in minimizing insensitivity to contemporality and apathy to problems outside one’s cultural enclave. the relevance lies in its capacity to engender http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ renewable energy issues in africa contexts 125 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the african intellectuals to earnestly begin the process of reconceptualizing concepts, themes, and social issues, through the application of the method of diep gesprek. by so doing it helps researchers to inaugurate new concepts/theories and point to new directions of further research. this is important, for if energy ethics must progress, practitioners must engage in sustained conversations. this establishes braai filosofie as quite pertinent to research in energy ethics. 4. some ethical issues arising from renewable energy program there are a number of ethical concerns raised about renewable energy program, but i want to focus on those ones that are pertinent to africa. generally, in the african context, ethical issues that surround renewable energy program have to do with unethical use of land. the strategic importance of land to renewable energy program cannot be overemphasized. most renewable energy projects require vast areas of land (ottinger 2007; u.s. epa 2007; ezemonye and ogbe 2011). in some places it has led to destruction of forest reserves (ottinger 2007) or converting of farmlands to energy fields (prinsloo and lombard 2015). ultimately, this can lead to care-withdrawal for the land. this makes renewable energy problematic because it touches on a subject – land – upon, which our very existence and the existence of other entities depend. in land is considered very substantial to collective existence of all being (including animals, plants, and the inanimate). hence, the annang maxim: adia mkpo. ’no. isong koro isong adehe ayaka ’gwo. this implies providing care and protection for the land. the parties that depend on the land to satisfy vital needs must in return show gratitude to the land in terms of care and protection. in african cultures, land is regarded as having life of its own (ibanga 2017b). lands are not dead things but are animated with life-force, potency of life, and they are as active as the life-forms that live in them, upon whom we depend. he, who destroys land, destroys life-force, the source of life and existence itself. let us look at two dimensions through which these issues are expressed. one of the core ethical issues involving renewable energy is the argument that bioenergy production will impact food security negatively. the argument is that farmers derive greater financial benefits from growing feedstock than from food production, hence there is the possibility that the farmers would abandon food production for biofuel with serious adverse effects on food supplies (ottinger 2007; ezemonye and ogbe 2011). http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ diana-abasi ibanga 126 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ biogas is usually derived from crops with high protein, fat or carbohydrate content, for example, maize, sunflower, sugar cane, palm oil, and soy. biofuel focused cultivation triggers concerns about land use, food availability and affordability to poor communities and regions. the argument is that unbridled production of biofuel for commercial or export purposes can put pressure on food markets in developing countries leading to food crises. from the perspective of african environmental ethics, conversion of food crops to motor spirit is not necessarily unethical. the conversion is only considered as a violation of african land ethic when there is an unmet obligation regarding the world hungry. the ethic involves the use of land for the purpose of which it was intended. accordingly, the primary purpose of land cultivation is for food production. this primary purpose of land should not be superseded by the secondary and tertiary purposes such as social infrastructure. therefore, when land is used to cultivate crops which are not primarily meant to serve as food it decenters the teleo-ontological orientation of land and violates its ethics of use, especially when there is an unmet obligation to feed the hungry. it is in this sense that some renewable energy programs are unethical, and complicated by the fact of starvation in many developing nations. meanwhile, giovanni frigo (2016) argues that concerns about biofuel can be potentially addressed if the biofuel is made from algae rather than sourced from food crops. principally, the algae would be grown on waste water. however, adopting the algae-based approach to biofuel production in the african place may still trigger ethical concerns if african farmers invest large amounts of their time on algae production while problem of hunger in the continent is not addressed. in african philosophical thinking, addressing hunger problem interlinks with concerns about posterity. “present people” have an obligation to facilitate arrival of “future people” in good state of health. to meet this obligation the “present people” need to be in good state of health themselves. another dimension of the environmental ethics that bioenergy program might violate concern land reclamation. with the rate of investment in renewable energy, demand for land would significantly increase, and since there is limited land space, expansion in feedstock market can lead to scrambling for land. this may then result in intensified land reclamation program to augment the shrinking land space for purpose of renewable energy program. land reclamation involves pushing back rivers and seas from their original space (or sometimes closing up small lakes) and draining the emergent land for agricultural and other developmental purposes. land reclamation fundamentally contradicts african land ethic, and this contradiction extends to renewable energy program when land reclamation http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ renewable energy issues in africa contexts 127 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ is done for that purpose. african environmental ethics directly intertwines with land use and land boundaries. land reclamation, whether for renewable energy purposes or other reasons, rails against biodiversity. the ethic violated in this case is that which has been outlined in the principle of ndu mmili ndu azu, interpreted as “live and let live”. it is a philosophy which demands respect for the right of existence, space, dignity and self-worth of other entities in nature (ibanga 2014; francis 2016b; ekwealo 2017). respecting the right of existence of other entities in nature implies not denying them space to exist, in terms of being mindful of destroying their habitat in the name of land reclamation. land reclamation naturally leads to biodiversity loss; and it has significant impact on aquatic habitats and ecologies. for every square meter of land reclaimed from the sea, it is obvious that we may have lost a large number of aquatic species. some of the species may be displaced from their natural habitat and exposed to the danger of extinction due to the space change or attack from other species who may view their retreating as another way of territory invasion. in annang-african ontology, land reclamation, whether for renewable energy purposes or other reasons, is viewed as a fundamental contradiction of the indigenous land ethic. in the indigenous african worldview, land is a fixed entity which can neither be created nor destroyed. in annangland there is an environmental ethic which states: k’unuk adaha abot (do not alter natural order/ordering). k’unuk adaha abot is an ontological maxim which admonishes every existent to leave the boundaries found in nature intact as it were. it holds that everything in nature has its boundaries cut out for it by abot (nature). for example, the boundary between land and the sea has been determined and fixed at the point of creation by abot. land is not expected to outflow to take the place of the sea and vice versa. this was done to establish ecological harmony. however, this harmony can be disrupted when one (e.g land) is made to encroach on the space meant for sea to occupy. the encroachment usually comes in form of land reclamation. it is believed that when land has overstepped its bounds, the sea must get back with dire consequences against the violator. hence, the unethical practices have always been met with catastrophic consequences such as flooding, hurricanes, river bank breaking, etc. to avoid the catastrophic consequences that always attend violations of natural boundaries, the annang ontological maxim warns – k’unuk adaha abot. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ diana-abasi ibanga 128 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 5. trade-off principles: to base decisions on project planning, site choice, and policy energy policy is ultimately based on cost-benefit analysis that integrates political considerations, placed-based values (principles), and scientific/ technological advances. within the corpus of african environmental ethics there exist some afrocentric values that can guide individuals, corporate bodies, communities, and governments, when deciding on renewable and non-renewable energy projects. i have summarized those oughts into five principles. 1. principle of accommodation: act in such a way that nonhuman existents and future people are considered and accommodated in your daily decisions and dealings. 2. principle of gratitude: act in such a way that reflects your gratitude towards other existents, humans and nonhumans, for contributing to support your beingness or existence. 3. principle of restoration: always act to restore to nature the loss you have caused it. for example, re-planting a tree after felling one. 4. principle of control: act in such a way that you control your action from producing too much negative externalities. 5. principle of necessity: act only on decisions and actions that are absolutely necessary. these principles were not begotten ex nihilo but are values and maxims available within the corpus of african philosophy; what i did was to systematize and abstract them into five definite principles. these precepts or injunctions are obligations designed to guide behavior of individual human beings as members of human and nonhuman community. the principles call for restraint and circumspection in decision-making and action-taking such that one’s lifestyle, behavior and dealings can lead to avoidance of wastage of resources and minimize injuries caused to other beings (humans and nonhumans) and their communities (culture, ecosystem, etc.). these principles offer us context to anticipate before acting. let me explain how these principles should be rationalized and used. principle of accommodation: this formulation refers to the biospheric aspects of the environment considered as an interrelated and interdependent whole. this is understood from the perspective of complementarity whereby individual elements (persons and objects) appear as thing-withothers, that is, interconnective with other beings not yet expressively visible. in this context, one cannot separate an individual specie from the overall environment (ecosystem) that projects it; like it is stated in an annang adage – agwo isi ’diahake nsaha ye abot, one cannot separate existents from http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ renewable energy issues in africa contexts 129 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ existence. i want to further state that the term “considered” is used here in “lived” (or empathetic) sense reflecting ecocentrism, and implies respect for nonhuman existents as fellow existents under the shared-space thesis. the other term “accommodated”, as used here, implies actually acting (not by doing-nothing or in passiveness) to secure this respect/right for the nonhuman and future people. “daily decisions and dealings” refers to both professional and non-professional acts, considered as both habits and/or non-habits. the phrase “future people” as used here refers to those who have not yet come into physical existence but nonetheless exist in our minds as expected people “uda’ya idap”. in african cultural thought it is the idea of “expectation” that gives credibility to their consideration as “people on the way” and it is based on the logic that we were once “people on the way”. the notion of “people on the way” is configured to look like a long endless chain that allows people to arrive in batches (generations) ad continuum. principle of gratitude: the term “act” refers to direct action (not passiveness). the term “reflects” implies being visible as sun such that it is capable of winning admiration and praise. “support” should be interpreted to mean those things (oxygen, food, aesthetic, shelter, medication, etc.) we sourced from other existents to lengthen our lives; those things that without animals and plants, our lives would have long ended. “beingness or existence” is used in past, present and future sense unitarily. this principle means that human beings have to reciprocate the supplies from nature, by offering something back to nature in return; and what one has to offer in reciprocation must be of comparative value/weight. principle of restoration: in this formulation “nature” is used as a proper noun to objectify it as animate being (if you like, gaia), a living thing capable of being hurt and able to feel pain; and also capable of being consoled. “consoled” here is not used in the same manner ada adaga (2015) is using the term in his “philosophy of consolationism”, reflecting escapism in humanistic emotiveness. rather it implies bringing relief to suffering, to comfort – by doing something to benefit the loser. to “restore” as used here implies actively seeking to return a place or thing to its original nature, by returning (directly or indirectly) what one took from it; seeking to make peace with the one, to console, or to reinstate balance/justice. the term “loss” is not used here in individualistic sense as a loss caused to an individual existent. rather, it is used in a complementary sense, in terms what the loss may contribute to complementarity or lack of it. the “loss” is viewed more as a community loss; not a particular human community but a community that includes nonhumans, that is, cultures, ecosystems, species habitats, etc. i have given example of “replanting a tree after felling one”. however, that is not end-in-itself; one must consider time-involvement http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ diana-abasi ibanga 130 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ including determining how many generations would pass before the tree comes to full maturity as it were. principle of control: this formulation enjoins consideration to be given about what extent an act of commission or omission should be allowed to affect communal balance. thus, if an action is capable of disrupting balance in nature in a very significant manner then such an act is considered really harmful. this principle takes into consideration that there is no action without consequence on others (individuals, communities, cultures, ecosystems, etc.). the extent of such a consequence is not the only thing considered here but also the nature (configurations, duration, coverage, etc.) of the consequence. the term “control” as used in the principle implies actively preventing negative externalities from actions. the phrase “too much” can be determined by considering alternatives (opportunity costs) to an objective. principle of necessity: this principle is the most fundamental as it serves as the basement to other principles in the set, and serves to operationalize other four principles. the term “absolutely necessary” implies that being “necessary” is not enough; necessity as the basis of one’s action must be from a very rigid context. the qualifier “absolutely” raises questions about what we consider as necessary when taking decision that involves other creatures in the environment. the principle is based on the view that we cannot determine what is necessary in a locus of nature (or about other existents) until we consider those other beings (animals and plants) with the same force of emotions and reasoning we consider fellow human beings (or better, members of one’s race/tribe). what we cannot substitute the life of fellow human being to achieve; we lack the moral justification to subject other animals and even some plant species. here, such question should be asked: “suppose the deer or redwood is a human being, would i still act in the same manner towards it?”. further, in deciding “absolutely necessary” it becomes less or more flexible in consideration depending on context. for example, if it involves sacrificing (dispensing with) human and/or nonhuman lives, in order to advance the course of the entire ecosphere, the requirement “absolutely necessary” becomes less flexible than if it involves merely losing habitat. more priority is placed on life than on shelter or comfort. life of an antelope weighs equally to the human life, even though human life may weigh a little bit higher depending on context. but no human comfort (e.g. shelter) weighs equal to, or higher than, the life of nonhuman (e.g. amoeba). this is summarized in the south african proverb “feta kgomo o tshware motho” (preserve life even at the expense of one’s comfort) which impels humans to prioritize life over any other consideration. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ renewable energy issues in africa contexts 131 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 6. conclusion although science has fabricated different kinds of technology to tackle the present energy crisis, there is need to recognize that technology is not an end-in-itself. technologies eventually depend on human beings to be effective. even though technology has certain power to change the way we use energy, belief systems have even more immediate impacts on the types of technology eventually accepted in society. therefore, more subtle work has to be done on our belief systems. this is in the domain of energy humanities and energy ethics. however, this does not call for one-sided approach to research. rather, the multifarious nature of energy crisis impresses upon researchers to embrace trans-disciplinary and multidisciplinary approaches in energy research. the traditional approach to research, which involves strict focus on the core areas of one’s discipline, will no longer work. energy scientists and technologists have to learn to work even closer with researchers in energy humanities and energy ethics. there is need to adapt our researches to multidisciplinary methodologies. this means that there is need for frequent cross-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary conversations. importantly, researchers should also focus on understanding the different contexts in energy studies and adapt their discourse accordingly. i think the future of energy science lies in the humanities. references african development bank. 2017. unlocking private sector potential to promote energy access and inclusive and green growth. abidjan: african development bank. agada, ada. 2015. existence and consolation: reinventing ontology, gnosis and values in african philosophy, edited by jonathan chimakonam. calabar: 3rd logic option publishing. asouzu, innocent. 2011. ibuanyidanda and philosophy of essence. calabar: univeristy of calabar press. chimakonam, jonathan. 2014. “interrogatory theory: patterns of social deconstruction, reconstruction and the conversational order in african philosophy”. filosofia theoretica: journal of african philosophy, culture and religions 3 (1): 1-25. ekwealo, chigbo. 2017. ndu mmili ndu azu: an introduction to african 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the role of floating solar systems in the energy-land nexus: a case study on the potential for south africa wineries. paper presented at 2nd international conference of the journal of green economy and development, kloof, south africa. schwerhoff, gregor, and mouhamadou sy. 2017. “financing renewable energy in africa – key challenge of the sustainable development goals”. renewable and sustainable energy reviews 75: 393-401. unah, jim. 2002. african philosophy: trends and projections in six essays, 2nd ed. lagos: foresight press. u.s. epa. 2007. regulatory impact analysis: renewable fuel standard programme. epa420-r-07-004. washington, dc: united states environmental protection agency. vezmar, stanislav, anton spajic, danijel topic, and damir sjivac lajos jozsa. 2014. “positive and negative impacts of renewable energy sources”. international journal of electrical and computer engineering systems 5 (2): 15-23. york, richard, and julius alexander mcgee. 2017. “does renewable energy development decouple economic growth from co2 emissions?”. socius: sociological research for a dynamic world 3: 1-6. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ from anthropocentrism to post-humanism in the educational debate from anthropocentrism to post-humanism in the educational debate 1 alessandro ferrante 1 daniele sartori 2 1 post-doctoral research fellow, department of human sciences r. massa, university of milano-bicocca 2 research associate, school of education, kingston university london doi: 10.7358/rela-2016-002-fesa alessandro.ferrante@unimib.it dnlsartori@gmail.com abstract this paper explores the impact post-human stance has on the study of the learning process. it shows how this new paradigm which focuses upon the relationship between human and non-human modifies our understanding of education. first, we argue that the educational debate is largely inspired by an anthropocentric perspective. it is grounded in the notion of human self-determination and it neglects the role of non-human factors in the learner’s development. furthermore, non-humans (both animals and machines) are usually considered as something to be used: in other words, they are instruments. this fact notwithstanding, there is a small minority of contemporary learning theories that investigate the relationship between human and non-human from a non-anthropocentric point of view. an overview of these theories is offered in the second part of the paper. finally the use of latour’s actornetwork theory (ant) in educational research will be explored to show one of the possible non-anthropocentric methods of conceiving and investigating the learning process. according to ant, learning can be interpreted as the effect of a network made up of heterogeneous elements, both human and non-human. keywords: post-human pedagogy, post-human education, philosophy of education, learning theories, actor-network theory, post-humanism, anthropocentrism, bruno latour, tara fenwick, humanism, non-human animals. 1 paragraphs from 1 to 4 are written by alessandro ferrante. paragraphs 5 and 6 are written by daniele sartori. mailto:alessandro.ferrante@unimib.it mailto:dnlsartori@gmail.com http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 alessandro ferrante daniele sartori 176 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 1. introduction this article originates from the hypothesis that the conscious use of the post-humanist paradigm in the field of education theories would enable us to develop new visions of educational phenomena and to interpret them in a non-anthropocentric way. this article intends to problematize the anthropocentric premises of pedagogy, to examine the impact of post-humanism on pedagogical knowledge, and to study the actor-network theory in depth, as it represents one of the most interesting, innovative, and non-anthropocentric proposals in the educational debate. the fundamental questions that orient our speculation are the following ones: in which terms is post-humanism contributing to redefine the pedagogical discourse moving beyond the main schemes of anthropocentric humanism? how can it promote a new understanding of both the educational processes and the learning dynamics? before going deeply into pedagogical issues, it is worth clarifying what we mean by “anthropocentrism” and “post-humanism” in this article. 2. anthropocentrism and post-humanism: definitions anthropocentrism could be considered as the main paradigm of thought in western society (badmington 2003; marchesini 2009; andreozzi 2014). in general terms, we could interpret it as a large cultural frame that generates in human beings a feeling of supremacy over the non-human (non-human animals, plants, ecosystems, machines). the anthropocentric perspective is based on a three-fold thesis, according to which humans are special and privileged entities compared to other living beings (ontology), they are the only sources of knowledge (epistemology) and the sole holders of moral values (ethics) (andreozzi 2014, 49). thus, anthropocentrism involves ontological, epistemological, and ethical dimensions that collectively justify the attitude of human dominion over nature (marchesini 2009; andreozzi 2014; ferrante 2014b). the use of anthropocentric premises leads us to consider the human as clearly separated from and opposed to the non-human, as well as superior to it. the non-human is viewed as having only instrumental value in order to satisfy human needs; the only needs that are regarded highly by anthropocentrism. moreover, a human-centred vision obstructs the decentralization from humankind – however partial it may be – in both philosophy and human sciences, bearing serious consequences in relation to the kind of knowledge that is produced and to the effects this very knowledge has on social and natural environments (braidotti [2013] 2014). http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 from anthropocentrism to post-humanism in the educational debate 177 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ on the contrary, post-humanism aims at criticising and overcoming the ontological, epistemological, and ethical coordinates of anthropocentrism (hayles 1999; marchesini 2002; badmington 2003; pepperell [1997] 2003; marchesini 2009; wolfe 2010; braidotti [2013] 2014). in order to do so, post-humanism focuses upon the relationship between human and non-human as the distinctive object of its investigation, interpreting it from a non-anthropocentric perspective, thus detaching itself from a hierarchical idea of reality. a similar perspective favours the decentralisation from humankind and shifts the focus towards the multiple connections between the human and the non-human (pickering 2005; braidotti [2013] 2014). this enables us to study the interconnection between nature and culture, as well as the relations that involve the human being and biological and technological alterities at the same time, from new perspectives. post-humanist theorists conceive human identity as an impure product derived from an ongoing miscegenation and contamination with the non-human. in other words, human beings become such only through a process of hybridization with the environment, as well as with those forms of otherness that inhabit it, which can be considered as co-evolutionary partners (marchesini 2002, 2009; farisco 2011). nowadays, post-humanism is a controversial and debated interdisciplinary perspective, but also an original and promising one. as badmington observed, such a frame of thought facilitates the connection of different research areas (2004). in fact, post-humanism recurs in many research fields: in literature, arts, philosophy, theology, human sciences, architecture, computer science, media studies, gender studies, animal studies and in disability studies (badmington 2004; gane 2006; braidotti [2013] 2014). 3. the influence of anthropocentrism on the pedagogical discourse over the last decade, pedagogy has started to examine the motif of posthumanism (stables and scott 2001; gough 2004; pinto minerva and gallelli 2004; pedersen 2010; barone 2014; ferrante 2014a, 2014b; pinto minerva 2014). nevertheless, post-humanism is struggling to affirm its importance in this field, as ideological and cultural resistance persists. in fact, pedagogy is a form of knowledge so much rooted in the humanistic and anthropocentric tradition that has been recently defined as the “most human among human sciences” (mariani 2006, 31). the intimate connection between humanism and pedagogy is widely acknowledged in both the scientific and the philosophical debate concerning education (marrou http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 alessandro ferrante daniele sartori 178 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ [1964] 1971; luhmann and schorr [1979] 1999; cambi 2003; colicchi 2009; pedersen 2010; acone, vitale, and de maio 2013). pedagogical knowledge – from the greek paideia to the german building, until the most recent neo-humanistic education theories – is permeated with ontological, epistemological, and ethical presuppositions that are reconnected to the diverse anthropocentric models that alternated with one another in the history of western culture. despite this, we believe that the connection between pedagogy and post-humanism could be prolific and profitable. in fact, post-humanism questions different anthropocentric assumptions that recur in the traditional pedagogical discourse and that still recur in many education theories. in this article, we will discuss the two most common anthropocentric assumptions that can be clearly detected in some of the most popular education theories, in order to demonstrate how post-humanism could overcome them. 3.1. education as a human proprium the first assumption is that human beings alone could educate and be educated in turn. many contemporary educational researchers and philosophers of education support this assumption in different ways, notwithstanding the fact that they adopt theoretical perspectives that differ from one another (hessen [1946] 1958; mounier [1949] 1964; bertolini 1988; iori 2000; mariani 2006; acone, vitale, and de maio 2013; cambi 2014; martino 2014) 2. when this assumption does not directly derive from religious and metaphysical discourses, as it happens for personalism 2 bertolini and iori resort to phenomenology, hessen to spiritualism, mounier, acone and martino to personalism, mariani to deconstructionism, cambi to both hermeneutics and critical pedagogy. therefore, they represent some of the most widespread education theories that characterise the pedagogical debate. to put these authors together does not mean to declare the theoretical and social context in which each of them operate as uninfluential. for example, it is evident that a new personalist such as acone elaborates an educational model that is completely different from that formulated by phenomenologists such as bertolini. on the contrary, our point is that in the formulation and enunciation of their ideas of education there are assumptions that transversally recur in their works however distant from a theoretical point of view they may be. though means differ, all of these authors share the idea that education is a peculiar phenomenon in the human world, and that anthropos is the only creature that could actually educate and be educated, despite the different evidences supporting the formulation of the various thesis. to explore anthropocentric perspectives in pedagogy and their respective differences in greater depth, see ferrante (2014b, 55-75). http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 from anthropocentrism to post-humanism in the educational debate 179 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ (mounier [1949] 1964; acone, vitale, and de maio 2013; martino 2014), it is based on the belief that non-human animals could not educate or be educated, as they resort to instinct in order to survive. animal behaviour, therefore, is widely predetermined by innate schemes. on the contrary, instinct does not, in most cases, enable human beings to face everyday challenges successfully. human beings have, therefore, to overcome this biological deficit resorting to reason and culture, which directly derive from education. in general terms, education is understood as the ability to create and share knowledge, a rational faculty that human beings develop. through communication, the human being transmits individual and social knowledge to the next generation, a form of knowledge that has derived from both direct and indirect experiences of reality (bertolini 1988). to the animal, on the contrary, this opportunity is negated. for example, hessen explicitly argues that animals do not have traditions, in the sense that a generation does not share the points of view, attitudes, and practices it has elaborated to the following one ([1946] 1958). of course it is impossible to deny that other species different from ours learn, but the anthropocentric prejudice leads us to consider that this happens thanks to automatisms (marchesini 2013), that is instinctive and irrational mechanisms that are expressed by the stimulus-response model. non-human animals’ learning is thus described as a sort of environmental conditioning that the animal passively experiences. non-human animals could be bred and trained, but not educated. the privilege of education is limited to the human being. he is the only entity who is given power of speech, reason, intellect, self-consciousness, freedom, ability to share ideas, practices, and the knowledge he acquired in his lifetime to his children (bertolini 1988, 150). moreover, new human generations do not absorb the teachings of their ancestors in a passive way, but they critically re-elaborate them. the learning subject, as a human being, plays an active role in the processes of knowledge construction (bertolini 1988; iori 2000; cambi 2014). the cultivated man is not a mere reproduction of a predefined model imposed from the outside, but he is an active entity, capable of formulating his own judgment and of supporting it (hessen [1946] 1958). true knowledge, as underlined by the pedagogical tradition, contains awareness, interiority and freedom in itself (cambi 2003); education is the high road of humanization (mounier [1949] 1964; iori 2000; acone, vitale, and de maio 2013; cambi 2014; martino 2014). it elevates the human being above the animal world, and enables him to have access to existential and meta-biological aims and meanings (hessen [1946] 1958), which at times carry a spiritual or religious message. education, therefore, is a social practice that uproots http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 alessandro ferrante daniele sartori 180 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ humankind from nature, leading it towards what truly belongs to it, that is culture (hessen [1946] 1958; mariani 2006; cambi 2014). the anthropocentric “narration” that we have just illustrated creates an idea of human beings that abound in culture, but lack in nature, and an idea of animals abundant in nature but lacking in culture, incapable of going beyond the rigid cage of instinct. the starting point of any anthropocentric pedagogy, therefore, is the clear distinction between human/animal, nature/culture, innate/learned, instinct/reason (ferrante 2014b). in this ideological framework, education is confined to the human world, it is one of the protected fields that separate humankind from other living forms, it is a “threshold notion” that divides and dissociates human from the nonhuman, particularly from animals. education represents a human trademark, the coat of arms of his ontological and anthropological peculiarity. from these observations derives the fact that the only true educator is the human being and that he could be educated in turn only by other fellow humans. thanks to education, therefore, the human being becomes a self-made entity; he grows as a self-sufficient creature without any substantial contribution from the non-human. the human educator could at least use the non-human strategically, but simply to make his activity more efficient. the non-human otherness (machines or animals) is reduced to either an object of knowledge or an instrument that could be employed in learning processes. education remains a practice that simply belongs to human beings (iori 2001; acone, vitale, and de maio 2013; martino 2014). 3.2. the human as a pedagogical unit of analysis since pedagogy deals with education, and since education is a human practice from an anthropocentric point of view, the object of any pedagogical analysis, therefore, could not be anything but humankind. the second assumption, intimately related to the first one, is that pedagogical analysis should be restricted to humankind. the anthropos, intended as either individual, subject or person is perceived as the proprium of pedagogy, its historical and theoretical telos (cambi 2014, 210). pedagogy is represented as the form of knowledge that should custody, defend, and protect human beings, thus helping them to develop their humanity (mariani 2006; acone, vitale, and de maio 2013; cambi 2014; martino 2014). it is therefore for the anthropos that pedagogy speaks and constructs itself (cambi 2008, 104). the primary educational concern of any humanist pedagogy, as luhmann and schorr among others outlined in their accurate analysis ([1979] http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 from anthropocentrism to post-humanism in the educational debate 181 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 1999), relates to the “form” that should be conferred to both the other and oneself in order to become the humans that we potentially are. therefore, pedagogy explores the aims, norms and values that are attributed to the educational process and that are its founding aspects. this applies in two cases: when this form is considered as something that is, as it were, naturally present in the individual and that is simply waiting to come into light (the maieutic approach); when it is considered as a form partially modulated by external events (this could be defined a sculptural approach) 3. in all these cases, the question is to thematise which model of human being should be created according to political, ethical, metaphysical or religious criteria. therefore, a sort of epistemological shift takes place in pedagogical theories: to research on the creation of the human being, scholars end by interrogating themselves on the human being itself, attributing to him an absolute priority. 4. post-humanism and pedagogy post-humanism, as written above, allows us to critically deconstruct the anthropocentric assumptions of the pedagogical discourse and to suggest different ways to interpret educational phenomena. 4.1. education and non-human otherness the first of the two anthropocentric assumptions – that is to say that education completely detaches the human from the non-human – could be overcome thanks to a speculation that resorts to contributions of different spheres of knowledge, ethology in primis. this discipline has demonstrated that other non-human animals also have a consciousness and a refined cognitive apparatus, a certain degree of subjectivity, and an articulated behavioural, social and emotional repertoire. besides, they can develop complex learning, as well as transmit such learning to their offspring, thus creating at times truly cultural traditions (mainardi 2001; marchesini 2002; marchesini and tonutti 2007; bekoff [2007] 3 about the relationship between the idea that education is an interior process and the idea that it is the result of external influences in the history of pedagogical theories, see dewey ([1938] 2014). for further details about the educational imaginary evocated by these two approaches in relation to the theme of human nature, see ferrante (2013). http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 alessandro ferrante daniele sartori 182 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 2010; marchesini 2013) 4. non-human animals are sentient, intelligent, and conscious beings, not at all passive and predetermined by their rigid instincts that aim to satisfy their existential needs. moreover, as marchesini affirmed, the human being itself can express his cultural dimension thanks to his complex neuro-biological apparatus, and not because of an assumed biological vacuity (2002; 2009). if this theory is valuable, it is because it asserts that nature and culture, innate and learned, should no longer be opposed in human beings (or in non-human animals): rather, they should be viewed as interdependent relationships, based on mutual integration and interaction. thanks to this interpretation, the paradigm that separates human-animal and nature-culture starts to crack, thus unveiling the anthropocentric prejudices that inspire it (marchesini and tonutti 2007). therefore, we can consider education as a widespread phenomenon in nature that crosses the borders between the human world and the world of other animals. the notion of education, therefore, could not be used to erect unsurmountable barriers between our specie and the others. of course, this does not mean that human education is identical to that of other species. it has more to do with the recognition of the cognitive plurality of the different forms of animal life (marchesini 2013) and the differences that exist in nature in relation to the learning patterns. in other words, it means to stop using the notions of education and learning, which raise human beings to a superior and privileged position, in a pretentious way. it is worth considering that, according to post-humanism, the human being does not learn only from the members of his specie. any individual, as well as any social group, elaborates his identity and his behaviour in relation to non-human partners, animals among them. marchesini argues that a great amount of cultural expressions – from dance to the planning of many technological devices – is mediated or promoted by animal otherness and that is originated by a direct comparison with it (2002; 2009). according to this hypothesis, human culture has a substantially dialogical and hybrid character, in the sense that it results from many connections between human and non-human. this consideration induces us to accept that not only non-human others learn, but also that we ourselves learn from them. pedagogy, therefore, tries to recognize the fundamental contribution nonhuman otherness gives to the definition of human cultural and educational processes (pinto minerva and gallelli 2004; ferrante 2014b; pinto minerva 4 the cambridge declaration on consciousness represents a significant interpretative turn about the question of non-human animal’s consciousness. this document, subscribed in 2012 by renowned scientists, explores how the scientific data available lead to consider that mammals and some other animals are fully conscious beings. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 from anthropocentrism to post-humanism in the educational debate 183 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 2014). in the light of the previous observations, to adopt a post-humanist perspective from a pedagogical point of view enables us to question not only how we learn as animals, but also how and what we learn from other animals, as well as in which terms education could be reconsidered in relation to non-human otherness. the relation between humans and non-human animals in the learning process has been examined in great depth particularly in applied zooanthropology (marchesini 2002; marchesini and tonutti 2007). for example, non-human animals become essential reference points that favour people’s cognitive, emotional and social development both in didactics and in the pet therapy that follow a zooanthropological approach. applied zooanthropology’s projects are based on the ability to make available and apply the referential content that belongs to the human-animal relationship. in practical activities, this kind of relationship is not randomly developed, but it is planned and oriented to specific dimensions, in order to obtain particular benefits linked to the user’s peculiarities. moreover, these practices focus on the user’s conscious recognition of the biological and behavioural characteristics of animal otherness, thus favouring the decentralization of the human subject, as well as a collaborative and respectful attitude towards the animal partner. many educational scholars who resorted to post-humanism have discussed the question of rethinking education through a constant reference to non-human otherness. pedersen, for example, argues that the reference to non-human otherness stimulates the interconnection of disciplinary fields that are usually separated and to question the human subject’s supremacy in educational experiences (2010). in the author’s opinion, it is important to establish a sort of alliance between animal studies, research and educational practices. this would, in turn, challenge pedagogical anthropocentrism and decentre the human subject through a form of education that would promote the recognition of non-human animal roles thereby raising their status from that of a subaltern and commodified level. this should also allow to problematize the complicity between pedagogy, biopower and biocapital, based on the exploitation of living creatures; a kind of exploitation that education usually does not simply oppose, but also contributes to its perpetration in different ways. pinto minerva, as well as pedersen, attributes a prominent theoretical role to the non-human in the creation of a new idea of education (pinto minerva and gallelli 2004; pinto minerva 2008, 2014). the author conceives a “pedagogy of the mutant subject”, according to which the human being has experience of both himself and reality thanks to ongoing transition processes – for he undergoes a constant metamorphosis – and to transhttp://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 alessandro ferrante daniele sartori 184 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ action processes, that is interactive exchanges with different forms of otherness (human and non-human ones), whom he progressively encounters. since human education takes place in the light of hybridization processes with the non-human, the scholar argues that the development of competences that would lead the subject to learn how to establish a relationship and how to co-evolve with otherness, human and non-human, is of pivotal importance. in fact, they would help him to develop forms of planetary democracy and of solidarity among the species that go beyond anthropocentric schemes. with this object in mind, pedagogy should promote practices of self and world care, as well as all the forms of otherness with which we share processes of co-evolution, being aware of our ontological bias. to both pederson and pinto minerva, as well as to other scholars who confront education from a post-humanist perspective (stables and scott 2001; bonnett 2004; gough 2004), we need to overcome anthropocentric, anti-ecologic, and specie specific behaviours thanks to educational activities. that is to say, that education should build relationships between the human and the non-human that do not gravitate around the anthropos’s superiority. nonetheless, in order to accomplish this aim, it is worth redefining education beyond the ideological barriers of anthropocentrism, considering it as a practice that aczcepts non-human otherness’s contributions. 4.2. the relationship between human and non-human as the subject of education studies post-humanism also allows us to overcome the second anthropocentric assumption that pervades the theories of education, according to which human beings are the proprium of pedagogy. in fact, wherever a post-humanist logic is adopted, the object of study changes. this object is no longer the human being or the non-human one, nature or culture, but all that is between them. pickering claims that the dualism of nature and culture that characterises modern humanism is fossilised into rigid disciplinary distinctions (2005). this traditional approach separates the “hard” sciences of nature – that exclude what is human and instead study the world of things − from the social sciences, which in turn explore the human world, focusing on meanings and exclude the world of things. pickering explains in detail that this subdivision is not erroneous in itself, but it is not compulsory. it can, therefore, be overcome, if the unit of analysis changes, thus becoming a hybrid object of study on which to reflect and intervene from a non-anthropocentric perspective. considered in these terms, post-humanism is an invitation to explore the ways in which http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 from anthropocentrism to post-humanism in the educational debate 185 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ human and non-human worlds combine, without assuming any intrinsic superiority of the human. this means that in order to understand the different assemblages of the human and the non-human, human sciences should reorganize their epistemological traditions (braidotti [2013] 2014). as far as pedagogy is concerned, to adopt a post-humanist perspective provides opportunity to analyse educational phenomena without exclusively focusing on humankind. the object of a post-humanist pedagogy is to study the ways in which the human and the non-human co-emerge and interact, and to generate new educational experiences. learning is no longer considered as an individual cognitive process or as a mere social realization. it could be rather considered as the effect of a complex system, composed by both human and non-human (sørensen 2009; fenwick and edwards 2010; barone 2014; ferrante 2014a, 2014b; sartori 2014). learning, therefore, derives from the collaboration of bodies, spaces, objects, technologies, animals, and natural forces. a small minority of educational studies has recently shifted its attention from students and teachers to the multiple interconnections between the human and the non-human. some of these studies aim to describe how learning and knowledge are rooted in action. to this end, they decentralise their attention from the human being in order to explore the materiality of educational processes, that is to say “the mutual entailment of human and non-human energies in local materialisations of education and learning” (fenwick and landri 2012, 1). socio-material studies in education – to which cultural historical activity theory (chat), actor-network theory (ant), complexity theory and new cultural geographies belong – open up new research opportunities and inaugurate a new vocabulary to rethink pedagogy, in other words educational practices themselves. among the socio-material approaches to education and learning, the one that combines themes, categories and methods of the actor-nework theory is probably the most popular and radical (latour 2005; sørensen 2009; fenwick and edwards 2010; fenwick and landri 2012; ferrante 2014b; sartori 2014). since the actor-network theory represents one of the most significant non-anthropocentric perspectives, its assumptions appear to be the most promising and warrant further examination. 5. actor-network theory: an introduction in the first part of this paper, it has been argued that post-humanism openly refuses the ontological, epistemological and ethical coordinates of anthropocentrism. two of its main traits have been discussed. firstly, it has been http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 alessandro ferrante daniele sartori 186 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ argued that post-humanism does not grant the human being a superior or privileged position over non-human species. secondly, that human being is not its main object of analysis: post-humanism focuses on the multiple relationships between the human and the non-human. once the rigid distinction between nature and culture (or nature and society) is removed, we can explore the interconnectedness between the human being and the biological and technological alterities. in introducing actor-network theory (ant), we will consider it against the above mentioned traits. as for the first point, ant treats human and non-human entities according to the principle of symmetry. quoting latour: “[…] to be symmetric simply means not to impose a priori some spurious asymmetry among human intentional action and a material world of causal relations” (2005, 76). non-human entities have traditionally being considered passive conductors or neutral carriers of actions whose source should be found elsewhere – in an intentional and conscious human actor or in an overarching and distant structure. ant grants them agency, i.e. the ability to modify a given state of affair. more precisely, each human or non-human entity is deemed capable of generating transformations and triggering unexpected events along the chain that links it to the others. as a result, action is redistributed: the actor is never alone in acting. it is made to act by many others (latour 2005, 46). additionally, ant rejects the idea that entities have inherent attributes, qualities or properties. law invites to understand it as a “semiotics of materiality” (1999, 4): ant extends to all materials the semiotic insight of the relationality of entities. the form entities have is a consequence of the relations they entertain with other entities. they are performed into existence through those relations. nothing is inherently ahistorical or durable: labour is constantly demanded to stabilise the connections that maintain a certain entity into existence. given that, ant investigates how human and non-human entities come together, exert force, hold together or decay (fenwick and edwards 2010). this is in line with what we have considered as the second main trait of post-humanism. when entities come together – associate – they interfere with each other’s course of action by modifying their respective goals or functions or by offering one another new possibilities. ant names this particular relation “translation” (latour 2005, 108). researchers are invited to follow, trace and describe the chain of translations in such a way that it is clear what actors do and make others do. when this happens, when each point of the chain is treated and described as a translation, we end up with something like a network. the notion of network should be considered as a tool http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 from anthropocentrism to post-humanism in the educational debate 187 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ to keep the world flat while we carry out our investigation. ant bypasses the opposition between individual and structure. there is no individual enclosed in a context and acting in isolation from within it. at the same time, there is no such a thing as distant and pre-existent structure capable of influencing entities’ behaviour. all there is are associations among human and non-human entities deploying themselves in different spatial patterns (latour 1999). it is through these relations that power is enacted, circulate and sediment. in the next paragraph, the use of ant in the educational debate will be discussed. we will focus on the notions of learning process and knowledge, teachers and students’ identity, educational reform. 5.1. actor-network theory and the educational debate if we investigate the learning process using ant key concepts, we no longer understand it as a singular and well-defined entity. on the contrary, we become interested in the many entities and interconnections underpinning it. we also reject the traditional assumption that learning is an individual cognitive achievement and embrace the idea that non-human entities play a key role in the process of knowledge building. sørensen (2009) clearly shows that representational knowledge does not simply transit from its source (e.g. a textbook) to the learners’ mind. a chain of translations and many artefacts are required to connect people to it. the researcher followed a teacher and a group of pupils studying the metric system. in order to explain it, the teacher asks a pupil to jump; she then measures his performance using a piece of chalk and a ruler. the metric system – the representational knowledge – is used as an external standard to compare the performance of the student to a given value in the textbook. it is made to associate with the network already in place in the class via different artefacts. more generally, the process of knowledge building should be understood as the product of the particular pattern of relations entities design when they associate. in the case of representational knowledge briefly discussed here, two separate regions are made to connect. different patterns produce different kinds of knowledge. by using ant to trace patterns of relations, sørensen identifies two other types of knowledge: communal knowledge and liquid knowledge. ant also calls into question the traditional understanding of student and teacher identity as a set of pre-determined and universal attributes. nespor (1994) understands students’ identities as the result of the interactions between architecture and the codified knowledge of the discipline. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 alessandro ferrante daniele sartori 188 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the author focuses in particular on the role of the programme. the latter artefact organises people in space and time; moreover, it associates the individual with certain contents and instruments. in so doing, the programme influences the range of networks students can connect to, thus assembling a certain type of student. in the case of the physic course he considers in his study, students are assigned to a secluded building; being obliged to take courses in a given order, they have no opportunity to organise their time schedule; they also have access to highly sophisticated representational technology (e.g. equations) which few people can master. all these factors do not encourage contact with different networks or people other than classmates, thus promoting the adoption of specific ways of interacting (e.g. meeting with peers during the night to study) and representing the world. quoting nespor “identity consists of a configuration of ties − a particular way of assembling an actor network − coupled to a public narrative” (2011, 22). nespor’s study (1994) clearly shows that ant does not invoke structure or social institution to explain entities’ behaviour or identity. agentivity is granted to non-human actors, the world is kept flat and the chain of translations is followed. ant has been used to investigate teacher identity too. fenwick (2011) clarifies the process of enrolment and translations of teachers during the educational reform launched in alberta (canada) in 2000. once teaching software, teaching guidelines, textbooks, student materials, instruments of data collection began to circulate in the classrooms “lesson plans became experiments. everyday interactions with students became ‘benchmarking’. student assignments became research findings. in other words, the translation of teacher to […] researcher fundamentally changes the pedagogic gaze, identity, and relationships” (fenwick 2011, 125). teachers were translated into “knowledge producers and authorities” (fenwick 2011, 127). their identity was the result of the relations they entertain with other human and non-human entities: teachers were made to act as knowledge producers and researchers. this calls into question our traditional understanding of professional standards – i.e. that set of knowledge, skills and competence that is used to define professional identity. far from representing “the reality of what teachers know, believe and are able to do” (mulchay 2011, 97), standards are constantly enacted through local material practices. as mulchay (2011) shows, teaching practices require physical work and embodied judgement from the teacher, as well as material objects and the students’ involvement. in the process of developing universal standards all these elements are made to disappear. the scholar followed a teacher panel meeting where geography teachers come together to produce the standards for the http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 from anthropocentrism to post-humanism in the educational debate 189 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ discipline. in this case, video excerpts of local teaching practices were translated into universal professional standards by way of material (notes), literary (arranging elements in lists and items) and social (grouping experts in a panel) technologies. the universality of standards was also reached thanks to final documents and reports being circulated and informing policy design. finally, ant calls into question our understanding of educational reform. as nespor (2002) points out, the traditional narrative about reform is that of an encounter between two discreet, distinct and well defined entities: a set of core principles and a pre-existent context. the latter either support or challenge the former. the problem with this way of conceptualising reform is that it makes it extremely difficult to think of both reforms and contexts as mutually constituting one another. school should not be considered a self-contained context. artefacts such as homework, curricula and standards move school practices across space and time, well beyond the school building. mrs. tuttle, the main character of nespor’s paper, was attached to the school via a constant flow of papers, homework, grading and reports. her use of the artefacts she received from school played a crucial role in defining the identity of the school, that of the reform and her identity as a reformer. in the school-based network, papers are intended to be signs of students’ individual performances. when mrs. tuttle compared a particular paper with a similar one from her other daughter undertaken four years earlier, she noticed the curriculum content had changed. the paper underwent a translation: once mrs. tuttle provided it with a new set of associations, it ceased to be the sign of an individual performance and became the marker of curriculum change. what was the marker of curriculum change was then compared with other children’s papers, thus becoming a sign of the school’s performance. it was also considered the defining example that a school reform was happening. finally, once hybridised with the national debate on curriculum reform, the homework became part of a wider problem: the national curriculum reform. as nespor points out, not only was mrs. tuttle actively shaping the identity of the school; she was also constructing the curriculum reform in terms she could oppose. 6. conclusions in the first part of this paper the main traits of post-humanism have been briefly described. post-humanism openly refuses the human-non human dualism. furthermore, it does not grant humans a unique and superior status. given that, it focuses on the relations between the human and the non-human. the implications of adopting a post-human perspective in http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 alessandro ferrante daniele sartori 190 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ education have also been debated. pedagogy has been shown to be traditionally based on the assumption that reason and culture are human trademarks: the education process distances individuals from nature and instinct and lead them towards culture. to counter this presupposition, three arguments have been made. first of all, ethology has demonstrated that non-human animals are able to educate and initiate cultural traditions. second, it is thanks to his neuro-biological apparatus – which is a biological trait – that the human being can express its cultural dimension. third, the active role of non-human animals in the learning process have been fully acknowledged by zooanthropology: learning processes based on inter-species relationships have been successfully designed and delivered by scholars in this field. the second assumption on which pedagogy is traditionally grounded is that of the human being as the proprium of pedagogy. the main concerns of pedagogy are which model of human being should be created and which criteria should guide educators in this process. to answers these questions, the notion of human being itself is debated and investigated, leaving no space for non-human entities, animals included. ant has been presented as a radically different way of understanding and investigating the learning process. by adopting the principle of symmetry, ant at the same time refuses to grant the human being a unique status and grant agency to non-human elements. furthermore, ant openly refuses essentialism: the form and attributes of entities are considered to be the result of the relationships they entertain with other entities. once applied to educational research, ant displaces man and its attributes as the main actors of the learning process. the latter is understood to be underpinned by a swarm of interconnected human and non-human actors. as for the humans participating in the learning process, their identity is acquired, enacted and negotiated thanks to and through the networks they are enrolled in. from this perspective, to think about change and reform is to think about how to rearrange the connections linking actors together. ant has proven to be a powerful analytic tool. can it also offer us any indication about the directions in which to orient future education practices? as we have shown, authors such as pinto minerva and pedersen have already argued the need for education to actively contrast anthropocentrism and promote the co-evolution of the human with non-human alterities. because of its political neutrality (braidotti [2013] 2014, 50), ant would probably not be able to take part in this debate very soon. the lack of an explicit ethical commitment is not the only issue educational researchers need to examine. the second and perhaps exquisitely http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 from anthropocentrism to post-humanism in the educational debate 191 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ pedagogical question we need to answer is how to translate ant insights and findings about a given learning process into operational variables that can be used to re-design the process itself. above all, is it possible to intentionally re-design a network? to what degree is this possible? finally, considering educators’ training and development: how can we alert educators about the role that the non-human plays in education? is it possible to mobilise ant categories during the design and delivery of learning processes? how? by answering these questions, we could probably offer the education debate a much more viable alternative to the current emphasis on the human and his cognitive faculties. references acone, giuseppe, valeria vitale, and deborah de maio. 2013. orizzonte teorico e pedagogia tra umanesimo e post-umanesimo. lecce: pensa. andreozzi, matteo. 2014. “dieci sfumature 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(1949) 1964. il personalismo, translated by aldo cardin. roma: editrice ave. mulcahy, dianne. 2011. “assembling the ‘accomplished’ teacher: the performativity and politics of professional teaching standards”. educational philosophy and theory 43 (s1): 94-113. nespor, jan. 1994. knowledge in motion: space, time and curriculum in undergraduate physics and management. london: routledge. 2002. “networks and contexts of reform”. journal of educational change 3 (3): 365-82. 2011. “devices and educational change”. educational philosophy and theory 43 (s1) 15-37. pedersen, helena. 2010. “is ‘the posthuman’ educable? on the convergence of educational philosophy, animal studies, and posthumanist theory”. discourse: studies in the cultural politics of education 31 (2): 237-50. pepperell, robert. (1997) 2003. the post-human condition. consciousness beyond the brain. bristol: intellect books. pickering, andrew. 2005. “asian eels and global warming: a posthumanist perspective on society and the environment”. ethics and the environment 10 (2): 29-43. pinto minerva, franca. 2008. “umano. post-umano. per una pedagogia del soggetto mutante”. in il soggetto nella pedagogia contemporanea, edited by enza colicchi, 129-40. roma: carocci. 2014. “umano e post-umano. una nuova frontiera della pedagogia”. in formazione e post-umanesimo. sentieri pedagogici nell’età della tecnica, edited by pierangelo barone, alessandro ferrante, and daniele sartori, 103-31. milano: raffaello cortina. pinto minerva, franca, and rosa gallelli. 2004. pedagogia e post-umano. ibridazioni identitarie e frontiere del possibile. roma: carocci. sartori, daniele. 2014. “post-umanesimo e pedagogia italiana. la proposta teorica di riccardo massa”. in formazione e post-umanesimo. sentieri pedagogici nell’età della tecnica, edited by pierangelo barone, alessandro ferrante, and daniele sartori, 173-87. milano: raffaello cortina. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 alessandro ferrante daniele sartori 194 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ sørensen, estrid. 2009. the materiality of learning. technology and knowledge in educational practice. new york: cambridge university press. stables, andrew, and william scott. 2001. “post-humanist liberal pragmatism? environmental education out of modernity”. journal of philosophy of education 35 (2): 269-79. wolfe, cary. 2010. what is posthumanism? minneapolis: university of minnesota press. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 god, the bible and the environment: an historical excursus on the relationship between christian religion and ecology 27 relations – 5.1 june 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ god, the bible and the environment an historical excursus on the relationship between christian religion and ecology marco damonte professor of tendencies of contemporary thought, university of genoa doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2017-001-damo marco.damonte@unige.it abstract the aim of this paper is double. on the one hand, it focuses on the relationship between christian religion and ecology in order to inquire into the most common charges that environmentalist movements address to christians and to evaluate them showing their historical roots. on the other, this study will show how some recent suggestions taken from catholic authors – who, at the same time, are the traditional ones – and from the teachings of the church, could be useful to encourage and to promote ecological ethics founded on human responsibility. in order to do so, an historical method will be used. in the first part, some authors from the patristic-scholastic age will be take into consideration, with particular care to augustine. in the second part an article by lynn white will be presented as an emblematic turning point in the relationship between christian religion and ecologists, paying attention first, to the puritan context of his writings, and, second, to the birth of contemporary environmentalist theories. in the last part romano guardini’s work and francis’ “laudato si’” will be considered. my attention will be focused on the interpretation of some relevant verses taken from the bible book of genesis. keywords: ecology, ethics of environment, patristic age, augustine, romano guardini, bible, christian religion, puritans, lynn white, power (in modern age). 1. from ancient times to modern age the most direct way to appreciate the way in which christian thinkers have conceived the relationship between humans and the world or, better, creation, is to take their interpretation of genesis 1:28 and 2:15 into consideration. these two verses in fact include the verbs that characterize the actions prescribed by god to persons in order to regulate their behaviour towards all other creatures. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/79 http://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2017-001-damo mailto:marco.damonte%40unige.it%20?subject= marco damonte 28 relations – 5.1 june 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 1.1. the patristic age a complete study of the patristic age should include the great number of christian authors until the ninth century 1. my aim here is more modest and includes only thinkers quoted in the most relevant anthologies of biblical commentary (louth 2001, 67-70). bede (672-735), in the first book of his commentary on genesis, offers a sort of literal interpretation, according to which there are two ages: in the first one animals and humans lived in harmony; in the second one they are in conflict with one another. the distinction between these two eras consists in the free decision of people to obey divine command or not, and this is confirmed by the fact that also in the second age the saints have control over damage caused by wild beasts. the strategy of cappadocian fathers is to read the relationship between human beings and nature in an allegoric way. for example, gregory nissen (335-395) in on the creation of man (18) affirms that in irrational animals we find human features that we have in virtue of our being created in the image and resemblance of god as rage, pleasure, cowardice, arrogance, burning desire to earn, fits of despair for a loss, and so on. in this fashion “having dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth” (gn 1:28b) means that human beings must dominate the (wild) beasts that are in their hearts. in the same text (1, 36-37, 39), gregory makes it clear that this capacity of controlling derives from god and it concerns both the self, in particular bad instincts and unfavourable dispositions, and other creatures because they could become objects of human concupiscence. john chrysostom (349-407), in his homilies on genesis (10, 4), offers a different perspective. for him the authority over the animals is a sign of god’s love for mankind. and this for two reasons: first, because it is a way in which god offers part of his power to people and, second, because it is a manner to bless mankind. the power received from the creator must be a motive of wonder and in fact it testifies at the same time god’s magnanimity and human’s greatness. this greatness consists in the rational human nature and not in every human action. also ambrose of milan (340-397) in on paradise (11, 51-52) and john chrysostom, in homilies on genesis (14, 4) suggest the same idea. they notice that this power is represented by the possibility given by god to adam to name all animals and that this is also a way to indicate the responsibility that people have towards them. 1 the bibliographical tool useful for this work is biblia patristica. index des citationis et allusions bibliques dans la littérature patristique, vols. i-vii. paris: cnrs, 1975-2000. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/79 god, the bible and the environment 29 relations – 5.1 june 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ with regard to genesis 2:15b, the verbs to tend and to keep are in general evaluated in the context of the metaphor between god and a gardener. also, in this case god gives mankind his own (creative) power. for this reason origen (184-253) in the commentary on john (13, 240-241) says that only the perfect human created by god and not yet struck by original sin was able to take care of the garden and, in particular, of the tree of the life. according to severian of gabala (ca. 380-415) in his six sermons on the creation (5, 5) tilling the soil is the same as complying to god’s laws. tending and keeping do not give people an arbitrary domain on nature, but they indicate that people have to work for the good and that this work is implied in their nature. ephrem (ca. 306-373), one of the syriac father, followed by procopio (469-515), dwells on considering the precepts of god the only thing adam has to follow and, on the other hand the seductions of the devil the only things to avoid (neri 1995, 40-3). in the middle ages, rupert of deutz (1076-1129) specified that the work of mankind lies in the fulfillment of god’s work, that is the work of faith, the task of hope and conforming to charity. as a consequence, what must be kept is faith and the love for god, the creator. contemporary textual criticism confirms these aspects starting from a lexical and an etymological point of view (baricalla 1998). moreover, comparing the first part of the book of genesis with previous western literature – in particular the enuma elish (testa 1977, 271-3) –, exegetes underline that the task committed by god to mankind is not to use creation in order to serve him, but to take care of creation in order to make it flourish. this should be the correct interpretation of genesis 2:15, even if the language used is taken from the legal contract between an owner and his farmers. 1.2. augustine the relevance of augustine of hippo (354-430) for all following western thought is the reason to take his writings into consideration in a specific section. to fix the context of his age is fundamental to understand it correctly. he wrote in an age when manicheism was widespread. manichees considered reality depend on two principles: the good and the bad ones. moreover, in a gnostic perspective, they thought matter was totally negative. for this dualistic prejudice, they denied humans had received from god the control over beasts observing that on a lot of occasions animals injured humankind. augustine, in his on genesis, a refutation of manichees (1, 18, 29) rebuts that this type of control changed after original sin http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/79 marco damonte 30 relations – 5.1 june 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ and that, in any case it is necessary to distinguish corporeal harm, from spiritual harm. individuals are vulnerable in their bodies, but mankind cannot be subjugated by wild beasts in virtue of its nature. dominating is explained as the judging capacity that belongs to human spirituality and, specifically, to the intellect (testa 1977, 288-9). people dominate nature in the way that they can and must approve what is right and condemn what is wrong in the light of the spirit of god. if we find an apparent exaltation of human power, it is because the manichees devalue human nature. in this fashion, augustine, in the same text (on genesis, a refutation of manichees, 2, 11, 15) underlines that work gives respectability to people and he remembers that only after original sin work became hard. at the beginning tending and keeping the garden were a pleasure and they were the way to develop humans’s abilities which god gifted them with. the only commitment for people was to preserve what god had given them. in the literal meaning of genesis (8, 8) it is clear that humans’s work and god’s work go in the same direction and have the same aim: what people have to do is to complete creation and to make it perfect or, at least, not to ruin it owing to bad actions. 2. the turning point of the twentieth century thanks to this background, christian culture and the exploitation of natural resources could be considered independent or even in contradiction with one another. but really, especially nowadays, biblical tradition is accused of being responsible of ecological crisis: air and water pollution, contamination of the soil, extermination of wild animals, and so on. when and who exactly move this charge? 2.1. lynn white and his interpretation of the ecological crisis this accusation is due to lynn townsend white jr. (1907-1987), who was a professor of medieval history at princeton from 1933 to 1937, and at stanford from 1937 to 1943. he was president of mills college, oakland, and a professor at the university of california, los angeles. moreover he helped to found the society of history and technology (shot) and he won the pfizer award for “medieval technology and social change” from the history of science society (hss) and the leonardo da vinci medal and dexter prize in 1964 and 1970. in 1967 white delivered a speech to http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/79 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/middle_ages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/princeton_university https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/stanford_university https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/mills_college https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/oakland,_california https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/university_of_california,_los_angeles https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=society_of_history_and_technology&action=edit&redlink=1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/pfizer_award https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/history_of_science_society god, the bible and the environment 31 relations – 5.1 june 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the american association for the advancement of science that was published in science in the same year under the title the historical roots of our ecologic crisis (white 1967). in this paper he points out that, from an historical point of view, all forms of life modify their context and that, quite unintentionally, changes in human ways often affect nonhuman nature. the word ecology, a neologism first appeared in the english language in 1873, testifies that “today, less than a century later, the impact of our race upon the environment has so increased in force that it has changed in essence” (1203). people have often been a dynamic element in their own environment, but in the present state of historical scholarship we usually do not know exactly when, where, or with what effects man-induced changes came. white wishes to fill this gap. he quotes the baconian creed included in novum organum and he goes on reflecting on the relationship between science and technology: as a beginning we should try to clarify our thinking by looking, in some historical depth, at the presuppositions that underlie modern technology and science. science was traditionally aristocratic, speculative, intellectual in intent; technology was lower-class, empirical, action oriented. the quite sudden fusion of these two, towards the middle of the 19th century, is surely related to the slightly prior and contemporary democratic revolutions which, by reducing social barriers, tended to assert a functional unity of brain and hand. our ecologic crisis is the product of an emerging, entirely novel, democratic culture. the issue is whether a democratized world can survive its own implications. presumably we cannot unless we rethink our axioms. (1204) this modern alliance of science with technology is distinctively occidental and it is the reason of the leadership of the west. this fact is due to the so-called scientific revolution of the 17th century and to the so-called industrial revolution of the 18th century, but its roots are mere ancient. modern science is supposed to have begun in 1543, when both copernicus and vesalius published their great works, but white argues that the distinctive western tradition of science began in the late 11th century with a massive movement of translation of arabic and greek scientific works into latin. he also underlines an anthropological change: formerly human had been part of nature, after the advent of modern science and of its marriage with technology, he became the exploiter of nature. according to this view human and nature are two things, and man is the uncontested master. at this point white introduces the relevant role of religion: these novelties seem to be in harmony with larger intellectual patterns. what people do about their ecology depends on what they think about our nature and destiny – that is, by religion. […] the victory of christianity over paganism was the greatest physical revolution in the history of our culture. it http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/79 marco damonte 32 relations – 5.1 june 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ has become fashionable today to say that, for better or worse, we live in “the post-christian age”. certainly the forms of our thinking and language have largely ceased to be christian, but to my eye the substance often remains amazingly akin to that of the past. our daily habits of action, for example, are dominated by an implicit faith in perpetual progress which was unknown either to greco-roman antiquity or to the orient. it is rooted in, and is indefensible apart from, judeo-christian teleology. (1205) even if we accept this historical analysis, the implicit negative evaluation of it deserves to be discussed. but a greater problem arises when white presents his position interpreting genesis: christianity inherited from judaism is not only a concept of time as nonrepetitive and linear but also a striking story of creation. by gradual stages a loving and all-powerful god had created light and darkness, the heavenly bodies, the earth and all its plants, animals, birds, and fishes. finally, god had created adam and, as an afterthought, eve to keep male from being lonely. human named all the animals, thus establishing his dominance over them. god planned all of this explicitly for human’s benefit and rule: no item in the physical creation had any purpose save to serve man’s purposes. and, although human’s body is made of clay, he is not simply part of nature: he is made in god’s image. (1205) and so the peremptory conclusion: “especially in its western form, christianity is the most anthropocentric religion the world has seen” (1205). quoting without references tertullian (155-240) and irenaeus of lyons (early 2nd century ca. 202) and contrasting christianity with ancient paganism and asia’s religions, white thinks of christianity as a dualistic religion and a religion that insists it is god’s will that human exploits nature for his/ her personal ends. if possible, white’s opinion is even more severe: by destroying pagan animism, christianity made it possible to exploit nature in a mood of indifference to the feelings of natural objects. […] the spirits in natural objects, which formerly had protected nature from man, evaporated. man’s effective monopoly on spirit in this world was confirmed, and the only inhibitions to the exploitation of nature crumbled. (1205) but there is also another link between christianity and contemporary ecologic problems. this link is deep-rooted in western atmosphere, in fact eastern theology, according to white, has been intellectualistic and contemplative, while the western one has been voluntaristic and directed to action. in his world: the christian dogma of creation, which is found in the first clause of all the creeds, has another meaning for our comprehension of today’s ecological crisis. by revelation, god has given man the bible, the book of scriptures. but since god had made nature, nature also must reveal the divine mentalhttp://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/79 god, the bible and the environment 33 relations – 5.1 june 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ity. the religious study of nature for the better understanding of god was known as natural theology. in the early church, and always in the greek east, nature was conceived primarily as a symbolic system through which god speaks to men […]. however, in the latin west by the early 13th century natural theology was following a very different bent. it was ceasing to be the decoding of the physical symbols of god’s communication with man and was becoming the effort to understand god’s mind by discovering how his creation operates. (1206) this mention of natural theology seems to be an implicit accusation of catholicism. this is the final conclusion drawn by white: modern science is an extrapolation of natural theology and modern technology is at least partly to be explained as an occidental, voluntaristic realization of the christian dogma of man’s transcendence of, and rightful mastery over, nature. but, as we now recognize, somewhat over a century ago science and technology – hitherto quite separate activities – joined to give mankind power which, to judge by many of the ecological effects, are out of control. if so, christianity bears a huge burden of guilt. (1206) 2.2. the puritan context to sum up, white’s generalizations lead him to individuate the following accusations turned against christianity: (1) christians consider humans to be superior to all other beings and this legitimates that all creatures are at the service of mankind; (2) monotheism prevents the possibility of a personal relationship with natural elements; (3) the refusal of metemphychosis aids in depreciating the value of the animal world; (4) the biblical negative conception about deserts and wild places strengthens the tendency to evaluate non humanized landscapes as without any intrinsic value; (5) the appreciation of the transcendent world implies the indifference towards the material one; (6) the apocalypse implicit in the final judgement and the relative annihilation are not compatible with an ethic of environment. the doubtfulness of each of these affirmations suggests a question: what model of christianity does white have in mind? shea (1993) argues that the context in which he moves is the puritan one and, in particular, puritans who arrived in america in the 17th century 2. they followed a strong version of calvinism where the role of original sin was very decisive and, consequently, they thought nature – at least after adam’s fall – be an unchanging 2 it must be noted that english puritans appreciated nature in a different way as thomas traherne’s (1637-1674) prose and william blake’s (1757-1827) poetry show (shea 1993, 208-9). http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/79 marco damonte 34 relations – 5.1 june 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ threat for mankind. sagoff (1988, 125-9) reconstructs the religious rhetoric of puritans who ran away from the paradise of england, where they were persecuted, to the desert and inhospitable lands of the new world. their religious, political and military leaders, as john higginson (1561-1622), john winthrop (1587-1649), samuel danforth (1626-1674), michael wigglesworth (1631-1705), and cotton mather (1663-1728) described the relationship between puritans and environment as a bloody battle. winning this battle was necessary not only for the physical survival, but also to be sure that god’s favour was for the puritans. another source for white’s assertions is american romanticism that leads to a sort of deism and pantheism. let’s consider the following emblematic verses: and i have felt / a presence that disturbs me with the joy / of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime / of something far more deeply interfused, / whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, / and the round ocean, and the living air, / and the blue sky, and in the mind of man; / a motion and a spirit, that impels / all thinking things, all objects of all thought / and rolls through all things. (wordsworth 1904, 92, lines 93-102) it is relevant to remember that in the 18th century america there was an integration between pantheism and democratic principles, as alexis de tocqueville (1805-1859) already noted in his de la démocratie en amérique (vol. ii, chap. 7) and as ralph waldo emerson (1803-1882) and henry david thoreau (1817-1862) theorized (shea 1993, 204-7). aldo leopold (1887-1948), professor of forestry at the university of wisconsin unconsciously echoes rousseau and wrote: examine each question in terms of what is ethically and aesthetically right, as well as what is economically expedient. a thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. (leopold 1993, 78) the two sources mentioned above have determined white’s conception about christianity or, better, have informed his prejudices about it. he ignores other christian traditions which go in a very different way, for example the benedictine one, which, in the sixties, was known in america thanks to the studies of rené dubos (1973). 2.3. ecological philosophy and environmental ethics white’s thought influence pervaded not only public opinion, but also influenced other authors, as roderick f. nash (1989, 92) and milan kundera (1999, 290) who corroborated his thesis. in the seventies, new fields of http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/79 god, the bible and the environment 35 relations – 5.1 june 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ethics about ecology (beatty 1998) were born under his blessing. in this decade a small number of academic philosophers in the english-speaking world began to turn their attention to the questions concerning the natural environment. environmental philosophy initially encompassed various types of enquiry, including applied ethics oriented to issues such as nuclear power and the deployment of toxic chemicals; more abstract extrapolations of traditional ethical theories, such as kantianism, utilitarianism and consequentialism, into environmental contexts; and, also, a far more radical project involving the reappraisal of basic presuppositions of western thought in the light of their implications for our relation to the natural world. but what do ecological philosophers exactly understand referring to western thought? for them the dominant worldview is sometimes called newtonian, sometimes cartesian. it was forged during the scientific revolution of the 17th and 18th centuries, though it is often seen – without justification – as having antecedents in both classical greek thought and christianity. it is newtonian insofar as it is atomistic and mechanistic, and it is cartesian insofar as it is dualistic. freya mathews summarizes ecological philosophers’ position about the western thought as follows: for if humanity was the repository of all meaning and purpose, then it was also the exclusive locus of value; matter as the inert and dead, the purposeless and blind, possessed only the meaning and hence value that we projected onto it. this flattering image of humanity as categorically elevated above the rest of nature had an obvious appeal in an expansive and ambitious age. moreover, the natural world, divested of intrinsic value, was rendered a fit object for human use, significant only as a reservoir of resources for humankind. this dissolution of traditional constraints on the exploitation of the natural environment obviously suited the mercantile ends of the early modern era. in reinforcing the assumption that humanity is the only proper object of moral concern and the only yardstick of meaning and value in life, the scientific worldview is seen by eco-philosophers as entrenching the human centredness or anthropocentrism that was to a certain extent already, in the pre-modern period, characteristic of western thought, with its judeochristian and classical greek and roman origins. ultimately, the classical scientific worldview and the anthropocentrism which accompanies it may be seen to rest on a fundamental principle of division or separation. (mathews 1998, 198) if the dominant worldview emphasizes separation, alternative, ecological worldviews rest on a principle of interconnectedness. this holistic interpretation of reality was understood in different ways by different authors. it is relevant, for our purpose, to note that eco-philosophers consider spirit as immanent in matter, body, nature in order to remove the traditional justifications for anthropocentric attitudes. the question is that they prefer to http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/79 marco damonte 36 relations – 5.1 june 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ propose a new religious attitude, rather than inquiring if christianity and biblical thought are really so compromised with modern anthropocentrism. the main outcome of ecological philosophy is the so called environmental ethics (brennan 1998). its guru, arne naess (1912-2009), a norwegian philosopher, argues that human self-realization depends on identification with nature (naess 1987). deep ecology started as a doctrine of biospheric egalitarism, i.e. all living things have the same claim to live and flourish (devall and session 1985). it evolved into a platform meant to embrace all those who recognize the inherent value of natural things and who share a concern to preserve natural diversity whatever their differences in underlying philosophies. a key point of deep ecology is that all living things are members of larger biotic or ecological communities. the larger community may then be regarded as a place of value, with individuals needs and projects assessed in terms of their contribution to the good of the larger whole. other radical positions are already aligned with wellknown political standpoints. social ecology is a type of green anarchism, while ecofeminism regards the destruction of nature as intimately linked to the oppressive structures of patriarchy. from the political point of view ernest haeckel (1834-1919) who coined the term ecology, was associated with the extreme right, the hitler youth were taught to value nature and the ss training manual declared the forests of germany to be of special value (pois 1986). although followers of the deep ecology platform are typically vague about the political solutions they put forward, the position has, on occasion, been accused of supporting eco-fascism. the fear behind this accusation is that biocentrism or eco-centrism may motivate the state to be unacceptably coercive towards individuals for the sake of some larger environmental good. as a result of this plurality of positions, there is no generally agreed radical platform (bondi 2015). the only two elements they have in common are (1) the rejection or, in the best case, the indifference towards institutional religions; and (2) a marked anti-anthropocentrism (watson 1983), with the only exception of hans jonas’ work (1985). at length this lack of foundation led to a philosophical crisis of these currents of thought which have started to be activist movements. naess’ own ecosophy is an amalgam of various influences, including spinoza, gandhi, logical positivism and the nature-centredness of the norvegean folk tradition. other authors, rather than studying in depth pre-modern western philosophy, prefer to appeal for justification to certain minority traditions, such as pantheism, romanticism, monism or the process philosophy of alfred north whitehead (18611947). eastern traditions, such as daoism and buddhism, and the spiritual traditions of indigenous people, are also invoked. but it seems that these http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/79 god, the bible and the environment 37 relations – 5.1 june 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ interests do not concern also christianity, a religion that they choose to attack, rather than value serenely paying attention, at least, to contemporary biblical scholars. 3. contemporary perspectives white has ended his paper wishing that christian religion should drop its dogmas and start to follow the example of francis of assisi, a saint who “tried to depose man from his monarchy over creation and set up a democracy of all god’s creatures” (white 1967, 1206). white underlined that “he was so clearly heretical that a general of the franciscan order, saint bonaventura, a great and perceptive christian, tried to suppress the early accounts of franciscanism” (1206). this author adds: both our present science and our present technology are so tinctured with orthodox christian arrogance toward nature that no solution for our ecological crisis can be expected from them alone. since the roots of our trouble are so largely religious, the remedy must also be essentially religious, whether we call it or not. we must rethink and refeel our nature and destiny. the profoundly religious, but heretical, sense of the primitive franciscans for the spiritual autonomy of all parts of nature may point a direction. i propose francis as a patron saint for ecologists. (1207) so, it is considered a sort of irony of history that the holy see proclaimed francis the patron saint of ecologists in 1980 and that the present pontiff, who chose call himself francis for the first time in the history of the church, has recently written an encyclical on ecological problems starting from francis’ canticle of the creatures. before taking this text into consideration, let’s consider a different way to appreciate the relationship between christian religion, the modern world and ecological questions. 3.1. romano guardini and the notion of power even if we can agree with white and so consider the notion of power the main notion that determines the relationship between mankind and nature, the question of why nowadays this notion is problematic remains. in the previous section i have shown white’s analysis to be problematic, and i will now present romano guardini’s (1885-1968) thesis according to which the notion of power became pernicious because it was redefined through secularization and because we use it without any responsibility. our condition is http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/79 marco damonte 38 relations – 5.1 june 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the consequence of the fact that we do not recognize the limit of our power. we think we can arrogate ourselves god’s prerogative. the genesis warns people people that they did not create anything from nothing and that their task was to harmonize themselves with the natural order of creation. when human beings forgot these things they were removed from paradise. power in itself in neutral; it is a kind of mere datum: every human act, each situation, the simple fact of being, are directly or indirectly connected with a feeling of power. the discrimination is between the use of power and the pleasure of power. in its positive declination, power produces in us the awareness to be masters of ourselves and to have a force; in its negative form it changes into arrogance and vanity. the consciousness of power is an ontological feature for human beings, neutral from a moral point of view. the questions and the problems start with its exercise and its use and so they have a metaphysical component and a religious one. for this reason, guardini suggests to take genesis into consideration (1961, chap. ii). first of all he underlines that, following the biblical narration, each person is gifted with a different nature in comparison with other living beings. he/she is created as the other beings, but moreover he/she has in him/herself the image of god. this means that human beings are part of created nature, but, at the same time, that they have a privileged relationship with god thanks to which they could adopt a definite position regarding nature and must do it. moreover guardini notes that human being is called to become master not only of nature, but, first of all, of himself. the resemblance between god and mankind consists in this exercise of a domain, which is a gift. and just because it is a gift, it is a task. domain does not have the purpose of usefulness, profit, progress, affluence, wellbeing and so on, but it is ordered to increase the resemblance between god and humans. after original sin, the problem is that human claims to use this power without corresponding ethics. he/she wants to do what he/she is able to do, without asking him/herself if he/she is doing a right thing or a wrong one. in god’s project, the greatness of mankind is based on reliability and on responsibility. in this perspective, power is obedience and service. the model proposed by christian revelation is jesus christ, presented in the new testament as the new adam. dominion is obedience because it must comply with the truth of created beings. dominion is service because it must be exercised inside god’s creation: it has the aim to keep on in history and in culture what god in his absolute freedom has created as nature. human power must not build a self-governing or an auto-referential world, but, according to god’s will, it has to realize god’s world in order to render it a world of human freedom. consistently, guardini avoids both naturalistic optimism and contemporary pessimism and he looks to the new testament revelation and he http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/79 god, the bible and the environment 39 relations – 5.1 june 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ trusts in the gift of redemption, seen as a second creation. also in this case people have the responsibility to accept or refuse it. redemption causes, if people do not obstacle it, the transformation of power into humility. the real power is attending to other beings, which means taking care of people and managing non-auto-consciousness beings. the power which possesses itself in a full way is a power able to forgo itself, and it is not a power that becomes violence, overwhelming, and destructive. 3.2. suggestions from francis’ “laudato si’” guardini’s historiographical and theoretical interpretation is one of the background of the last social encyclical letter promulgate by the holy father francis (damonte 2016). this ecclesial document (francis 2015) is addressed to all people and it is particularly clear, frank. in order to appreciate what it says about genesis 1:28 and 2:15, i simply propose the following anthology 3. we have forgotten that we ourselves are dust of the earth (cf. gn 2:7); our very bodies are made up of her elements, we breathe her air and we receive life and refreshment from her waters (2). without repeating the entire theology of creation, we can ask what the great biblical narratives say about the relationship of human beings with the world. in the first creation account in the book of genesis, god’s plan includes creating humanity. after the creation of man and woman, “god saw everything that he had made, and beheld it was very good” (gn 1:31). the bible teaches that every man and woman is created out of love and made in god’s image and likeness (cf. gn 1:26). this shows us the immense dignity of each person, “who is not just something, but someone. he is capable of self-knowledge, of self-possession and of freely giving himself and entering into communion with other persons” (65). the creation accounts in the book of genesis contain, in their own symbolic and narrative language, profound teachings about human existence and its historical reality. they suggest that human life is grounded in three fundamental and closely intertwined relationships: with god, with our neighbour and with the earth itself. according to the bible, these three vital relationships have been broken, both outwardly and within us. this rupture is sin. the harmony between the creator, humanity and creation as a whole was disrupted by our presuming to take the place of god and refusing to acknowledge our creaturely limitations. this in turn distorted our mandate to “have dominion” over the earth (cf. gn 1:28), to “till it 3 in this case numbers indicate paragraphs and not pages. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/79 marco damonte 40 relations – 5.1 june 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ and keep it” (gn 2:15). as a result, the originally harmonious relationship between human beings and nature became conflicting (cf. gn 3:17-19). it is significant that the harmony which saint francis of assisi experienced with all creatures was seen as a healing of that rupture. saint bonaventure held that, through universal reconciliation with every creature, saint francis in some way returned to the state of original innocence. this is a far cry from our situation today, where sin is manifest in all its destructive power in wars, the various forms of violence and abuse, the abandonment of the most vulnerable, and attacks on nature (66). we are not god. the earth was here before us and it has been given to us. this allows us to respond to the charge that judaeo-christian thinking, on the basis of the genesis account which grants man “dominion” over the earth (cf. gn 1:28), has encouraged the unbridled exploitation of nature by painting him as domineering and destructive by nature. this is not a correct interpretation of the bible as understood by the church. although it is true that we christians have at times incorrectly interpreted the scriptures, nowadays we must forcefully reject the notion that our being created in god’s image and given dominion over the earth justifies absolute domination over other creatures. the biblical texts are to be read in their context, with an appropriate hermeneutic, recognizing that they tell us to “till and keep” the garden of the world (cf. gn 2:15). “tilling” refers to cultivating, ploughing or working, while “keeping” means caring, protecting, overseeing and preserving. this implies a relationship of mutual responsibility between human beings and nature. each community can take from the bounty of the earth whatever it needs for subsistence, but it also has the duty to protect the earth and to ensure its fruitfulness for coming generations (67). this responsibility for god’s earth means that human beings, endowed with intelligence, must respect the laws of nature and the delicate equilibriums existing between the creatures of this world, for “he commanded and they were created; and he established them for ever and ever; he fixed their bounds and he set a law which cannot pass away” (sal 148:5b-6). the laws found in the bible dwell on relationships, not only among individuals but also with other living beings (68). francis refers himself to the story of cain and abel in order to show what happens when right relationships among people and between mankind, god and nature are disregarded: “the voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground. and now you are cursed from the ground” (gn 4:9-11). disregard for the duty to cultivate and maintain a proper relationship with my neighbour, for whose care and custody i am responsible, ruins my relationship with my own self, with others, with god and with the http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/79 god, the bible and the environment 41 relations – 5.1 june 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ earth. when all these relationships are neglected, when justice no longer dwells in the land, the bible tells us that life itself is endangered (70). any approach to an integral ecology, which by definition does not exclude human beings, needs to take account of the value of labour, as saint john paul ii wisely noted in his encyclical laborem exercens. according to the biblical account of creation, god placed man and woman in the garden he had created (cf. gn 2:15) not only to preserve it (“keep”) but also to make it fruitful (“till”). labourers and craftsmen thus “maintain the fabric of the world” (sir 38:34). developing the created world in a prudent way is the best way of caring for it, as this means that we ourselves become the instrument used by god to bring out the potential which he himself inscribed in things (124). 4. conclusions as engagements the role of religions in our societies increases. the fact that contemporary societies are part of the so called global village and that their specific cultures are glocals makes the religious values decisive and so their performative role cannot be neglected (mendieta and van antwerpen 2001). this is true also in the case of current ecologic crisis (gottlieb 2004). the christian message held in genesis, correctly understood, implies that human power over nature is not arbitrary, nor absolute, but it must correspond with the order of the creation. this book is sacred and revealed for believers and so it is normative for them: all christians have to collaborate to god’s project increasing it, and not thwarting it. i think this perspective is greater and greater: it could be shared with other monotheistic religions, in fact both judaism and islam consider god as creator of all that exists. moreover this approach could be useful also among unbelievers insofar as it appeals to human responsibility and insofar as it warns we do not possess nature, but we have received it from past generations and we have to preserve it for future generations (damonte 2013) and for the necessities of poor people. also in the case of ecology, the spiritual force of a religious message could improve our actions (damonte 2009). the relationship between humanity and the environment is a dynamic and active process that must be improved and not cut off. neglected nature is not friendly. the human task towards nature has to have the qualities of a good administration, not of a dictator, nor of a cold person. i hope to have removed some pernicious prejudices and to have suggested some available perspectives which do not belong to a new form of anthropocentrism, but fully depend on human responsibility. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/79 marco damonte 42 relations – 5.1 june 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 5. appendix considering the relevance i have ascribed to two verses of genesis, i think reasonable to quote this verses in hebrew, greek, latin and in the main english translation. i do this in the present appendix, making reference to bibleworks, the most famous and complete informatic multimedial support used by bible scholars 4. 5.1. genesis 1:28 wbr>w wrp. ~yhil{a/ ~h,l' rm,ayow: ~yhil{a/ ~t'ao %r,b'y>w: westminster hebrew old testament hy'x;-lk'b.w ~yim;v'h; @a[b.w ~y'h; tg:d>bi wdr>w h'vub.kiw> #r,a'h'-ta, wal.miw `#r,a'h'-l[; tf,m,roh' lxx septuaginta rahlfs’ – καὶ ηὐλόγησεν αὐτοὺς ὁ θεὸς λέγων αὐ ξά­ νεσθε καὶ πληθύνεσθε καὶ πληρώσατε τὴν γῆν καὶ κατακυριεύσατε αὐτῆς καὶ ἄρχετε τῶν ἰχθύων τῆς θαλάσσης καὶ τῶν πετεινῶν τοῦ οὐρανοῦ καὶ πάντων τῶν κτηνῶν καὶ πάσης τῆς γῆς καὶ πάντων τῶν ἑρπετῶν τῶν ἑρπόντων ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς. latin vulgate – benedixitque illis deus et ait crescite et multiplicamini et replete terram et subicite eam et dominamini piscibus maris et volatilibus caeli et universis animantibus quae moventur super terram. king james (1611/1769) – and god blessed them, and god said unto them, “be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth”. the webster bible (1833) – and god blessed them, and god said to them, “be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living animal that moveth upon the earth”. young’s literal translation (1862/1889) – and god blesseth them, and god saith to them, “be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it, and rule over fish of the sea, and over fowl of the heavens, and over every living thing that is creeping upon the earth”. the darby bible (1884/1890) – and god blessed them; and god said to them, “be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the heavens, and over every animal that moveth on the earth”. 4 bibleworks for windows, version 3.5 (1996), edited by michael s. bushell. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/79 god, the bible and the environment 43 relations – 5.1 june 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ american standard version (1901) – and god blessed them: and god said unto them, “be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth”. the bible in basic english (1949/1964) – and god gave them his blessing and said to them, “be fertile and have increase, and make the earth full and be masters of it; be rulers over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing moving on the earth”. revised standard version (1952) – and god blessed them, and god said to them, “be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth”. new king james version (1982) – then god blessed them, and god said to them, “be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth”. new revised standard version (1989) – god blessed them, and god said to them, “be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth”. 5.2. genesis 2:15 `hr"m.v"l.w hd"b.["l. !d,[e-!g:b. whxeniy:w: ~d"a"h"-ta, ~yhil{a/ hw"hy> xq;yiw: westminster hebrew old testament lxx septuaginta rahlfs’ – καὶ ἔλαβεν κύριος ὁ θεὸς τὸν ἄνθρωπον ὃν ἔπλασεν καὶ ἔθετο αὐτὸν ἐν τῷ παραδείσῳ ἐργάζεσθαι αὐτὸν καὶ φυλάσσειν. latin vulgate – tulit ergo dominus deus hominem et posuit eum in paradiso voluptatis ut operaretur et custodiret illum. king james (1611/1769) – and the lord god took the man, and put him into the garden of eden to dress it and to keep it. the webster bible (1833) – and the lord god took the man, and put him into the garden of eden, to dress it, and to keep it. young’s literal translation (1862/1889) – and jehovah god taketh the man, and causeth him to rest in the garden of eden, to serve it, and to keep it. the darby bible (1884/1890) – and jehovah elohim took man, and put him into the garden of eden, to till it and to guard it. american standard version (1901) – and jehovah god took the man, and put him into the garden of eden to dress it and to keep it. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/79 marco damonte 44 relations – 5.1 june 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the bible in basic english (1949/1964) – and the lord god took the man and put him in the garden of eden to do work in it and take care of it. revised standard version (1952) – the lord god took the man and put him in the garden of eden to till it and keep it. new king james version (1982) – then the lord god took the man and put him in the garden of eden to tend and keep it. new revised standard version (1989) – the lord god took the man and put him in the garden of eden to till it and keep it. references baricalla, vilma. 1998. “l’attesa del creato. riflessioni su alcuni capitoli del genesi”. in le creature dimenticate. per un’analisi dei rapporti tra cristianesimo e questione animale, edited by luisella battaglia, 1-23. cesena: macro. beatty, john. 1998. “ecology”. in routledge encyclopedia of philosophy, edited by edward craig, vol. iii, 202-5. london: routledge. bondi, damiano. 2015. fine del mondo o fine dell’uomo? saggio su ecologia e religione. verona: fondazione centro studi campostrini. brennan, andrew. 1998. “environmental ethics”. in routledge encyclopedia of philosophy, edited by edward craig, vol. iii, 333-6. london: routledge. damonte, marco. 2009. “confrontation between civilization, religions and professions of faith”. études maritainiennes / maritain studies 25: 46-57. 2013. “ecologia dell’ambiente ed ecologia dell’uomo”. in ma di’ soltanto una parola… economia, ecologia, speranza per i nostri giorni, edited by enrico garlaschelli, giovanni salmeri, and paolo trianni, 235-47. milano: educatt. 2016. “storie a piè di pagina. una lettura filosofica della laudato si’”. fogli campostrini 11: 38-59. devall, bill, and george session. 1985. deep ecology. salt lake: peregrine smith. dubos, rené. 1973. “a theology of the earth”. in western man and environmental ethics, edited by ian g. barbour, 43-54. reading, ma: addison-wesley. francis. 2015. encycical letter laudato si’. on care of our common home. roma: vatican press. gottlieb, roger s., ed. 2004. this sacred earth. religion, nature, environment. new york london: routledge. guardini, romano. 1961. power and responsibility: a course of action for the new age. chicago: henry regnery company. jonas, hans. 1985. the imperative of the responsibility: in search of an ethics for the technological age. chicago: university of chicago press. kundera, milan. 1999. the unbearable lightness of being. new york: harper perennial. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/79 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/harper_perennial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/harper_perennial god, the bible and the environment 45 relations – 5.1 june 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ leopold, aldo. 1993. “the land ethics”. in environmental philosophy: from animal rights to radical ecology, edited by michael zimmerman and baird callicott. prentice hall: j. cliffs. louth, andrew. 2001. ancient christian commentary on scripture, old testament i, genesis i-ii. downers grove, il: intervarsity press. mathews, freya. 1998. “ecological philosophy”. in routledge encyclopedia of philosophy, edited by edward craig, vol. iii, 197-202. london: routledge. mendieta, eduardo, and jonathan van antwerpen. 2001. the power of religion in the public sphere. new york: the social science research council. naess, arne. 1987. ecology, community and lifestyle. cambridge: cambridge university press. nash, roderick f. 1989. the rights of nature. madison: university of wisconsin press. neri, umberto, ed. 1995. biblia. i libri della bibbia interpretati dalla grande tradizione. bologna: dehoniane. pois, robert a. 1986. national socialism and the religion of nature. london: croom helm. sagoff, mark. 1988. the economy of the earth. cambridge: cambridge university press. shea, william r. 1993. “l’ambiente della fede e la fede nell’ambiente”. in filosofia della religione. indagini storiche e riflessioni critiche, edited by mario micheletti and armando savignano, 199-215. genova: marietti. testa, emanuele, ed. 1977. la sacra bibbia. genesi. introduzione – storia primitiva. to rino roma: marietti. watson, richard a. 1983. “a critique of anti-anthropocentric biocentrism”. environmental ethics 5: 246-67. white, lynn, jr. 1967. “the historical roots of our ecologic crisis”. science n.s. 155: 1203-7. wordsworth, william. 1904. “lines composed a few miles above tintern abbey”. in the poetic complete poetical works of wordsworth, ed. by andrew j. george. boston new york: cambridge edition. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/79 beyond scarcity: perspectives on energy transition 49 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ beyond scarcity perspectives on energy transition robert-jan geerts wageningen university, wageningen netherlands doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2018-001-geer robertjangeerts@gmail.com abstract two dominant lines of reasoning in the philosophical debate on energy transition can be described as boundless consumerism (we should find ways to keep growing) and eco-frugality (we should reduce our impact as much as possible). this paper problematizes both approaches via their implicit understanding of the good life, and proposes a third alternative: qualitative abundance. society is not interested in any sustainable energy system, but in one that caters to our needs and enables us to flourish as human beings. because the dominant lines in the current debate share a concern for scarcity, they fail to raise the question of a “good” energy system, and therefore the possibility of a positive energy ethics. qualitative abundance initiates discourse around prosperity (with boundless consumerism) and simplicity (with ecofrugality), thus expanding and enriching debates on energy transition. keywords: energy transition; scarcity; abundance; energy ethics; prosperity; simplicity; good life; quality of life; energy discourse; energy debates. 1. introduction energy transition, understood as the shift from a finite, polluting, climate change-inducing, fossil energy regime towards a sustainable, clean, climate neutral, renewable one, is a large, complex, and poorly delineated sociotechnological project. it is large because the energy basis of society is enormous – about one sixth of all economic activity revolves around energy (shah 2006). its complexity derives from its intertwinement with many aspects of modern life and the multiple problems needing resolution: anthropogenic climate change, peak oil, local environmental issues, national energy security, etc. the functioning of national economies, the shape of cities, and the choices individuals make all depend on the amounts and kinds of energy available to society. finally, the energy transition is http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ http://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2018-001-geer mailto:robertjangeerts@gmail.com robert-jan geerts 50 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ poorly delineated because different routes imply different boundaries. an engineer working on solar fuels may think the thing to change is the production and refining of primary sources, whereas the sociologist studying relations between energy consumption and culture imagines an emergence of new practices. the problem, and thus the solution, is different and much narrower for the engineer than for the sociologist. debates on energy transition are complex because of these reasons, which makes clarifying distinctions both difficult and much needed. this article aims to sketch one such distinction around the issue of scarcity and to problematize the implicit understanding of aims of energy transition on both sides of this discourse. an alternative scarcity rejecting position is proposed, which leads to the emergence of two other discourses, on prosperity and simplicity. it should be noted up front that the “positions” and their resulting lines of reasoning described here are not necessarily actual positions that are held by participants in debates. rather, they are starting points: philosophical positions on the functioning of energy in society which underlie discussions on energy technologies, systems, policies, and practices. argumentative routes originate at such starting points, and also have a direction: they are aimed at contesting arguments from other starting points. in extreme cases, in which debaters exclusively employ one of these routes to define their position, it may be said that they identify with that starting point, but i do not make any claims here that such people exist 1. instead, argumentation from various starting points may be mixed and weighted through some kind of balancing mechanism. such balancing mechanisms may lead to nuanced positions, arguing for example that both sides have their merits and that truth must be somewhere in the middle. in such cases the distinction between various lines of reasoning is useful to get a better grip on how exactly this middle would be conceptualized: can we speak of a continuum, or is it actually not an opposition after all? in other cases, people may argue from a variety of positions to make a claim, but those arguments may be inconsistent. in such cases, describing the opposition in clear terms helps to understand exactly why such positions are inconsistent. the article is structured as follows: section 2 outlines two positions or “camps” in the current debate, boundless consumerism and eco-frugalism, 1 indeed, when i give examples of “boundless consumerist thinkers” later on in this chapter, i do not expect that those thinkers would self-identify with my proposed concept. what i claim is that in their work, lines of reasoning are present that strongly align with my concept of boundless consumerism. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ beyond scarcity 51 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ and briefly discusses their merits and demerits. this is followed in section 3 by an exploration of the notions of the good life implicit in these positions, and their shared perspective on energy and scarcity. section 4 introduces another perspective, called qualitative abundance, and explores its roots and characteristics. section 5 relates qualitative abundance with the other two perspectives, and briefly sketches the resulting discourses between them in terms of prosperity and simplicity. section 6, finally, makes some concluding remarks. 2. discussions on possibility: boundless consumerism and eco-frugality a good amount of discussion on energy transition revolves around concerns of possibility: what kind of energy system is available, considering problems such as climate change and dependence on finite sources? what are the design options, which boundaries do we have to consider? within this discussion on possibility, which is a sub-section of discussion on energy transition in general, a distinction can be discerned between those embracing growth of some sort, and those who reject it. these positions i name boundless consumerism and eco-frugality respectively. by distinguishing and characterizing these lines of reasoning, we gain insight in what is and is not discussed between them. the boundless consumerism line of argument embraces high-energy practices that developed in the fossil-fuel era. it aims at finding sustainable sources and efficiency improvements to continue to power them. simply put, it holds that smart management and novel technologies are all we need to plug into abundant sustainable energy sources that can keep powering our ever-increasing demands. adherents to this position argue for “green growth”: the idea that economies can keep growing if only we made some changes in the direction of development. examples are julian simon (1981) and more recently the “ecomodernist” movement spearheaded by the breakthrough institute (asafu-adjaye et al. 2015). belief in the viability of this route can be based on a variety of arguments, which can be categorized as ecological, technological, and economical optimism. ecological optimism holds that the (fossil or renewable) energy supply on which society is based is practically unlimited. this is often combined with technological optimism, which holds that technological developments will outpace depletion of the energy sources we are currently using. economical optimism, finally, holds that the economy can keep growing on a declining energy footprint. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ robert-jan geerts 52 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ note that although these positions are grouped under the banner of boundless consumerism, they do not necessarily argue for growth of consumption at any cost – they may accept a slower pace of growth in order for this growth to be sustainable. also, they do not necessarily always agree with each other; there is plenty of debate between proponents of different technologies regarding how exactly to produce unlimited energy. but the central point shared by all these positions is that there is no absolute limit in sight: the energy basis (or technological development, or economic activity) is boundless. this means that an energy transition needs to ameliorate current problems of the depletion of specific resources, or specific forms of pollution (e.g. smog or co2), but not much more than that. it is therefore a rather modest project that may be solvable by a dedicated group of technologists or technocrats, out of the way of the consumer who can keep expanding their consumptive interests. this is exactly what eco-frugalism problematizes. eco-frugalism can be described as being concerned that one or more of the optimisms described above is not warranted by our present situation: resources are limited; alternatives are not being developed quickly enough, and/or (fossil) energy is too central in our economic system to be drastically rejected without giving up growth. it may be argued, then, that ecofrugalism is based on one or more pessimisms that mirror the optimisms described above. such pessimisms are not new. one early version of them can be found in malthus’ (1999) population dynamics: he argued that a society cannot continue growing indefinitely because of a limited carrying capacity of the land. in the 1970s the industrial version of this argument was put forward by the club of rome in their seminal report entitled limits to growth (1972). more recently, peak oil and climate change have spawned a myriad of pessimist commentators. see, for example, the work of heinberg (2004) and greer (2017) on peak oil, and the stern review (stern 2006) and this changes everything by naomi klein (2014) on climate change. these authors typically debunk one or more of the optimisms mentioned above with a number of empirical claims, after which a proposal is made on what to do to avert the crisis. the eco-frugalist conclusion is that boundless consumerism is impossible, and that therefore we must minimize our energy consumption whenever we see the opportunity. this is no trivial task, as energy consumption is not usually on our minds. this means we need to be constantly reminded of the efficiency of our cars, to turn off the lights when we leave a room, and to simply stop doing whatever can be understood as wasteful expenditure of energy. eco-frugalism is a conscious reduction of energy consumption: http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ beyond scarcity 53 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ we need to be aware of what we are doing in order to change our routines, and (the abstention from) energy consumption must be on our minds at all times. it is a negative message: although we may want to indulge in certain polluting or depleting activities, we are not allowed to, because it would lead to negative consequences. although some eco-frugal efforts may appear to be very similar to the ones which improve efficiency in order to allow continued economic growth, the aim is rather different. in the case of eco-frugality, a car displaying its current fuel consumption in order to inspire more efficient driving is aimed at reducing the energy expenditure of a specific trip, whereas the same car would allow more and longer trips to boundless consumers. discussions between boundless consumerism and eco-frugalism thus revolve around competing and incommensurable empirical claims about e.g. the amount of available fossil resources (and therefore the time available for a transition), and competing theories with regards to technological development, economic principles, climate science, etc. these discussions clarify and sharpen argumentation from both lines of reasoning and help explore and explicate potential issues, but they fail to reflect on the playing field, the (implicit) rules of engagement, shared fundaments, and blind spots. indeed, sometimes the lack of attention to an issue is more telling than the discussion itself. in the next section i propose to raise the level of comparison to such an issue: the conceptions of the good life implicit in the proposed futures. it turns out these are poorly developed, and it is suggested that this is due to the centrality of scarcity in the discourse between these two positions. this insight allows me to introduce an alternative perspective that enables a richer discussion. 3. the desirability of the possible: implicit understandings of a good energy system before we dive into the substantive conceptions of the good life implicit in discussions on energy transition, it must be argued why such a shift in the discussion is permissible. the central point here is that the reason society pays so much attention to energy systems at all is that these are supposed to provide for our well-being. not only are we interested in a sustainable energy system, but it should also (and perhaps primarily) cater to our needs and enable us to flourish as human beings. although it is common to assume that technologies are neutral tools that simply offer humans ways to provide for their needs, philosophers of technology (e.g. latour 1992; verbeek 2005, 2011) have convincingly http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ robert-jan geerts 54 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ argued that technological artifacts play a much more complex role in human behavior. at the very least, the availability and particular configuration of technologies “nudges” (thaler and sunstein 2008) people to behave in particular ways. energy technologies do this for example when the easy availability of gasoline makes the automobile a viable option for transportation, while the ubiquity of cars in the streets makes cycling or walking less appealing. central heating makes every room in our houses comfortable, and so discourages a family to gather to share warmth. simply put, the kind of energy system we design will have a big influence on the lives we will be living. energy transition is therefore an opportunity to reflect on the current system and reorganize it such that it caters better to diverse human needs while also becoming sustainable. this shift in the discussion means broadening it from the possible to the desirable. although it is tempting to try and keep the debate on energy transition “factual” and leave the morality to individual users, that simply is not possible: societal choices (the layout of infrastructure) will constrain individual choices (how to get around). a discussion on energy transition can either engage with or ignore the moral issues, but it cannot circumvent them. the development of an “energy ethics” is to explicate the implicit ethical notions and concerns that relate to the energy system. examples would be concerns of justice (what is a fair distribution of energy in society?), risk (what kind of risks can the energy system acceptably cause?), and the environment (what burden can we place on the non-human environment?). although these all warrant attention, they do not really provide an alternative perspective on energy transition. rather, they provide (negative) boundary conditions: the energy system should not be unjust, it should not involve risks greater than this-or-that, and should not burden the environment excessively. focusing on the good life, on the other hand, offers a positive direction: this is what the energy system should do. this offers a stronger guidance to the project of energy transition. so how do the two positions introduced above conceptualize a good energy system? boundless consumerism revolves around the idea that consuming goods and services importantly constitutes the good life. individuals, or perhaps more accurately consumers, ideally find themselves in a free market, and are expected to make consumption choices that ultimately add up to a good life as conceived by this consumer: they are supposed to “design their own lives”. as long as the free market is plentiful and consumers are wealthy enough to pursue their goals, this will automatically result in people living the best lives they can. the goal of energy transition must therefore be nothing else than ensuring there is no lack that inhibits http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ beyond scarcity 55 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ anyone to pursue their goals. allan stoekl describes the resulting stance of the consumer as “i spend, or waste, so that i will ultimately be saved” (stoekl 2007, xv) – the religion of the credit card. this approach to the good life is based upon a crude economism: any good that is available in the market comes at a certain price, and the individual consumer is to make the assessment whether the purchasing of a specific good would be worth the price, or indeed the best way to spend their limited amount of funds. growth, then, is always good, as it increases the amount of purchases we can make. two routes of critique are common to point out that this position is problematic. the first is to claim that it may be a dead end. even if boundless consumerism would provide for the best possible lives in theory, it will not work on a finite planet: it is bound to lead to resource wars, many losers, and disillusionment; the outcome will not reflect the utopian vision we set out to reach (heinberg 2004). the weakness of this critique is that it is partly based on empirical claims that counter one or more of the optimisms mentioned above. as long as there is controversy about these empirical claims, this argument is not likely to win many sceptics over 2. the second route of critique is to argue that it does not seem to work. above a certain threshold, there is little to no correlation between (energy) consumption and happiness: in the united states between 1950 and 2005 per capita gdp tripled, but the percentage of people considering themselves “very happy” has remained largely stable (speth 2009, 132). green economists (e.g. jackson 2011) therefore argue for a new economic approach that caters to well-being relying on growth. although this route questions not just the practical but also the theoretical wisdom of boundless consumerism, it is still susceptible to discussions on the empirical basis of the critique. is it really the case that consumption and happiness are not related above certain threshold, or have other causes (e.g. environmental, social, or geo-political concerns) offset the benefits of consumption? in addition to these relatively common routes, ivan illich (1973; 1974) offers a radical critique of modern technology that makes it more plausible that it is indeed high energy consumption itself that is problematic. central to his critique is the idea that narrow goals end up counterproductive if given enough time. illich identifies two watersheds through which every modern institution will pass: the first when this institution becomes more efficient than the practices it replaces, the second when increasing develop 2 whether such a controversy is actual or staged does not matter much for people to feel reassured in their position, as becomes clear by how little climate change deniers give in to the scientific evidence stacking up against their position (klein 2014). http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ robert-jan geerts 56 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ment only increases the effort needed to support the institution. motorized transport, for example, already passed both watersheds: the first when railways made travel faster than what used to be possible on foot, and the second more recently when automobile culture became dominant (illich 1973, 7-8). the automobile may have a higher top speed than the bicycle, but at the cost of spending a substantial amount of our income on the car itself, its maintenance, fuel, road tax, etc., and at the cost of spending more time waiting in traffic, looking for parking spots, and going to the gym to get exercise. all in all, illich calculated, the net velocity of the average car in 1970 in the us was close to 5 mph (illich 1974, 18-19). such counterproductivities are hard to break through because of the development of radical monopolies: monopolies of one kind of means to reach certain ends. the automobile has a certain degree of radical monopoly for transportation in some geographical areas, for example through the (re)design of cities with shopping malls away from the city center (accessible only through freeways), sprawling suburbs, and underdeveloped public transport options. by tailoring the transportation system to favor automobiles, walking, cycling, and mass transit are discouraged or impossible (illich 1974, 43-49). this means that although we as consumers find ourselves in a “free market” with plenty of options regarding which car to purchase, all of these choices are within a narrow spectrum, meaning that the system is characterized by a combination of affluent choices on commodities and very limited choices on different societal trajectories. the general point to take away from this is that we may be consuming ourselves into a corner: we work more and more to achieve something that becomes increasingly hard to reach, while obstructing the possibility of alternatives. illich therefore suggests we should be wary of such developments, and refrain from “optimizing” our institutions beyond the second watershed. in other words, we need to keep checking whether we consume to satisfy our needs and wants, or whether we consume to be able to consume more. whereas boundless consumerism is built around a problematic understanding of well-being, eco-frugalism is concerned even less with a developed understanding of the good life. it is based on a negative message: yes, we may like the lives we are currently living, but if we do not stop doing these things we like, we will suffer the consequences. we do not really want frugality, but it is our only option: we have to give up part of our freedom (wealth, purchasing power) in order to prolong life (society, the earth). the eco-frugalist conception of the good life is therefore not central to its argument: instead of thinking about how to live a good life, we should be concerned with living life at all. but this does not mean that there is no reason http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ beyond scarcity 57 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ to assess the kind of life being envisioned by eco-frugalists. is the price to be paid worth it? are there perhaps positive aspects to life as promised by eco-frugalism? is it at all desirable? a good place to start is allan stoekl’s assessment: “an ecoreligion, one that would defy the ‘comfortable’ or ‘free’ (and nonnegotiable) lifestyle of consumerist humanism […] through a religiously inspired cult of austerity, simplicity, and personal virtue. such a cult refuses certain basic human urges to consume or destroy, and in the process involves the affirmation of yet another humanism (the self as virtuous in its austerity) and, after consumer profligacy, yet another model of nature as a standing reserve to be protected largely for its value to man” (stoekl 2007, xv). the core of the good life according to eco-frugalism is “virtue in austerity”: the satisfaction that is found in “making do” and “doing without”. however, stoekl is very critical of its appeal. historically, virtue in austerity has been strongly promoted by protestantism, but unlike it, eco-frugalism does not offer the promise of an afterlife of abundance just the grey life on earth. stoekl simply cannot believe that austerity has any appeal beyond a small minority which gets their satisfaction mostly from feeling smug about being more sustainable than the majority. one may wonder whether stoekl is fair in his assessment. perhaps describing eco-frugalism as promoting a bland life of being cold and eating potatoes into eternity is erecting a strawperson only to then knock it down. there is more to it than just feeling smug about an austere lifestyle. one may feel independent and self-sustaining when repairing one’s clothes or bicycle, and there is a certain satisfaction to being able to cook a great tasting meal from humble ingredients. being successful in decreasing one’s own energy footprint by ten percent every year gives a feeling of accomplishment perhaps not unlike that of a manager who has reduced the operating costs of a company by the same amount. being able to competently deal with limits promotes a general feeling of competence, and a sense of adulthood, as compared to being a big baby who always wants and needs “more”. but at least when eco-frugalism is taken seriously, its negative message is not so easily bent around into a positive can-do atmosphere. when it comes to depletable resources like fossil energy or rare earth metals (rather than income-limited resources like solar energy), no reduction in use is strict enough for the true eco-frugalist, because any further reduction would still extend the date of depletion. this means any activity that is not essential to life is problematic: if we get rid of those frivolous spices in our food, it would be cheaper still. ten percent energy reduction is nice, but why not twenty? any success can be put into perspective by the daunting http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ robert-jan geerts 58 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ scale of the real goal of sustainability. pushed to its limit, even life itself becomes questionable: if the aim is to sustain life on earth, do we really need so many people to do this? when the only goal is to reduce our footprint by as much as possible, suicide reaches the goal 100 percent 3. the aspects of eco-frugal practices that add to our perceived quality of life (feeling independent, the satisfaction that comes with creation, etc.) may be real, but they do not come from the gospel of eco-frugalism itself; they are additional benefits that are not central to the aims of eco-frugalism. indeed, these “side-effects” cannot be properly defended from the perspective of eco-frugalism itself, such appeals must come from elsewhere we will get to their source in the next section. although boundless consumerism and eco-frugality appear to be each other’s opposites, they do share an important notion of how to understand the relation between energy and society. stoekl (2007) emphasizes that they are both based on efficiency improvements and the organization of “measurable” energy; they both affirm the importance of energy (or resources in general) to the good life; they share the idea that the ultimate question is how to deal with scarcity. boundless consumerism embraces the ceaseless production and squandering of these resources for hedonistic enjoyment; eco-frugalism intends to hoard them in order for them to last forever. in this, they both understand our environment as the “standing reserve” central in martin heidegger’s understanding of modern technology (heidegger 1977): we cannot see our environment other than as a stock of consumable resources, and through this, ourselves as both the managers of this stock, and as a stock (of human resources) in ourselves 4. this shared focus on the question of scarcity allows boundless consumerism and eco-frugalism to develop their disagreements: they both see the problem of energy transition as an issue of allocating scarce resources, but disagree on the ways to do this. however, a focus on scarcity is not unproblematic – it leaves out a number of other concerns, such as questions regarding the best use of these resources, whether scarce or not. 3 this sounds harsh, but there are people who make similar claims for the sake of sustainability. dutch environmental blogger “green evelien” at one point states that “the most ecological is not living, but that may be exaggerating it” (matthijssen 2014). on a more positive note, people can also have positive impact, for example by restoring forests, so at least in theory there are better choices than the “zero-option” of suicide. 4 many advocates for eco-frugality may dismiss this analysis, because they consider themselves to have a more appreciative view of the world and humanity. my claim is that such views are not (purely) eco-frugalist, but would include another perspective; the one i develop in the final part of this paper. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ beyond scarcity 59 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ in his later work, ivan illich recognized the problem of the centrality of scarcity, and argued that the eco-frugalist side of it is the most problematic. “we are straight on our way towards an energy-obsessed low energy society in a world that worships work but has nothing for people to do” (illich 2013, 118). in our attempt to manage energy (and thus the ecosystem and the biosphere), we move from a technocracy to an “ecocracy”, in the sense that life itself becomes managed by the system. eco-cracy is described by henryk skolimowski (2005, 272-3) as “recognizing the power of nature and of life itself, mean[ing] observing the limits of nature, designing with nature, not against it, creating ecologically sustainable systems, reverence for the planet – not its continuous plundering”. in the perspective of the eco-frugalist, this “reverence” can be understood as little different from the reverence the first industrialists may have felt for the steam engine: observing the limits of nature in order not to overload or exhaust it, but instead making sure the “factory of life” keeps outputting the things we need. whilst the boundless consumerists end up deploying technologies that are counter-effective in their own aims and destructive to freedom via radical monopoly, eco-frugality reduces life itself to a process that needs to be optimized regarding its (energy) efficiency. “[the ecocrat] replaces the technocrat whose authority was at least limited to the management of people and social machines. the ecocrat’s aims transcend these institutions; his management tools fit nature into their domain” (illich 2013, 120). more so than boundless consumerism, which at least let everyone “design their own life”, eco-frugalism represents one step further towards the submission of everything to the goal of efficiency, which, as we know by now, is an empty goal in itself. ecocracy is in this sense not a reversal of technocracy, but a more refined version of it, taking into account the ecological basis in which technocracy functions. understood this way, the concerns around the negative message of eco-frugality are very serious indeed. in its attempt to extend life, it inadvertently reduces it to another cog in the machine. if we want to save ourselves from this dystopia, we must move beyond the scarcity perspective. 4. the rejection of the scarcity discourse by qualitative abundance if one would have to choose between mindless consumption in a world that is falling apart and a lifeless life of austerity, there is little appeal to either option. but in some discussions on energy transitions, a much more positive note can be detected, for example when people speak of the feelhttp://www.ledonline.it/relations/ robert-jan geerts 60 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ing of empowerment after placing pv-panels on their roofs, or when the commute becomes something to look forward to when it is done by bicycle instead of automobile. such positive aspects of energy transition may be noticed and mentioned, but in a debate revolving around scarcity, there is no place to integrate such notions. to stick with the example of the commute by bicycle, a boundless consumerist may respond that everybody is free to ride their bicycles, but the fact that most people commute by car shows that there is an obvious need for automobiles, so we need to work on ways to continue fueling them. an eco-frugalist may respond to the bicycle commuter by emphasizing the amount of energy saved by cycling instead of driving. but the idea that there may be something good about riding a bicycle remains unchallenged, and therefore undeveloped. it remains a personal preference, a side-note, whereas it needs to become truly part of the debate. what is needed is a line of argumentation that challenges the dominance of scarcity. a seed for this can be found in the work of illich when he suggests that “we cannot break out as long as our principles are the laws of thermodynamics” (illich 2013, 118). illich realized that life (or at least the good life) should not be understood in terms of efficiency and scarcity, so his earlier arguments for the bicycle as a more efficient mode of transport than the automobile were misconceived, and indeed counterproductive: they reinforced the notion that efficiency is what matters. but the most important vice of the automobile is not its failure to deliver the promised speed, but rather its way of transforming distance. whereas the self-propelled traditional modes of travel should be understood as transit, the automobile, as well as other modern, “fast” modes of travel are forms of transport. transit is an intrinsically human mode of moving around, one that makes people connect with each other, makes them appreciate the route itself. transport on the other hand obliterates distance, sucks people up at one point to emit them at another, and makes the distance invisible and un-transitable. this makes transport qualitatively different from transit and therefore incomparable to it quantitatively. for the later illich, the efficiency of the bicycle is thus beside the point when we are interested in a mode of travel that is compatible with a good life: it is a good mode of travel because it agrees with human nature, it is egalitarian, accessible, safe, and gentle on the earth. and because of these features it also happens to be efficient and sustainable. it is sustainable because it agrees with the good life, not the other way around. this effect is not unique to the bicycle. other examples are shopping for food at a farmers’ market in order to know where your food comes from and to celebrate the seasons (whilst also reducing the carbon footprint of your http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ beyond scarcity 61 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ food), and building a house that lets in lots of sunshine for a more pleasant living environment (whilst reducing the cost of heating). although these ideas and examples remain short of a robust law that connects a certain understanding of the good life with a sustainable society, they at least offer some theoretical scaffolding that enables discussion, and a first indication that there is a valuable connection to be explored further. i propose to name this line of reasoning qualitative abundance, referring to the shift in focus from the quantitative, measurable scarcity that underlies the discussion between the two positions mentioned above. qualitative abundance thus starts not with the availability of energy, but with its uses: the question for energy transition is not how much there is or can be in the future, but how much and what kind of energy is needed for humans to flourish. it sets out to understand how energy consumption contributes to well-being, and how to improve upon energy consumption practices. by making the good life the central issue, it does not just go beyond the more-is-better rhetoric that is often central to quantitative discussions, but also beyond concerns of quantity in general – there does not necessarily have to be an “optimum” quantity either, as this may be strongly related to the ways in which energy is produced and consumed, and to the particular ideas of the good life that one may ascribe to. much like the other two lines of reasoning described above, qualitative abundance may also come in different forms. one way to distinguish between various forms is through their underlying theories of the good life. hedonists would be interested in an energy system that provides them with the greatest amount of pleasure. desire satisfactionists would strive for an energy system that would satisfy their desires, and objective lists theorists would want an energy system that enables the achievement of a particular list of goods. although any theory of the good life is compatible with questioning the kind of energy consumption to achieve its goals, the outcomes would be different. for example, moving from utility grid-delivered electricity to a cooperatively owned microgrid increases independence and sense of community, but decreases convenience and possibly security of delivery. how to balance these effects on well-being? such questions are under-explored and would benefit from systematic treatment. but even in its current underdeveloped state, the notion of qualitative abundance can guide to break the dominance of scarcity discourse by engaging with either of the other two starting points. in the next section, i will sketch the discourses that could emerge and develop in this way. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ robert-jan geerts 62 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 5. new dimensions of discourse: prosperity and simplicity if the discussion between boundless consumerism and eco-frugality is characterized by their shared concern and different understanding of scarcity, the discussions between qualitative abundance and the previous two may be characterized in similar ways. i will suggest that the central issues these discussions revolve around are prosperity and simplicity respectively. a schematic rendition of the resulting lines of discourse can be found in figure 1. the three original positions are found in the corners, and between each combination of them, the central issue of discussion is mentioned. finally, between the positions and central issues, one can find the opposing understandings of the central issue at hand. figure 1. – lines of discourse on energy transition. boundless consumerism and qualitative abundance are both concerned with means and ends. the former aims at supplying a maximum amount of the means of energy in order for society to consume it – for whatever ends it can imagine. the latter, on the other hand, aims at maximizing the ends (what is the very best way we can consume energy?), to then look for the energy means that best fit those ends. they are both concerned with prosperity through the expenditure of energy, but approach it from diametrically opposed directions. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ beyond scarcity 63 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ proper discussions on prosperity could further the debate on energy transition significantly, because it will improve the modes of comparison between various means. for example, when dealing with the transportation system, the boundless consumerist perspective may suggest that comparisons between modes of travel should be done in terms of energy costs per passenger kilometer. prosperity would be the ability to travel far and often. but we are not necessarily interested in passenger kilometers, but rather in visiting friends and places of interest, getting to work, or the feeling of being on the move. the amount of passenger kilometers needed for this are dependent on the geographical dispersal of one’s social network, the richness of one’s (nearby) surroundings, the distance to work, and the modes of transportation chosen. all of these are more or less interrelated: someone living and working in the same city is more likely to have friends in that same city than someone who commutes from a sleeper town, for example. a better mode of comparison between modes of transportation would revolve not around passenger kilometers, but around people’s ability to “get around”: prosperity lies in going where and how one pleases. this can be achieved not only by making passenger kilometers more affordable, but also by making people interested in local destinations. in more general terms, discussions on prosperity in relation to energy transition raise questions on the proper ends for which means are expended. eco-frugality and qualitative abundance both tend towards being critical of overconsumption of commodities: qualitative abundance raises the question whether they are truly the proper means towards an end, and eco-frugality wonders whether we can really afford them, or whether there are better ways to spend those resources. in short, then, they are both interested in simplicity, in the general sense of the word: in having fewer things and complications around. they differ on the proper aim of simplicity: eco-frugality aims at doing with as little as possible, whereas qualitative abundance suggests there is an optimal amount of simplicity (or complexity) that we should strive for. simplicity is not a new topic when it comes to discussions on consumption. the voluntary simplicity movement, which can be traced back to the mid-nineteenth century with the work of thoreau, was described by elgin and mitchell (1977) as follows: “the essence of voluntary simplicity is living in a way what is outwardly simple and inwardly rich. this way of life embraces frugality of consumption, a strong sense of environmental urgency, a desire to return to living and working environments which are of a more human scale, and an intention to realize our higher human potential – both psychological and spiritual – in community with others” (elgin and mitchell 1977, 2). this description clearly contains elements of http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ robert-jan geerts 64 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ eco-frugality (frugality of consumption, environmental urgency) as well as qualitative abundance (human scale, higher human potential, community with others), but puts little effort into distinguishing between them and recognizing their different roots. the tension between the two approaches is clearly noticeable in the concept of alternative hedonism, coined by kate soper (2008). her argument for alternative hedonism is again made along two lines: the first, eco-frugalist line that the affluent lifestyle of consumerism is beginning to show its polluting and exhausting dark side, and the second, qualitative abundance line that there is a seductive alternative, “an altered conception of what it is to flourish and to enjoy a ‘high’ standard of living” (soper 2008, 571). like elgin and mitchell, soper also intermingles these lines by combining environmental and personal critiques of consumerism: “consumerism is today for many people both compromised by the pollution, congestion, stress, noise, ill health, loss of community and personal forms of contact it entails, and viewed as pre-emptive of a distinct range of pleasures” (ibid.). soper holds that both lines are complementary, and this is reflected in the ways alternative hedonists behave. this behavior is partly explained by altruistic motivations, but not entirely. “it is, for example, a decision to cycle or walk whenever possible in order not to add to the pollution, noise and congestion of car use. the hedonist aspect, however, of this shift in consumption practice does not reside exclusively in the desire to avoid or limit the un-pleasurable by-products of collective affluence, but also in the sensual pleasures of consuming differently” (soper 2008, 572). because these “sensual pleasures” can only be had in a healthy environment that is not flooded with automobile traffic, the “altruism” of not adding to congestion is really a form of “self-policing” (ibid.) or moral constraint to achieve a greater good. it is important to notice that although the two lines of argument may be complementary, they do not coincide: they come from different perspectives and provide us with different boundaries. there are sensual pleasures to be had with walking, and soper embraces those because walking is also sustainable, but the “sensual non-sustainable” (of, for example, powerboat racing) still needs to be rejected with a negative argument. this illustrates that qualitative abundance by itself is not enough to guide us in energy transition; only in combination with concerns of climate change, resource depletion, etc., one can be sure that the resulting energy system will be both catering to the good life and sustainable. three things need to be said about this. first, there is reason to believe that it is no coincidence that many practices that tailor to the good life are also eco-frugal. this was mentioned above, and is discussed in more detail http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ beyond scarcity 65 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ elsewhere (geerts 2017). second, in cases of conflict, it may be possible and desirable to “self-police” at a higher level, and change our ideas of the good life. many of us started something (a running habit, a change of diet) because we believed it was healthy, and at a later point started enjoying it and understanding it as increasing our well-being for its own sake, and not only because of its health effects. along the same lines, we could develop low-energy habits and learn to love them. third, the problem of incompleteness is true for eco-frugalism as well: the negative line of argument will by itself also fail to guide us in conflict situations. if we have a variety of options available to reduce our environmental impact, but a limited amount of time and effort to put into it, what are we to choose? qualitative abundance suggests choosing the option that increases our well-being whilst reducing its environmental footprint. finally, this third point hints at the final feature of the schematic description of discourse on energy transition in figure 1. qualitative abundance does not just draw attention away from scarcity, but offers a new route to compare the other two positions: between for example overconsumption and underconsumption. this comparison is impossible without the “detour” of this extra position, because none of the three positions in the corners of figure 1 can be related to the issue opposite of them. similar to qualitative abundance being unfit to discuss scarcity, boundless consumerism is incompatible with simplicity, and eco-frugality does not have anything to say about prosperity. referring to either of these concerns therefore automatically precludes arguments from the positions opposite to them. so, if we maintain that a discussion on energy transition must go beyond scarcity, we must learn to discuss the ends to the means of boundless consumerism, and the balance 5 to the minimalism of eco-frugality. in other words, we need to develop qualitative abundance. 5 the idea that simplicity is fundamentally a ‘balancing act’ is described most explicitly by gambrel and cafaro (2009), who argue that (voluntary) simplicity ought to be understood as a virtue. virtues are always conceptualized as the mean between two vices. simplicity should be understood as the prudent mean between several axes of vices: between underconsumption and overconsumption; unthinking consumption (carelessness) and overthinking consumption (obsession); none or crude consumption (asceticism) and luxurious consumption (lavishness); inefficient or pointless consumption (wastefulness) and hyper-efficient consumption (penny-pinching), for example (gambrel and cafaro 2009, 91). although these distinctions are useful, they do not coincide with the distinction between negative and positive (or eco-frugal and qualitative abundant) approaches to simplicity mentioned above. these are all related to finding a balance that leads to a good (virtuous) life, and not to the balance between living a good life and minimizing one’s environmental footprint to do so. the balanced virtue that gambrel and cafaro refer to finds itself in between the vices that can be recognized in boundless http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ robert-jan geerts 66 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 6. conclusion this paper has attempted to develop a number of concepts aimed first to clarify discussions on energy transition, and second to expand these discussions to better include concerns for the good life in relation to energy consumption. it has suggested that the main lines of argumentation can be described as boundless consumerist and eco-frugalist respectively, and that these share a concern for scarcity. the focus on scarcity leads to side-lining of arguments that suggest that in energy transition society should not just be concerned with replacing finite with sustainable energy sources, but also with replacing counter effective energy practices with ones that actually promote well-being. the introduction of the concept of qualitative abundance facilitates the emergence and development of two discourses beyond the well-established scarcity discourse: one in connection with boundless consumerism on the question of prosperity (what kind of energy means are fit for achieving human ends?) and one in connection with eco-frugality on the question of simplicity (how to get rid of overconsumption without overshooting towards underconsumption?). discussions on both prosperity and simplicity, even in relation to energy transition, are not new. however, the impact of these discussions on the mainstream discourse on energy transition has been minimal. it is the hope that the framework provided in this paper helps to understand how various discussions on these topics relate and in what way they can be used to challenge the dominant scarcity discourse. a first step in that direction would be to develop a more thorough overview of such discussions than i have been able to provide in this paper. but perhaps just as important as developing the alternative would be to keep showing the need for it: to simply ask what we need all that energy for. consumerism (overconsumption; unthinking, luxurious, inefficient consumption) and in eco-frugality (underconsumption; overthinking, none or crude, hyper-efficient consumption). therefore, their use of the concept of voluntary simplicity seems to coincide with my concept of qualitative abundance, and not with the debate between qualitative abundance and eco-frugality, which i characterize with the concept of simplicity. although this is a possible source of confusion, there may be a straightforward reason for it. gambrel and cafaro notice that their term of ‘simplicity’ seems to contrast more strongly with the approach that is here called boundless consumerism than with what is called ecofrugality. they argue that this is acceptable because they hold that modern society has a clear tendency to err on the side of boundless consumerism, so they propose a strong pull in the other direction. in other words: their ‘mean’ is slightly overcompensated, and leaning beyond qualitative abundance towards eco-frugalism – exactly where i place the concept of simplicity. qualitative abundance may be understood as a more neutral, albeit admittedly also less ‘simple’, term for the true mean. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ beyond scarcity 67 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ aknowledgements an early version of this paper was presented at the 16th international conference on ethics across the curriculum, scottsdale, arizona, october 2-4, 2014. i thank the audience there, as well as carl mitcham, philip cafaro, bart gremmen, josette jacobs, guido ruivenkamp, giovanni frigo, and two anonymous reviewers, for their useful comments. i also thank hanneke nijland for the layout of the diagram. finally, i thank the biosolarcells research program for funding the ph.d. project that led to this paper. references asafu-adjaye, john, linus blomqvist, steward 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nudge: improving decisions about health, wealth and happiness. london: penguin. verbeek, peter paul. 2005. what things do: philosophical reflections on technology, agency, and design. university park, pa: penn state university press. verbeek, peter paul. 2011. moralizing technology: understanding and designing the morality of things. chicago london: the university of chicago press. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ coal feeds my family: subsistence, energy, and industry in central appalachia 173 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ is sn 2 2 8 0 -9 9 5 3 beyond anthropocentrism 1 • january 2013 inside the emotional lives of non-human animals a minding animals international utrecht 2012 pre-conference event special issue (genoa, italy, 12-13 may, 2012) edited by m. andreozzi, r. bennison, a. massaro, s. tonutti capabilities approach and animal bioethics • michele panzera animals and our emotions. how to approach the study of an interspecific community? • sabrina tonutti advocacy and animal rights • kim stallwood the emotional lives of animals: a christian perspective • alma massaro – gianfranco nicora animalia: ontology and ethics in weak antispeciesism • leonardo caffo the contemporary debate on experimentation • susanna penco – rosagemma ciliberti non-human animals and genetic engineering • arianna ferrari the relationship between humans and other animals in european animal welfare legislation • paola sobbrio human’s best friends? • matteo andreozzi elationsre l a t io n s . b e y o n d a n t h r o p o c e n t r is m 1 • 2 0 1 3 r 6.2 november 2018 energy ethics: emerging perspectives in a time of transition special issue edited by giovanni frigo part ii studies and research contributions energy ethics: a literature review 177 giovanni frigo contesting the radical monopoly: a critical view on the motorized 215 culture from a cyclonaut perspective damien delorme desiring ethics: reflections on veganism from an observational 233 study of transitions in everyday energy use alice dal gobbo ethical risk and energy 251 bertrand andre rossert coal feeds my family: subsistence, energy, and industry in central 269 appalachia m. joseph aloi human energy: philosophical-anthropological presuppositions 287 of anthropogenic energy, movement, and activity and their implications for well-being roman meinhold http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ relations. beyond anthropocentrism 174 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ comments, debates, reports and interviews energy ethics outside the box: carl mitcham in conversation 301 with giovanni frigo carl mitcham giovanni frigo energy equality and the challenges of population growth 313 andrea natan feltrin the energy of ethics / the ethics of energy: a dialog with irigaray, 321 varela and jullien federico battistutta reviews alex epstein, a review of the moral case for fossil fuels (2014) 331 adam briggle author guidelines 335 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 269 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ coal feeds my family subsistence, energy, and industry in central appalachia m. joseph aloi * department of philosophy and religion, university of north texas, denton, tx usa doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2018-002-aloi michaelaloi@my.unt.edu abstract across central appalachia, you can see the message scrawled across bumper stickers, protest signs, and billboards: “coal feeds my family”. the metaphor of coal feeding families is one that stresses the economic importance of this extractive industry to the economy of the industrialized rural mountain south. this essay examines the change in land-human relationships through the lens of food. a contrast is drawn between homesteading’s cultivation of life and coal’s energy economy of the dead. the energy economy of the preindustrial appalachian farm is shown to be a slight alteration from the energy cycles of the appalachian forest. the industrial energy economy of coal, on the other hand, severed appalachian people from their traditional agricultural energy economy, from the results of their production, from the sources of their consumption, and from the very thing, the sun, which made the preindustrial economy possible. the coal energy economy was not only made possible through various technological innovations in production and consumption, but also by certain social relations and political structures. these relations and structures remain relatively intact, in spite of the rapid disintegration of the coal economy, and their inertia explains the popularity of the slogan “coal feeds my family”. keywords: coal; energy; appalachia; food; farming; transition; industrialization; technology; ethics; non-human relations. 1. introduction across central appalachia, you can see the message scrawled across bumper stickers, protest signs, and billboards: “coal feeds my family”. * the author would like to thank the editor, g. frigo, for inviting him to participate in this special issue. he would also like to thank tom torres and cat bergeman, for helping him work through gaventa’s power and powerlessness. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ http://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2018-002-aloi mailto:michaelaloi@my.unt.edu m. joseph aloi 270 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ slightly less popular than the more correct slogan “coal: it keeps the lights on”, the metaphor of coal feeding families is one that stresses the economic importance of this extractive industry to the economy of the industrialized rural mountain south. it’s a message that gains much of its strength from the persistent and pervasive backdrop of appalachian poverty; coal keeps my family from hunger, coal keeps my family from food stamps. in this part of the world, the energy economy that’s been built around coal sends deep roots into the everyday lives of people – all the way to the dinner table. the very idea of being “pro-coal” is a relatively recent phenomenon; it can be taken as a symptom of the decline of the industry. as recently as 25 years ago, the predominant discourse was within the playing field created by the economics of industrial coal – strip mining vs. deep mining, workers vs. operators, etc. the coal economy, recently the field upon which disputes have been waged, has become a side or position to take in a new, different, economic dispute. because the entire energy economy of industrial coal is now precarious, one can now be “pro-coal” in the way that one was formerly “pro-miner” and “anti-operator” in the field created by coal. it seems, then, an auspicious time to put the entire coal energy economy of appalachia in perspective, to compare it to what went before it. anthropocentrically considered, much can be made from the changes of industry, and the ripples it spread in the form of changes in economy, in politics, in human health, and so on. but we ought also to consider this change in energy patterns from a non-anthropocentric perspective. we ought to examine the change in relations between people and the nonhuman characters of their landscapes. in this essay, i examine the change in land-human relationships by examining the relations people have to their food. in particular, i contrast the manner in which homesteading focuses on cultivating life, on bringing a landscape to life, and on energy cycles that are grounded in life cycles with the manner in which coal mining, and its industrial use, is an energy economy based on the dead. along the way, i attempt to shed a bit of light on why coal is seen as a source of nourishment, and what it means for the nonanthropocentric relationships of appalachia that it is. 2. what is energy? let us pause for a moment, however, and attempt to understand what energy is. vaclav smil tells us that “by far, the most common definition of energy is ‘the capacity for doing work’” (2006, 8). smil advises us to http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ coal feeds my family 271 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ understand “work” to mean “any process that produces a change … in an affected system” (2006, 8), to remind us that our bodies work even when we are not conscious of this work. energy, then, is what allows for changes in physical systems – ecosystems, individual bodies, solar systems, and the like. but smil also says that, since the nineteenth century, there has been an increase in “the frequency of the term’s misuse” (2006, 2). he writes that it is “used ubiquitously and loosely as qualifiers for any number of animated, zestful, vigorous actions and experiences […]. devotees of physical fitness go one step farther and claim (against all logic and scientific evidence) that they are energized after a particularly demanding bout of protracted exercise” (2006, 2). let us forget, for a moment, that metaphor is a perfectly acceptable use of language – did smil mean that the term energy had been misused at an increasing crestper-second ratio? rather, i think it important to recognize that not all limits on the capacity to do work are purely physical. perhaps “devotees of physical fitness” are letting us know that they have increased willpower to produce changes in physical systems after exercise, and that a lack of will was their primary inhibitor before exercise. whenever we speak of something so thickly veined with human value judgments as are ethics or economies, we cannot help but push our lexicons beyond the precisely-delineated limits of scientific terminology. accordingly, even though i primarily wish to speak of the manner in which appalachian economies have functioned by changing physical systems, i doubt i will be able to hew so close to the bone without neglecting important elements of the discussion. i will be using the term “energy” to refer to the capacity to do work, whether that capacity is rooted in brute physical systems, in cultural norms, or in social relations. 3. the energy economy of the pre-industrial appalachian farm my understanding of the energy economy of the preindustrial farm, and especially its ethical components, borrows much from a similar discussion in wendell berry’s the unsettling of america. there, berry makes a quasi-distinction between “mechanical energy” and “biological energy”: the moral order by which we use machine-derived energy is comparatively simple. [… t]he energy goes in as ‘fuel’ and comes out as ‘waste.’ this principle sustains a highly simplified economy having only two functions: production and consumption. the moral order appropriate to the use of http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ m. joseph aloi 272 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ biological energy, on the other hand, requires the introduction of a third term: production, consumption, and return. it is the principle of return that complicates matters, for it requires responsibility, care … in an energy economy appropriate to the use of biological energy, all bodies, plant and animal and human, are joined in a kind of energy community. […] they are indissolubly linked in complex patterns of energy exchange. they die into each other’s life, live into each other’s death. […] and this exchange goes on and on, round and round, the wheel of life rising out of the soil, descending into it, through the bodies of creatures. (berry 1997, 85-6) the biological energy circle, the wheel of life, which berry is here talking about is an agricultural circle; the creatures which rise out of the soil are predominantly crops and domestic animals, and they return to the soil their manures and their corpses. but berry describes the wheel in an ecological manner, reminiscent of aldo leopold in his essay “round river”: “the current is the stream of energy which flows out of the soil into plants, thence into animals, thence back into the soil in a neverending circuit of life” (leopold 1966, 188). berry is not arguing that preindustrial farmers had a complex theoretical grasp of scientific ecology, just that the practices of preindustrial farming were rooted in and responsive to ecological reality in a way which the practices of the mechanical energy economy are not. the energy economy of the appalachian farm was not primarily a moneyed, cash economy, but one of subsistence agriculture. in where there are mountains, donald edward davis tells us that “as late as 1869, a small but significant majority of mountain farmers had not accepted the concept of agriculture as a market-driven, profit making business” (davis 2000, 142). likewise, thomas hughes wrote in 1881 that “an englishman, who came here lately to found some manufactures, left in sheer despair and disgust, saying he had found at last a place where no one seemed to care for money” (hughes 1881, 63-4; cited in gaventa 1980, 50). this is not to say that no commerce at all went on in pre-coal-boom appalachia; antebellum kentucky was the third-largest producer of iron goods, and there were around 3000 slaves working at industrial salt furnaces in west virginia’s kanawha valley (davis 2000, 150; moore 2014, par. 11). but the vast majority of people lived in appalachia through subsistence homesteading and did not farm in order to participate in market economies. although various types of livestock were important to the economy of the appalachian farm, “it was crop production that interested mountain families most or at least occupied much of their labor around the homestead” (davis 2000, 136). the stream of energy that spread from http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ coal feeds my family 273 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the sun through the soil entered the bodies of fruits, vegetables, and grains before it entered the bodies of appalachian people. this passion for plant cultivation combined with the physiographic diversity of the appalachian region result in an abundance of different crop foods. in fact, “southern and central appalachia has the highest documented levels of agrobiodiversity in the u.s., canada and northern mexico” – there is more diversity of food crops in appalachia than in anywhere in north america, save for the area in mexico where corn was domesticated (veteto 2011, 3). of these plants, the one which best exemplifies the manner in which the biological energy economy structured the daily lives of appalachians is corn: corn was not only important as a primary foodstuff, it was central to mountain subsistence culture. corn was ground into meal and made into whiskey; its husks and leaves were woven into hats, dolls, mops, and chair bottoms. corncobs served as primitive toilet paper, fire starters, bowls for tobacco pipes, and hog and cattle fodder. the harvesting of corn also greatly influenced social relations, bringing neighbors and communities together for annual fall cornshuckings. cornshuckings, or “frolics” were ritual celebrations, yearly events in which community members assisted friends and neighbors in the gathering and preparation of the annual corn harvest. (davis 2000, 137) corn, here, does not simply feed the family of the mountaineer. it also provides those other things that make life comfortable and meaningful, and it binds individuals into communities. corn grants this because it is carefully cultivated, drawing on the energy of the sun, and those derivatives of solar energy that lie in the soil and the bodies of mountain people and draft animals. 4. the wildness of the energy economy of the appalachian farm berry’s description holds for the energy economy of preindustrial appalachian farms, most of which were small homesteads that raised both plants and animals. but these mountain farms were deeply woven into the mountain landscape, and the energy circuits which appalachian farmers participated in were often as wild as domestic. the frontier log cabin is a symbol of this deep weaving; mountain homes were directly made of the forest (see davis 2000, 104-5). appalachian homesteaders did not only rely on the energy of the living organisms they reared, but http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ m. joseph aloi 274 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ hunted for food and fur, fished, and gathered foods and medicines from the surrounding forests. appalachian agriculture was a wild agriculture, an agriculture that harvested crops that needed no sowing or tending. part of the wildness of appalachian agriculture is a necessity of the landscape; mountain topography was never as suited to mass production of cash crops in the manner of the agriculture of the deeper south or the midwest. this geological truth still dictates the shape of the appalachian farm. the average farms of michigan (179 acres), kentucky (164 acres), and west virginia (157 acres) are all roughly the same size. but michigan, a non-appalachian state, has per-farm average annual sales of $102,710, while the partially-appalachian state of kentucky averages $56,586 and the entirely-appalachian state of west virginia averages $25,051. this is largely because more of the appalachian farm is, of necessity, forested hillside – in michigan, the average farm is less than 12% woodland, the average kentucky farm 22%, and the average west virginia farm is almost 40% (2007 census of agriculture). preindustrial appalachian agriculture was even more forested: of the average100-300 acre farms of the blue ridge mountains in the early 19th century, “two thirds or more [was] left completely forested” (davis 2000, 125). one of the things that this meant is that much of the eating and being eaten – much of the energy exchange – of the preindustrial appalachian farm happened in the forest. this is an energy economy that was highly interspecies, and dependent on fecund wild processes. before the blight destroyed the american chestnut, the trees were so plentiful that “for a month or two each fall, hogs ran loose to feast on chestnuts and other mast littering the forest floor” (davis 2000, 195). hog were not the only livestock raised on wild feed; cattle drovers let their herds loose on the mountainsides, where “the additional feeding of the cattle herds was only necessary under extraordinary conditions” (davis 2000, 133). the trees of the forest produced maple syrup, and wildflowers produced honey (davie 2000, 144-5). and appalachian rivers were not only regular sources of fish, but, also, of freshwater mussels and their pearls (davis 2000, 186-90). the wild sources of food and fuel for the appalachian homestead were powered by the same soil-and-water based cycles of solar energy as were the domesticated crops. just as wet summers could ruin a potato crop, over-warm springs could lead to a slender harvest of maple syrup. but they were not seen, at the time, as two different realms powered by the same source. rather, the appalachian forest was considered part of the farm; the farm was set in the forest. the harvest of the chestnuts by the hogs was not disconnected from the harvest of chestnuts by the http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ coal feeds my family 275 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ farmers, nor from the harvest of the hog. the settlers of the appalachian mountains were certainly the source of several varieties of ecological disturbance. but the energy economy of the appalachian farm – its patterns of production, consumption, and return – was not but more than a slight alteration from the energy cycles of the appalachian forest. 5. the end of the predominance of biological energy this section and the next describe the three interrelated ways that the sun-based energy economy was largely supplanted at the end of the nineteenth century. first, the relationships between the settlers and the land base of the solar economy were disrupted as land speculators used various methods – legal and illegal – to take ownership of the land from these small homesteaders and transfer it to large land holding companies. second, the rapid establishment of the coal energy economy and its associated lifeways disrupted the lifestyles, skills, and habits of the sun-based economy. finally, the coal economy’s technological character severs the solar economy’s rootedness in the process of living, dying, and decay that berry calls the wheel of life. most of these speculators wanted the land in order to profit from the mineral wealth beneath it. the speculators leased the mineral rights, which were often purchased separately from the folks still living on the land, and often leased the surface rights to railroads and developers. “thus”, writes john gaventa, “the mountaineer often ‘voluntarily’ sold his land [for little …] for while the agents wanted the land, the mountaineers were more interested in community harmony. to them, there seemed to be plenty of land for everybody” (1980, 53). by the time it became evident that there was not plenty of land for everybody, the land could not be purchased back at prices which they could afford – often, not at any price – the land’s worth was now tied to the value of the minerals beneath it. not all land acquisition happened in such an ethically ambiguous manner, however; some land was acquired through clearly illicit means. gaventa writes that: […] some of the mountaineers were burned out if they would not sell. one old miner presented the deed of sale from his father to the company. the deed bore a signature of his father’s name – but, said the miner, his father could not write. […] another resident […] tells how his father was jailed, supposedly for fighting, and had to post the title to his land for bond […]. the title was never recovered. (1980, 54) http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ m. joseph aloi 276 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ though these methods of land acquisition are clearly illegal, it was rare for mountain people to win a court case against the well-oiled legal machines of the land holding companies (gaventa 1980, 54). gaventa’s argument is that these original land acquisitions created a system of power relations – economic, political, and even cultural – that continues in the present era. this system operates not only through explicit, brute, use of power by the landholders. the brute political or economic power is enshrined in institutions – again, economic, political, and cultural – in such a way that the powerholders merely need to mobilize this institutional bias, often times through “non-decisions” (gaventa 1980, 14-5). in turn, this institutionalization of power relations, gaventa claims, can result in “an unconscious patter of withdrawal, maintained not by fear of power of a, but by a sense of powerlessness in b” (1980, 17). as the industrial coal economy became more and more sedimented, the miners and other workers felt less and less able to take control over its shape. one of the features of the industrial energy economy of coal is that it powered not only by the energy of the mineral coal itself, but, also, by a sense among people living within it that the ability to produce change in the system – material, economic, political, and cultural – is monopolized by those in positions of power in that system. average working people do not have the energy to change their economy. the second way that the circuit of the biological energy economy of the appalachian farm was disrupted was through the actual establishment of the coal economy. gaventa writes of the establishment of middlesborough, ky: in two years, twenty million dollars flowed into the transformation of this valley. by the end of 1889, a city had grown up. where three years before there had been sixty families in a hamlet along yellow creek, there were now some 5,000 people. where there had been an economy of relatively self-sufficient agriculture, there were now sixteen operating industries (with forty-one more planned), and six banks. […] reported coal production in claiborne county leapt from none in 1889 to 135,558 tons from five mines three years later. (1980, 56) this rapid and radical change in the landscape and settlement patterns was also a rapid and radical change of the energy economy. much of the energy used to create this new economy came from people –“labourers, ditch-diggers, construction workers, and miners”, in gaventa’s words (1980, 57). in the particular case of middlesborough, most of these people “were attracted from the farms and ‘hollows’ of the rural region”, so that the change in energy economies was also, for many appalachians, a change in occupation and in lifestyle (gaventa 1980, 57). although, in http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ coal feeds my family 277 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ other parts of appalachian coal country, the mines were worked by large influxes of immigrants from eastern and southern europe, and africanamerican economic migrants looking for better opportunities than could be found in the deeper south, the lifestyles of all appalachian residents, new and old, were drastically changed by the birth of this new economy (fones-wolf and lewis 2002). former homesteaders and new migrants took to these new trades – took their places in the new coal energy economy – not only out of hope for a more prosperous and stable future. as mentioned above, much of what had once been farmland was no longer available for such a use; it had been purchased by the land holding companies. these companies worked hard to sediment the structures of this new economy, making sure that they maintained a place of prominence in it. gaventa tells us that the british company which founded middlesborough “owned the land and the minerals, which it would lease but would not sell; and also the railroads, upon which distribution of the products depended” (1980, 57). the transformation from a relatively egalitarian mountain farming economy required the creation of a new class of laborers: miners. this was accomplished not only by denying the former farmers their land – their soil; the backbone of the energy economy of the farm – but also by denying them, and other new migrants, all but the slimmest of chances at upward mobility. 6. production in the industrial energy economy to flesh out the second manner in which the agricultural energy economy was disrupted, and to discover the third, we need to examine what berry found to be the two components of industrial economies: production and consumption. to do this, we may take a slight detour to discuss the work of the philosopher albert borgmann on modern technology. borgmann claims that modern technology is distinguished from its premodern predecessors by its diremption of means from ends. he defines modern technology not as a number of machines or industrial assemblylines, but as “the characteristic way in which we today take up with the world” (borgmann 1984, 35). we get our food technologically, we communicate technologically, we make our livelihoods technologically and we even think about other people technologically. we have technological lives individually and technological institutions collectively. this mode of living in the world directs us to engage with “devices” rather than with “things”. more precisely, we engage ourselves with commodities; “what distinguishes a device is its sharp internal division http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ m. joseph aloi 278 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ into a machinery and a commodity produced by that machinery” (borgmann 1984, 33). commodities are alienated and decontextualized from their process of production; “the machinery of a device has a tendency to become concealed or to shrink” (borgmann 1984, 42). a “device” is contrasted with a pretechnological “thing”, which “is inseparable from its context”, both social and material (borgmann 1984, 41). to clarify these concepts, borgmann contrasts a wood-burning stove with a central heating plant. the machinery of a central heating plant is complex, efficient, and hidden from the eyes of almost all who benefit from its existence. the commodity of this plant is heat. the heat is consumed without the consumers knowing, except perhaps vaguely, how it was produced. we push a button on the wall and the room becomes warmer. the machinery can, and does, change continually and consistently; coal fired heating plants become replaced by machines that burn natural gas. means and ends are drastically separated from each other (borgmann 1984, 42-4). a woodstove, on the other hand, is a thing: “the experience of a thing is always and also a bodily and social engagement with the thing’s world” (borgmann 1984, 41). every thing is connected to and inseparable from a practice or set of practices. certain things and practices – focal things and practices – give structure and meaning to our lives. borgmann chose to use the term “focal thing” because “a focus gathers the relations of its context and radiates into its surroundings and to inform them” (borgmann 1984, 197). in contrast to the heating plant, “the fireplace constituted a center of warmth, of light, and of daily practices” (borgmann 1984, 196). the line between work and leisure is blurred in our interactions with things, and they always produce several inseparable commodities (using the term more loosely) which are, in turn, inseparable from the material and social practices which engendered them: thus a stove used to furnish more than mere warmth. it was a focus, a hearth, a place that gathered the work and leisure of a family and gave the house a center. its coldness marked the morning, and the spreading of its warmth marked the beginning of the day […]. it provided for the entire family a regular and bodily engagement with the rhythm of the seasons that was woven together of the threat of cold and the solace of warmth, the smell of wood smoke, the exertion of sawing and carrying, the teaching of skills and the fidelity to daily tasks. (borgman 1984, 42) on this borgmannian account, focal things, and the practices by which we engage with them, make us who we are, help us know who we are, and make us happy to be who we are. “technological progress” is nothing more than a series of attempts to disburden us of the often arduhttp://www.ledonline.it/relations/ coal feeds my family 279 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ous practices connected to focal things by replacing these things with devices. the danger of contemporary technology lies in our loss of the ability to find meaning in, connection to, and knowledge of the machines and practices which produce these commodities. the production of stuff to meet basic needs in our technological era takes this form diagnosed by borgmann. berry’s description of industrial agriculture is a good place to begin analyzing the diremption of production from consumption in technological farming. he writes “the more quantifiable [farming] skills became, the easier they were to replace with machines. as machines replace skill, they disconnect themselves from life; they come between us and life” (berry 1997, 91). berry is here talking about the way that farming has become a parade of devices for farmers, and how this has resulted in a loss of focal practices and of meaning – of connection to life. but, for all the reasons previously discussed, industrialization in most of central appalachia did not result in an energy economy of industrialized agriculture. it resulted in an energy economy of coal production – mining. in this economy, appalachian miners, and the mines they worked in, became an element of the machine-part of the devices that delivered electricity, heat, and steel to modern america. the necessary severing at the heart of the technological energy economy of coal results in appalachian people being severed both from their traditional, thingly, agricultural energy economy and, at the same time, both from the results of their production and from the sources of their consumption. of the daily labor in the new economy, ronald eller tells us “the work was dirty and usually tiring, much like that with which they were accustomed on the farm. yet the work routines, job discipline, safety conditions, and environment of the company town provided a marked contrast to traditional agricultural life” (1982, 128). as late as the 1930s, much of the miners’ work was done by hand, with the aid of simple tools like hammers, picks, shovels, drills, and black powder (eller 1982, 129). as the twentieth century progressed, mining became more and more mechanized. but, at least in these early days, the brute physicality of the job was similar to farming. the biggest contrast between the labor of mining and the labor of farming was the former’s distant relationship to what berry called “the wheel of life” – the natural process of birth, living, and dying; the movement of the seasons; the need to care for soil and living things. listen to what eller can tell us of the miners’ relationship to sunlight: “the miner’s day started long before daylight and often ended well after dark. in the early morning hours, the miners set out for the mines carrying http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ m. joseph aloi 280 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ their lunch pails and water bottles and wearing lard oil lamps to light their way” (1982, 129). while the rising and setting of the sun – far apart in the summer; closer together in the winter – were the guideposts that structured the lives of appalachian agrarians, this movement was utterly unnoticeable to the appalachian coal miner underground. the energy economy of the appalachian farm, and the world it created, was erased by three severing acts. first, land acquisition and speculation severed people from their land base; severed farmers from their farms. second, these newly impoverished former farmers needed work, and the work available to the – the work of a coal miner – was technological in borgmann’s sense. miners were not understood as agents standing apart from the coal-producing machines; rather, they were treated as part of the machinery that delivered the commodities of heat, electricity, and steel to the rest of america. even to the extent they consumed these commodities, they were severed from the production process in a way which was not the case for their earlier consumption of their farm-grown produce. third, the labor of their new jobs took place underground, and by this means they were also severed from the very source of the old energy economy and of the wealth of meaning and focal practices tied to it: the sun. we know now what many miners perhaps did not; that the coal they retrieved from underground was itself created by a solar energy economy – although one that vastly predated the economy of the farm. plants that died millions of years ago, yet failed become soil, were buried so deep that the pressure from the world above changed them to coal (“how is coal formed?”, kentucky coal education). the farmer related to the nonhuman world through relations like planting, conserving, tending, harvesting, etc. the farmer had to deal with living things at each stage of the wheel of life. but the miner deals nearly exclusively with plants that are so long dead, dead at the dawn of prehistory, that we often refer to them as minerals rather than dead plants. this is a monumental withering of the sphere of relations between humans and the nonhuman world, and it was accomplished through this tripartite severing that created the coal energy economy 1. 1 this tripartite severing results in a co-exploitation: the same economic processes exploit both the miners, the non-mining community members (including the nonhuman members), and the landscape itself. this period of appalachian history is a rich source for analysis of this co-exploitation, either through the lens of social ecology, environmental justice, ecofeminism, or biocultural conservation. this last, though, would be rather tricky, since euro-appalachians are very clear examples of colonial settlers. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ coal feeds my family 281 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 7. consumption in the industrial energy economy the process of severing, of diremption, that borgmann locates at the heart of technological society is often understood as an unalloyed good; we are severed from the hard labor of pre-technological society and delivered to an easygoing commodious existence. but this commodious existence made possible through the development of the industrial coal economy has a catch in the way that consumers are fundamentally dependent on this system for the basic needs of existence. we can see this in coal country through the example of the company store. as we saw with gaventa’s example of middlesborough, the rapidity of the birth of the coal energy economy saw the creation of cities and towns where before there were none. not all of these were independent communities; often times, the coal companies themselves would build, own, and maintain the towns. as shelly stewart burns writes, “coal companies funded, built, and governed company towns, and maintained control in all aspects of community life” (2007, 3). the mining families rented company-owned houses, worshiped in company-owned churches, and, of course, shopped at company-owned stores for tools, clothing, and food. the dependence of mining families on the company store was nearly as complete as the dependence of farming families on the forest. but the miners’ subsistence was even more precarious. wages were dependent on faraway market forces, and, of course, a coal economy is based on a non-renewable resource. more profoundly, the anthropocentric character of the coal economy requires a kind of political dependency that was not present in the farm economy: the miners’ dinner was dependent on the caprice of the mine owners. because the same company which controlled access to all of these basic needs was in charge of setting wages as well as the costs of these needs, they could ensure that their workers lived in a state of perpetual indebtedness. this amounted to a system of peonage, or debt slavery: in west virginia and many other states, the indebtedness which led to a state of peonage for immigrants and blacks began when labor contractors, acting for companies or on their own behalf, advanced transportation costs to prospective workers. this advance, known as bringing the men “on transportation”, was frequently the first in a series of “advances” the men received. food, clothing and tools were provided to the workers on their arrival at the work sites, and credits for the cost of these items were entered in books at the company store or commissary. (bailey 1991, par. 9) this company system functioned because wages were often issued in a company-created currency, or scrip, that was not accepted outside of the http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ m. joseph aloi 282 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ company store: “the checks are only good at the company store, consequently the system permits the employer to charge him extortionate prices for the goods. […] flour selling in many places in this state can be purchased at from $5.50 to $6.50 per barrel, while in the company stores the same article sells at $7.50 to $8.65 per barrel” (moran 1890, par. 2). although the phrase “coal feeds my family” was not to be heard for several decades, this was the beginning of the stark realization by the people of central appalachia that their ability to eat was precariously dependent on their collaboration with, and subordination to, the interests and authority of the coal barons. if we listen to wendell berry, the predicament of the miners forced to shop for groceries at the company store is simply one of many ways that the industrial eater is dangerously beholden to outside forces. he writes “we still (sometimes) remember that we cannot be free if our minds and voices are controlled by someone else. but we have neglected to understand that we cannot be free if our food and its sources are controlled by someone else” (berry 2009, 229). for this reason, berry is continually calling for a more responsible eating, which includes, when possible, reconnecting with the wheel of life by growing one’s own food. the company store is a particularly compelling example of this phenomenon, but berry does not even seem to have it in mind; he is explicitly writing of “urban shoppers” (2009, 228). rather, for berry, our loss of freedom stems less from a lack of ownership than from the severing at the heart of modern technology. berry writes: the specialization of production induces specialization of consumption. […] the passive american consumer, sitting down to a meal of preprepared or fast food, confronts a platter covered with inert, anonymous substances that have been processed, dyed, breaded, sauced, gravied, ground, pulped, strained, blended, prettified, and sanitized beyond any resemblance to any part of any create that ever lived. (2009, 228-30) to put this in more borgmannian terms, modern technology’s severing of the process of food production into an opaque machinery and a processed food-commodity has severed eaters from the solar-powered wheel of life that brings food into existence. alienation from this community of living beings makes eaters as dependent on whims of the market economy generally as the turn-of-the-century miners were specifically dependent on the coal barons. what those coal barons accomplished in central appalachia through land acquisition has been accomplished globally through the promise of ease and commodious living. we all need wages in order to get groceries. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ coal feeds my family 283 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 8. the meaning of the change in energy economies of course, much has changed since the days of the company store. the perceptive reader will have noticed that the account of the coal energy economy offered here more or less ends with the beginning of the twentieth century. strikes, walkouts, and uprisings – outside of and within the union – gave miners the ability to challenge the company store model. labor laws that accompanied the new deal strengthened the positions of miners. labor unions created new types of focal practices and communal celebrations that gave meaning to the lives of those communities embedded in the coal energy economy, even if these practices and celebrations were markedly more anthropocentric than the agrarian ones. and finally, largely due to mechanization, the number of people employed as miners has plummeted. with the advent of strip mining and, later, mountaintop removal, “coal companies no longer needed a substantial workforce. instead, they needed the hills and valleys where these people lived” (burns 2007, 5). the coal economy is visibly on its way out, along with the communities it created and the solidarities it fostered. as mentioned at the beginning of the essay, the world created within the coal energy economy is precarious as the very existence of a coal-based economy seems unstable. but patterns of neglect and deliberate manipulation by political and economic powers have ensured that the economic health of – and, accordingly, the ability to get food in – central appalachia is still tightly tied to coal. gwynn guilford discusses these patterns in a recent article for quartz: as of 2013, of the 10 largest landowners in west virginia, none is headquartered in the state, according to a 2013 study by historian lou martin and economists at the west virginia center on budget and policy. in six counties, the top ten landowners control at least half of private land […]. in 1977, then-governor arch moore settled with pittston [coal company], accepting $1 million – less than a fifth of what west virginia taxpayers spent on cleanup [after the buffalo creek disaster]. (2017) the example of gov. moore is particularly egregious, because pittston’s greed and carelessness caused the deaths of 125 people. but guilford’s article has numerous other examples of how “the elite protect the old guard, a key source of their power and wealth” (2017, par. 5). as we saw with gaventa, part of what allows the energy economy of coal to function is the inability of the vast majority of appalachians to change the political and economic structures of this economy. so although the forms have changed slightly since the era of the company store, the fundamental dependence of mountain people on the coal http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ m. joseph aloi 284 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ economy for their well being has not. to move beyond coal, mountain people feel, appalachia needs to diversify its economy. to diversify the economy, appalachia needs massive investment in either new economic sectors or the higher education required for entrepreneurship. to pay for these investments, appalachia needs tax revenue. the bulk of the tax revenue is from coal, so appalachia is dependent on coal to fund the transition beyond coal. this, then, is what sparks the utterance “coal feeds my family”: a feeling that any possible future manner of eating, and all manner of current eating, is and will only be possible due to coal 2. once the matter is viewed this starkly, the contrast between the environmental ethics inherent in the energy economy of preindustrial agriculture and the energy economy of industrial coal mining stands out clearly. the eating of corn, of chestnuts, and of hogs and cattle fed from corn and chestnuts was a practice that revealed and underscored the connectedness of the wild and the domestic, of care for nonhuman life and care for human life, and of life and death. as berry said, this energy economy was powered by the sun and rooted in the soil; it gathered different lives together into a wheel. the coal economy, by contrast, is one that severed producer from consumer, eating from care and cultivation, work from the value it created, and the physical energy created by coal from the social and political energy that it enabled. the coal energy economy is powered by and rooted in the long-dead plants, the mineral, of coal. it severs instead of gathering, and its most potent metaphor is a metaphor for the eating of death central to this economy. 2 there is a popular perception, reinforced by shallow news coverage of the region, that appalachian enthusiasm for coal is rooted in a nostalgic resistance to change. part of this perception seems to stem from an equivocation on the term “conservative” – there is no prima facie reason to assume that people who have preferences for traditional forms of religion are thereby required to hold atavistic economic preferences. but the shallowness of this interpretation becomes clear once one attempts to discover what appalachian are resisting changing to. there have not been any serious attempts on the part of political leaders to offer appalachians a new economic activity, or activities, to replace coal. in a recent episode of anthony bourdain’s parts unknown, he descends into a deep mine to eat with miners. he asks each of them whether they would prefer a safer job to mining. each invariably replies that they’d rather not be mining, if any real alternatives existed. it is not at all nostalgic or unreasonable to resist change that would result in impoverishment. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ coal feeds my family 285 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ references 2007 census of agriculture. state profile: kentucky. https://www.agcensus.usda. gov/publications/2007/online_highlights/county_profiles/kentucky/ cp99021.pdf. 2007 census of agriculture. state profile: michigan. https://www.agcensus.usda. gov/publications/2007/online_highlights/county_profiles/michigan/ cp99026.pdf. 2007 census of agriculture. state profile: west virginia. https://www.agcensus. usda.gov/publications/2007/online_highlights/county_profiles/west_ virginia/cp99054.pdf. bailey, kenneth r. 1991. “a temptation to lawlessness: peonage in west virginia, 1903-1908”. west virginia history 50: 25-45. http://www.wvculture.org/ history/journal_wvh/wvh50-2.html. berry, wendell. 1997. the unsettling of america: culture and agriculture. san francisco: sierra club books. berry, wendell. 2009. bringing it to the table: on farming and food. berkley, ca: counterpoint press. borgmann, albert. 1984. technology and the character of contemporary life: a philosophical inquiry. chicago: university of chicago press. burns, shelly stewart. 2007. bringing down the mountain: the impact of mountaintop removal on southern west virginia communities. morgantown, wv: west virginia university press. davis, donald edward. 2000. where there are mountains: an environmental history of the southern appalachians. athens, ga: university of georgia press. eller, ronald d. 1982. “the miner’s work”. in appalachia inside out, vol. 1: conflict and change, edited by robert j. higgs, ambrose n. manning, and jim wayne miller. knoxville, tn: university of tennessee press. excerpted from: ronald d. eller, miners, millhands, and mountaineers: industrialization of the appalachian south, 1880-1930. knowville, tn: university of tennessee press, 1982. fones-wolf, ken, and ronald l. lewis, eds. 2002. transnational west virginia: ethnic communities and economic change, 1840-1940. morgantown, wv: west virginia university press. gaventa, john. 1980. power and powerlessness: quiescence and rebellion in an appalachian valley. chicago: university of illinois press. guilford, gywnn. 2017. “the 100-year capitalist experiment that keeps appalachia poor, sick, and stuck on coal”. quartz, december 30. https:// qz.com/1167671/the-100-year-capitalist-experiment-that-keeps-appalachiapoor-sick-and-stuck-on-coal/. “how is coal formed?”. kentucky coal education. http://www.coaleducation. org/q&a/how_coal_formed.htm. hughes, thomas. 1881. rugby, tennessee; being some account of the settlement founded on the cumberland plateau by the board of aid to land ownership, http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ https://www.agcensus.usda.gov/publications/2007/online_highlights/county_profiles/kentucky/cp99021.pdf https://www.agcensus.usda.gov/publications/2007/online_highlights/county_profiles/kentucky/cp99021.pdf https://www.agcensus.usda.gov/publications/2007/online_highlights/county_profiles/kentucky/cp99021.pdf https://www.agcensus.usda.gov/publications/2007/online_highlights/county_profiles/michigan/cp99026.pdf https://www.agcensus.usda.gov/publications/2007/online_highlights/county_profiles/michigan/cp99026.pdf https://www.agcensus.usda.gov/publications/2007/online_highlights/county_profiles/michigan/cp99026.pdf https://www.agcensus.usda.gov/publications/2007/online_highlights/county_profiles/west_virginia/cp99054.pdf https://www.agcensus.usda.gov/publications/2007/online_highlights/county_profiles/west_virginia/cp99054.pdf https://www.agcensus.usda.gov/publications/2007/online_highlights/county_profiles/west_virginia/cp99054.pdf http://www.wvculture.org/history/journal_wvh/wvh50-2.html http://www.wvculture.org/history/journal_wvh/wvh50-2.html https://qz.com/1167671/the-100-year-capitalist-experiment-that-keeps-appalachia-poor-sick-and-stuck-on-coal/ https://qz.com/1167671/the-100-year-capitalist-experiment-that-keeps-appalachia-poor-sick-and-stuck-on-coal/ https://qz.com/1167671/the-100-year-capitalist-experiment-that-keeps-appalachia-poor-sick-and-stuck-on-coal/ http://www.coaleducation.org/q&a/how_coal_formed.htm http://www.coaleducation.org/q&a/how_coal_formed.htm m. joseph aloi 286 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ limited; a company incorporated in england, and authorised to hold and deal in land by act of the legislature of the state of tennessee. london: macmillian and co. https://archive.org/details/rugbytennesseebe00hughiala. leopold, aldo. 1966. a sand county almanac with essays on conservation from round river. new york: sierra club ballantine. moore, catherine venable. 2014. “o beulah land”. oxford american 85 (summer). http://www.oxfordamerican.org/magazine/item/351-o-beulah-land. moran, m.f. 1890. “letter to edward robertson, esq., labor commissioner”. first report of the state commissioner of labor, of west virginia, december 1, 1890. charleston: moses w. donnally. http://www.wvculture.org/history/ labor/umwadistrict1702.html. smil, vaclav. 2006. energy: a beginner’s guide. oxford: oneworld publications. veteto, james r. 2011. “apple-achia: the most diverse foodshed in the us, canada, and northern mexico”. in place-based foods of appalachia: from rarity to community restoration and market recovery, edited by james r. veteto, gary paul nabhan, regina fitzsimmons, kanin routson, and deja walker. https://www.southernsare.org/educational-resources/sare project-products/books-manuals-and-training-guides/place-basedfoods-of-appalachia. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ https://archive.org/details/rugbytennesseebe00hughiala http://www.oxfordamerican.org/magazine/item/351-o-beulah-land http://www.wvculture.org/history/labor/umwadistrict1702.html http://www.wvculture.org/history/labor/umwadistrict1702.html https://www.southernsare.org/educational-resources/sare-project-products/books-manuals-and-training-guides/place-based-foods-of-appalachia https://www.southernsare.org/educational-resources/sare-project-products/books-manuals-and-training-guides/place-based-foods-of-appalachia https://www.southernsare.org/educational-resources/sare-project-products/books-manuals-and-training-guides/place-based-foods-of-appalachia respect, inherent value, subjects-of-a-life: some reflections on the key concepts of tom regan’s animal ethics 5 is sn 2 2 8 0 -9 9 5 3 beyond anthropocentrism 1 • january 2013 inside the emotional lives of non-human animals a minding animals international utrecht 2012 pre-conference event special issue (genoa, italy, 12-13 may, 2012) edited by m. andreozzi, r. bennison, a. massaro, s. tonutti capabilities approach and animal bioethics • michele panzera animals and our emotions. how to approach the study of an interspecific community? • sabrina tonutti advocacy and animal rights • kim stallwood the emotional lives of animals: a christian perspective • alma massaro – gianfranco nicora animalia: ontology and ethics in weak antispeciesism • leonardo caffo the contemporary debate on experimentation • susanna penco – rosagemma ciliberti non-human animals and genetic engineering • arianna ferrari the relationship between humans and other animals in european animal welfare legislation • paola sobbrio human’s best friends? • matteo andreozzi elationsre l a t io n s . b e y o n d a n t h r o p o c e n t r is m 1 • 2 0 1 3 r 7.1-2 november 2019 the respect extended to animals: studies in honor and in memory of tom regan conference event special issue (florence, italy, february 20, 2018) edited by francesco allegri editorial exploring non-anthropocentric paradigms 7 francesco allegri introduction the importance of tom regan for animal ethics 13 francesco allegri studies and research contributions verso i diritti degli animali. riflessioni e dibattiti nella storia 19 del pensiero vilma baricalla respect, inherent value, subjects-of-a-life: some reflections 41 on the key concepts of tom regan’s animal ethics francesco allegri animalismo e non violenza. l’incidenza della lezione gandhiana 61 sul pensiero di tom regan luisella battaglia almost like waging war: tom regan and the conditions 77 for using violence for the sake of animals federico zuolo relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ relations. beyond anthropocentrism 6 comments, debates, reports and interviews ricordo di tom regan. intervista con luigi lombardi vallauri 95 francesco allegri author guidelines 99 relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 41 respect, inherent value, subjects-of-a-life some reflections on the key concepts of tom regan’s animal ethics francesco allegri università degli studi di siena doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2019-0102-all3 allegri2@unisi.it abstract this article reconstructs the theoretical premises of tom regan’s animal ethics, the american philosopher recently disappeared who has given a fundamental contribution to this area of practical ethics, by developing a theory of rights based on the extension to all subjects-of-a-life of kantian notions such as inherent value and respect. regan’s theory still remains the most rigorous foundation of an animal ethics alternative to the utilitarian approach of peter singer, but it is not without unresolved problems or not entirely satisfactory solutions. to remedy some of them, in the final part the author tries to insert into the reganian theoretical framework elements of gradualism. keywords: animal rights; animals; gradualist view; inherent value; moral status; peter singer; respect; subjects-of-a-life; tom regan; utilitarianism. 1. introduction the seventies of the twentieth century have been a decisive turning point in the attribution of moral relevance to non-human animals. if until then the prevailing philosophical thought had prescribed only indirect obligations towards sentient beings not belonging to our species (with several exceptions in the history of philosophy, but isolated), in the middle of the decade, with the publication of peter singer’s animal liberation, animals enter fully into the moral community, as patients to whom we have direct moral obligations, and not only that of not making them suffer unjustifiably, but also that of not killrelations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2019-0102-all3 mailto:allegri2@unisi.it https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ francesco allegri 42 ing them (singer 1975). the arguments that lead the australian philosopher to assign animals moral status are utilitarian and are based on bentham’s principle of equal consideration of interests, which singer mainly elaborates in terms of preferences. in the same year in which singer’s book is published, the canadian journal of philosophy publishes an article, entitled “the moral basis of vegetarianism”, which is perhaps the first contribution on the ethics of the human-animal relationship to appear in an academic peer-reviewed journal. its author, tom regan, an american philosopher from north carolina state university, while reaching practical conclusions not dissimilar to those of singer, justifies them on the basis of a different theoretical approach, deontological and of kantian inspiration, which gives rise to a theory of moral rights (regan 1975). further elaborated in many texts over a period of more than thirty years 1, regan’s proposal finds its most rigorous formulation in the case for animal rights, where he fully develops an alternative perspective to utilitarianism, in the belief that the latter, besides being a normative theory in itself unsustainable, is not able to adequately support the battle (common with singer) for the improvement of animal conditions and the elimination of their exploitation (regan 1983). in the following pages, which want to pay homage to this important figure of contemporary moral philosophy, i intend to reconstruct the theoretical premises of tom regan’s animal ethics, focusing my attention on the three key concepts of his view (used by the american philosopher to extend rights to non-human animals): respect, inherent value, subjects-of-a-life. my conclusion will be that, although regan’s theory still remains the most rigorous foundation of an animal ethics alternative to peter singer’s utilitarian approach, it is not without unresolved problems or not entirely satisfactory solutions. in the final part of the article i will indicate some of them and i will try to to overcome them by inserting elements of gradualism into the reganian theoretical framework. 2. the criticism of singer and utilitarianism for regan, first of all utilitarianism – both in its classical hedonistic version and in the version of preference outlined by singer – has implications that contrast with widely diffused intuitions. this aspect is already problematic, because according to regan one of the requirements that a 1 some of which – including the first paper published in the canadian journal – are collected in regan 1982. relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ respect, inherent value, subjects-of-a-life 43 moral theory must satisfy is its conformity to our moral intuitions. however, they should not be conceived as mere convictions that we happen to have (fruit of the family environment and the social context in which we lived), but as weighted beliefs to which we arrive by subjecting our initial ideas to the overcoming of certain conditions, such as conceptual clarity (the complete knowledge of the meaning of the terms connected to a given deliberation), full information on the facts at stake in the situation to be assessed, absence of logical errors (i.e. wrong reasoning, or the violation of the principle of non-contradiction), impartiality (to be in accordance with the formal principle of justice, for which we must evaluate equally equal individuals or situations), coolness (“not being in an emotionally excited state, being in an emotionally calm state of mind”, regan 1983, 129). can we legitimately consider the beliefs that we retain, once all five of these clauses have been fulfilled, unreliable prejudices for testing the plausibility of a moral theory? regan thinks not. once these constraints have been overcome, our intuitions, now reflective, constitute a fact that a philosopher should not overlook in the elaboration of a moral theory. on the contrary, utilitarianism, even in the singer’s version, violates this requirement. the case of murder is emblematic in this regard. hedonistic utilitarianism is not able to account for secret killings, about which “fails on two counts, failing to account both for the wrong done by secret killings and for the wrong attaching to the unknown criminal’s escaping punishment” (regan 1983, 204). the reason behind these counterintuitive responses lies in the fact that classical utilitarianism conceives individuals as mere receptacles. they are simply containers of value (pleasure) and disvalue (pain) without having an autonomous value in themselves. according to regan, the utilitarianism of preference supported by singer, unlike the claims of the australian philosopher, fails to avoid the counterintuitive outcomes of classic utilitarianism regarding murder, and in some ways makes them worse. in fact, by basing the prohibition of killing on the preference to continue living, singer is unable to account for the prohibition to take the life of all those beings who, not possessing an idea of death, cannot have the desire to continue living, i.e. the totality of animals and atypical humans (the subjects suffering from serious mental handicaps). moreover, if it is true that the “preference” factor allows some step forward on secret murders, however, even assuming that a person prefers to live, an equally strong preference to kill her by another person is enough to even the score. in other words, the utilitarianism of preference cannot avoid the main defect of hedonistic utilitarianism: the conception of individuals as receptacles. although relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ francesco allegri 44 singer denies that self-aware beings are mere containers of value, regan believes that hart’s criticism of the australian philosopher that he has simply turned receptacles of pleasure into receptacles of preference is fully compelling (regan 1983, 209-210) 2. but since singer does not attribute a decisive importance to the response of intuitions, regan also attacks him on another requirement, to which all philosophers are sensitive: logical coherence or consistency. unlike the prevailing versions, singer formulates utilitarianism not in terms of maximizing general utility, but in terms of equal consideration of interests. in doing so however, regan argues, he actually presents a principle whose status and relationship with the ordinary principle of utility are problematic. in fact, since utilitarianism is a monistic theory of obligation, the principle of equal consideration of interests – that singer always presents in normative terms (equality should not be understood as a fact, but as an ideal) – cannot also be a basic or fundamental principle on a logical level (under penalty of the pluralistic nature of the resulting theory of obligation); on the other hand, it cannot even be the only fundamental principle, from which the principle of utility derives logically, otherwise the theory would no longer be utilitarian. in both cases the outcome is inconsistent (regan 1983, 211-213). 3. the shortcomings of utilitarian animal ethics but, according to regan, there are also more specific and animalrelated reasons for rejecting singer’s utilitarian view. in addition to the already highlighted difficulty of prohibiting, on the basis of the mere preference to continue living, the killing of beings who do not have an idea of death, by applying the utilitarian theoretical ethics to the animal question it is very difficult to justify, as instead singer would pretend to do, the duty to contrast the practice of intensive farming. because, utilitarianism being a consequential theory, in order to make a kind of action obligatory, its effects must be better than the available alternatives. but is it really true that the overall effects of refraining from eating food products from industrial farms are better than the continuation of current practice? regan has doubts about that. the fact is that the animal industry is a big business involving millions of people. it is not only the interests of consumers of animal products that are at stake. it is also the 2 here regan’s reference is to hart 1980. relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ respect, inherent value, subjects-of-a-life 45 interests of those who breed and sell the animals, those who transport, slaughter and canning the animals, and so on (i.e. the whole food chain) and – not to be forgotten – their dependents. for all these categories, the continuation of intensive livestock farming means keeping their jobs and being able to support their loved ones (regan 1983, 221-222). furthermore, seen from a utilitarian perspective, the obligation to be vegetarian is rather weak. in fact, the single utilitarian subject who makes the choice not to eat meat, with his gesture does not affect in any way the treatment reserved to animals in intensive farms (ibid., 224225). as singer admits, it is only a collective effort of great relevance that, by dropping the demand for animal food below a certain threshold, can damage the food industry (by decreasing the number of animals raised and farmed) 3. so what reason do i have to become a vegetarian if my individual gesture has no impact on animal suffering? none, since in such a perspective the moral evaluation of actions depends on the consequences, and in this case my act has no better effect than its omission 4. 4. the deontological view of tom regan: the principle of respect for the inherent value of all subjects-of-a-life and the extension of rights beyond the human world for regan, utilitarianism is therefore an inadequate ethical conception and should be abandoned, replacing it with a theory based on a principle other than the principle of utility. the fundamental principle of morality in the new regan’s view is the principle of respect for the equal inherent value of all subjects-of-a-life. the starting point to arrive at this new theory is the formal principle of justice, for which equal individuals must be treated in the same way (regan 1983, 232). it has a formal nature, as it does not in itself specify what is the measure of equal treatment, i.e. the equal way in which subjects are to be treated. it only asserts that if we treat two individuals differently, without indicating a morally significant difference between them, our behavior is not in accordance with justice as it appears inconsistent (if they are completely equal, from a moral point of view, why treat them differently?). a normative interpretation of justice is required to fill in the empty box. regan puts forward a normative interpretation of 3 here regan’s reference is to singer 1980, 335. 4 for an overall assessment of peter singer’s animal ethics, allow me to refer to allegri 2017. relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ francesco allegri 46 justice alternative to both utilitarianism and perfectionism, the latter view he exemplifies with aristotle and nietzsche. in this approach – which regan also calls “moral elitism” (cohen and regan 2001, 194-195) – the element of similarity that gives the right to equal treatment consists of a set of intellectual and/or artistic qualities. those who possess more and/ or to a higher degree have greater value than those who possess them to a lesser extent or do not possess them; and deserve better treatment. regan rejects this option because what natural talents individuals are, to hearken back to a helpful phrase of rawls’s, is the result of “the natural lottery”. those who are born with intellectual or artistic gifts have not themselves done anything to deserve preferred treatment, anymore than those who are born lacking these gifts have done anything to deserve being denied those benefits essential to their welfare. no theory of justice can be adeguate that builds justice on so fortuitous a foundation, one that could sanction forwarding the “higher” interests of some over the vital interests of others. (regan 1983, 234) on the other hand, utilitarianism, although based on an egalitarian proposal, encounters problems of discrepancy with respect to the methodology of reflective intuitions. in order to avoid the defects of perfectionism and utilitarianism, the normative interpretation of formal justice developed by regan starts from the thesis that a certain type of individual has value in herself, a value that regan calls inherent to radically differentiate it from the value in itself of states of consciousness, for which the expression “intrinsic value” is more widespread. the inherent value is not only conceptually distinct from the intrinsic value, but is irreducible and immeasurable with respect to the latter. we cannot determine the inherent value of an individual by making the algebraic sum of the intrinsic values of her experiences or the experiences of others. the inherent value is incomparable with the intrinsic value of states of consciousness, such as pleasure or the satisfaction of preferences. the kantian nature of this idea is undoubted and the immediate reference can only be to the second formula of the categorical imperative, to which regan, however, gives a more extensive articulation than kant, for whom the value in themselves of individuals appears to be confined to the human sphere. according to regan the limit of utilitarianism – which explains the reasons for its inadequacy – is not to grasp the distinction between these two types of value and to remain anchored only to the intrinsic value of states of consciousness, which leads us to treat individuals as mere containers of experiences of value, without having as such any relevance, with all the counterintuitive results to which this gives rise. instead, conrelations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ respect, inherent value, subjects-of-a-life 47 formity to our reflective beliefs is saved if, in addition to the intrinsic value of experiences, we consider the value in themselves of the bearers of those experiences. the inherent value of a individual, not depending on states of consciousness, is invariant with respect to the value of the experiences that the subject carries out: those who have a more pleasant or happier life do not therefore have greater inherent value than those whose lives are less pleasant or happy. nor do those who have more “cultivated” preferences (say, for arts and letters) therefore have greater inherent value. (regan 1983, 235-236) but, beyond that, inherent value is not something individuals can “earn by dint of their efforts or as something they can lose by what they do or fail to do. a criminal is not less inherently valuable than a saint” (ibid., 237). finally, it does not depend on whether individuals are the object of anyone else’s interests. when it comes to inherent value, it matters not whether one is liked, admired, respected, or in other ways valued by others. the lonely, forsaken, unwanted, and unloved are no more nor less inherently valuable than those who enjoy a more hospitable relationship with others. (ibidem) in other words, the inherent value is equally owned. it doesn’t know different degrees. these characteristics deeply distinguish regan’s conception from those of his two competitors. if independence from states of consciousness distances the inherent value of regan from utilitarianism, its egalitarian nature differentiates it from perfectionist conceptions. unlike in perfectionism, the conditions (the elements of similarity) that confer access to the inherent value are not given by intellectual or artistic qualities, but by the possession of some minimal requirements. what are they? certainly, according to regan, it is sufficient to have a mental life that contemplates, in addition to sensitivity, some sense of the past and the future. those who possess these abilities are called by regan with the neologism “subjects-of-a-life”. to be a subject-of-a-life in regan’s perspective it is therefore not enough to be alive or simply sentient 5. something more is needed: individuals are subjects-of-a-life if they have beliefs and desires; perception, memory, and a sense of the future, including their own future; an 5 from this point of view cochrane’s way of expressing himself for which “regan claims that sentient animals possess this right to respectful treatment” (cochrane 2012, 6) is imprecise. the status of subject-of-a-life is not recognized by regan to all sentient beings, i.e. to a being for the mere fact that it is sentient. relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ francesco allegri 48 emotional life together with feelings of pleasure and pain; preference and welfare interests 6; the ability to initiate action in pursuit of their desires and goals; a psychophysical identity over time; and an individual welfare in the sense that their experiental life fares well or ill for them, logically independently of their utility for others and logically independently of their being the object of anyone else’s interests. (regan 1983, 243) but by introducing the concept of inherent value and identifying in the subjects-of-a-life its undoubted holders, although we have laid the foundations for a normative interpretation of formal justice, we have not yet reached a moral principle that tells us how to treat such beings. the normative principle that completes regan’s theory is the principle of respect (or equal respect), for which “we are to treat those individuals who have inherent value in ways that respect their inherent value” (ibid., 248). respecting this value of subjects-of-a-life essentially means that we should not treat them as mere receptacles of intrinsic value. updating kant, regan asserts that “individuals who have inherent value must never be treated merely as means to securing the best aggregate consequences” (ibid., 249). the principle of respect for the equal inherent value of all subjectsof-a-life according to regan satisfies much better than competing models plausible criteria of suitability of moral theories and interprets more adequately than utilitarianism bentham’s thesis that each has to count for one and none for more than one. from the general theory of duties developed it is perfectly plausible, for the american philosopher, to derive that the possessors of inherent value are holders of rights. it is possible to achieve this result, which is the objective of regan’s theorization, aimed at extending moral rights to animals, conceiving rights as valid claims, a thesis that regan takes up from j.s. mill and j. feinberg. obviously, a mere claim to the recognition of something is not enough to have the moral right to it. such a claim must be justified (and therefore validation criteria are required). regan follows mill not only in conceiving rights as valid claims, but also in the thesis that the validation procedure consists in referring to principles of moral obligation, the justification of which has been independently established (i.e. in the thesis that rights are ultimately based on duties). however, he differs from the english philosopher on the specific basis 6 by “preference-interests” regan means what we have an interest in (what we are interested in). by “welfare-interests” he means what is in our interest. the two concepts must be kept distinct because not everything that interests us is in our interest and vice versa (regan 1983, 87-88). relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ respect, inherent value, subjects-of-a-life 49 of validation, which for mill is the principle of utility, while for regan it can only be the principle of respect, since in his opinion it satisfies the criteria for evaluating moral theories better than competing proposals, and notably better than utilitarianism. since the obligation to respect the inherent value of the subjects-of-a-life, and to respect it equally, is well founded, the subjects-of-a-life enjoy the right to equal respect for their equal inherent value, i.e. not to be treated as things or mere containers of value, which in themselves have no dignity (regan 1983, 276-279). regan then develops his theory with operating rules that articulate the abstract idea of equal respect. first of all, from the principle of respect it is possible to logically derive a harm principle, which prohibits harming the subjects-of-a-life, and enjoins the promotion of their wellbeing, because to harm someone or not to intervene in her help means to disrespect her (not respecting her as an individual with inherent value) (ibid., 262-263, 286-287). however, such a principle, which merges together non-maleficence and beneficence, needs additional elements to be adequate. in fact, if non-maleficence is conceived as absolute (“one should never harm a subject-of-a-life”), the harm principle is hardly convincing in the multiform situations of human action; on the contrary, it risks producing even more counterintuitive results than the principle of utility. with a very effective slogan regan argues that “the totem of the utilitarian theory (summing the consequences for all those affected by the outcome) is the taboo of the rights view” (ibid., 337). but to be a plausible proposal, even his theory must take into account the effects of the actions. in fact, the right not to be harmed does not appear to be exempt from exceptions, fully in line with our intuitions. for instance, it is legitimate to harm an individual in self-defense (does a person not have the right to hit an aggressor to defend himself?) and it is equally legitimate to punish and therefore harm the guilty person, i.e. the one who has committed a crime. of course, in both cases, innocent individuals are not involved. therefore, the absoluteness of the harm principle could be reproposed in a more restricted version, i.e. as a principle of protection of the innocent: it is never justified to harm an innocent subject-of-a-life (i.e., the right of the innocent not to be harmed is never violable) (ibid., 287, 291). but in reality not even the right of the innocent not to be harmed appears unconditional, because “situations arise […] in which, no matter what we decide to do – and even if we decide to do nothing – an innocent subject-of-a-life will be harmed” (regan 2004b, xxviii). consider the following hypothetical scenario: suppose that, due to a landslide, fifty miners are prisoners in a cave and the only way to get them out is to open a tunnel with an explosive charge. there is a relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ francesco allegri 50 drawback though. the landslide has also blocked a fifty-first miner in an adjoining cave and the explosion would inevitably kill him. on the other hand, to save the latter it is necessary to blow up the cave that imprisons the other fifty. the alternative then, unless you let all fifty-one people die (even in this case, however, innocent beings will suffer damage, and numerically greater), is between blowing up the first cave thus saving the miner trapped in the second but killing the other fifty prisoners in the first, or, vice versa, blow up the second cave killing the fifty-first miner and saving the other fifty. in such circumstances one is not only forced to harm an innocent, but also to make comparisons between the amounts of damage. the rights view – regan acknowledges – must be able to provide us with practicable guidelines for those cases where “we are required to choose between harming the few or harming the many who are innocent” (regan 1983, 303). these are the situations in which we would be tempted to apply the principle of utility. in order to master such contexts, but without accepting utilitarian aggregations, regan introduces some moral principles, derived from the principle of respect, which can justify the violation of the right of the innocent not to be harmed; i.e. they come into play in those circumstances where all available courses of action (including omissions) involve harm to innocents. these are specifications of the principle of the protection of the innocent, which allow us, on the one hand, to deal with real or hypothetical tangled situations of practical ethics, avoiding absolute prohibitions that cannot be proposed, and on the other hand, to avoid utilitarian repercussions (thus maintaining compliance with the principle of respect). these principles, if they do not allow us to aggregate states of consciousness in the utilitarian way, at least allow us to attribute importance to the number of individuals involved in an action, that is to say, to make the number of damaged individuals count. the first is the minimize overriding principle, for which special considerations aside, when we must choose between overriding the rights of many who are innocent or the rights of few who are innocent, and when each affected individual will be harmed in a prima facie comparable way, then we ought to choose to override the rights of the few in preference to overriding the rights of the many. (regan 1983, 305; see also 328) this principle allows us – in accordance with our intuitions – to opt for the salvation of the fifty miners in the example just proposed, that is to say, to harm only one innocent in order to prevent a greater number of innocents from being harmed. the second is the worse-off principle, for which relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ respect, inherent value, subjects-of-a-life 51 special considerations aside, when we are faced with choosing to harm the many or the few who are innocents, and when the harm faced by the few would make them worse-off than any of the many, then we ought to override the rights of the many rather than the few. (regan 1983, 328; see also 308) with the clarification that it also applies to cases involving only two individuals, i.e. situations in which we are forced to choose between harming one innocent subject-of-a-life or harming another (ibid., 308, 328). in such contexts the principle enjoins us to spare the one who would suffer a more serious level of damage. the worse-off principle allows the theory of rights to avoid one of the most counterintuitive outcomes of utilitarianism, exemplified as follows. suppose we are faced with the following aut-aut: to strongly damage a single individual p, or to damage a thousand others, each in an extremely slight way. let’s imagine that, quantifying the damage caused by performing the two actions, the first action produces – 999 (a very strong damage inflicted on a single person), while the second one produces – 1,000 (a damage of only one unit for each of the thousand people involved). in utilitarian logic, the first action, which minimizes the overall damage (it has a less low algebraic score), would be morally obligatory, while the second would be prohibited. but such a response seems hardly acceptable. p suffers an evil of enormous entity, when the alternative action would not result seriously harmful to anyone. the worse-off principle, in accordance with the intuitive data, allows us to choose the second option and to declare the first one wrong or impermissible (in this case the damage that the first individual would suffer confronted with the damage suffered by the other thousand are not comparable). 5. the application of the rights view to the animal question applied to the animal question, regan’s theory produces responses that challenge many of the uses of animals commonly made by humans. since the inherent value entitling the right to respect belongs to all subjects-of-a-life, regan’s preliminary work is to identify whether there are animals that meet the criterion for being subjects-of-a-life and, if so, what they are. he attributes the ability to have states of consciousness to animals primarily “from what we know about the relationship between human consciousness and the structure and function of the human nervous relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ francesco allegri 52 system” (regan 1983, 29) and on the basis of the theory of evolution. regarding the first point, “there is good reason to believe that our consciousness is intimately related to our physiology and anatomy. damage to the spinal cord, for example, can make it impossibile for us to receive sensations from affected parts of our bodies” (ibidem). but if this is the case, it is reasonable to assume that at least the animals most anatomically and physiologically similar to us, such as mammals, are sentient. hypothesis fully confirmed by the theory of evolution – and so we come to the second point – which, in addition to highlight a line of continuity between animal species and a line of phylogenetic contiguity between us and the other mammals, points out the adaptive value of consciousness for survival: if consciousness had no survival value – if, in other words, it was of no or little assistance in the struggle of species to adapt to and survive in an ever changing environment – then conscious beings would not have evolved and survived. (ibid., 19) since it is therefore reasonable to attribute a complex mental life to non-human species, we can ask ourselves which animals are subjectsof-a-life. in the case regan, following the same criteria of anatomicalphysiological affinity that led him to identify the species to be considered sentient, believes that the required conditions are certainly possessed by all typical mammals, human and not, from at least one year of age (ibid., 77-78, 246-247). without this precluding animals with features less similar to ours from accessing this status. so much so that the range indicated in his main work was later extended by regan, who has ascribed the necessary characteristics for the inclusion among the subjects-of-a-life also to birds, in which, in his opinion, it is possible to ascertain a “unified psychological presence” (regan 1998, 42-43; but see also cohen and regan 2001, 162, 208-209; regan 2004a, 60-61; regan 2004b, xvi). and more recently he has further extended this status to fish, albeit with some doubt (regan 2004a, 60-61; regan 2004b, xvi). as these categories fall fully within the list of those who, possessing inherent value, deserve respect, it is questionable their use in so many human activities that instead unreasonably violate their rights. among them one of the most relevant, if not the main, is the practice of feeding on animals. from the theoretical premises carried out derives the moral obligation not to eat subjects-of-a-life and the rejection of institutions such as farms for food purposes, both on an industrial and family scale. another controversial issue of animal ethics that regan’s theory of rights deals with is experimentation. on this theme from the case relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ respect, inherent value, subjects-of-a-life 53 onwards regan reaches a level of radicality to which he had not previously reached (see jamieson and regan 1982), nor advocated in the beginning (regan 2004b, xii). while until then regan invited researchers to identify alternative ways with respect to a harmful use of animal welfare, but allowing a return to the usual procedures in the event that different methods were found to be unsuccessful, the latter clause now disappears. regan now asserts that using subjects-of-a-life in scientific practices of any kind and for any purpose, which harm them, means unjustifiably infringing their rights as bearers of inherent value. and treating them even less than as mere receptacles of intrinsic value: as simple renewable resources, of which one is not even interested in suffering. his position from reformist as it was thus becomes abolitionist (regan 1983, 363-394; regan 2004a, 159-177). regan’s position is also abolitionist with regard to all other areas in which animals are damaged for instrumental use in relation to human needs. he expresses his opposition to practices such as zoos, circuses (obviously the one with animals), aquatic shows with marine mammals, etc. for example, how can animals such as elephants or dolphins be caged or kept in confined spaces? the life offered to them by the world of circus and water shows is very far from what they would enjoy in their natural habitat. circuses constantly move from one country to another, covering many miles. during the journeys the animals are crammed into trucks, without the possibility of moving for hours and sometimes days, when in the wild they have at their disposal areas of tens, if not hundreds, of square kilometers, which they travel daily (regan 2004a, 125-157). 6. some critical reflections the theoretical framework outlined by regan for animal ethics undoubtedly presents many aspects that can be shared. in the first place, a deontological theory of moral obligation based on the principle of respect seems more convincing than a theory of obligation based on the principle of utility. regan’s view has the undoubted merit of developing a more adequate conception of beneficence than utilitarianism. by focusing exclusively on the intrinsic value of states of consciousness, utilitarianism neglects the value of the bearers of those states, the individuals, who tend to become mere receptacles of valuable experiences, having no autonomous value in themselves. instead, it is not so much a question of impersonally increasing the good of the world by relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ francesco allegri 54 adding states of consciousness, but rather of improving people’s lives. from this point of view, as darwall has written, kant’s conception of beneficence appears more balanced. in kantian perspective “it is only because individuals have value that their welfare does also” (darwall 1998, 288-289). we must not do the good of individuals to increase the intrinsic value of states of consciousness, but we must increase the intrinsic value of states of consciousness to do the good of individuals. furthermore, the flexibility guaranteed to its theory of rights by intermediate principles such as the minimize overriding principle and the worse-off principle, allows it to be effective in practical disputes (and thus to be able to compete with utilitarianism) 7. in addition, the concept of respect allows it to unify many if not all the demands of moral obligation (another factor that can put it on the same level as utilitarianism, which, as we know, is based on a principle unifying particular duties). veracity, fidelity, justice, gratitude, etc. are all forms of respect for the other (if i do not keep a promise made i lack respect to the one to whom i have made it, etc.), and therefore they can be derived from this more general principle 8. of course, it could be argued that the notion of inherent value is not necessary, and indeed there have been those who have tried to develop a conception that assigns rights to non-human animals without it. this is the case of rachels, rollin, and more recently cochrane, just to name a few, who have considered it sufficient to refer to the notion of interest (rachels 1990, 207; rollin 2006, 115; cochrane 2012) 9. for example, cochrane defends the claim that nonhuman animals possess prima facie rights not to be killed and not to be made to suffer, asserting that “a much more plausible and straightforward means of establishing a theory of animal rights is not through an appeal to dignity or inherent value, but through interests” (cochrane 2012, 9). however, for what i have said before, i am not sure that without this notion they can get the results 7 having in mind regan’s model elaborated in the case, singer’s words are excessive, when he emphasizes the great difficulties “faced by all adherents of rights-based ethical theories, because such theories are too inflexible to respond to the various real and imaginary circumstances in which we want to make moral judgments” (singer 1987, 13; italics added). it must be admitted, however, that singer’s evaluation is appropriate if referred to the vast majority of theories of rights. 8 nevertheless, i do not believe that a principle of respect is capable of resolving a priori all conflicts between the various components of moral obligation and for this reason i believe that a form of normative pluralism is preferable. i explored this theme, precisely in relation to regan’s theory, in allegri 2005 to which i refer. 9 on the other hand, feinberg had already moved in this direction (see feinberg 1974). relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ respect, inherent value, subjects-of-a-life 55 achieved by regan using it. although regan admits that, for example, the principle of equal consideration of interests does not necessarily lead us to support a form of utilitarianism (regan 1983, 223). but also accepting the cogency of the notion of inherent value, something needs to be revised in regan’s general approach. beyond its undeniable merits, regan’s view is not without unresolved problems or solutions that are not entirely satisfactory. i shall limit myself here in conclusion to considering a couple of them (and both are just related to inherent value; therefore this notion, even if useful, is not said that it should not be modified): (1) the moral status of beings who are not subjects-of-a-life and of which we do not know whether they possess inherent value or not; (2) the categorical nature of the inherent value. (1) as it is constructed, regan’s inherent value, does not seem to be able to belong to beings who are not subject-of-a-life. since for regan only mammals, birds and fish fall within the range of subjects-of-a-life, animals that are not part of this set do not appear to enjoy rights. can we do with them what we want? indeed, regan’s position on the place to be assigned to the latter in the moral community has never been very clear. sometimes regan seems to be in favour of conceiving sentient beings who are not subjects-of-a-life in aggregative terms in the manner of singer (i.e. as mere receptacles of intrinsic value; see regan 1983, 246), and sometimes he even seems to deny them moral status, while acknowledging indirect reasons not to harm them 10. i believe that the first solution can be accepted, the second not. in fact, if regan agrees with singer’s aggregative model, then he recognizes that we have towards merely sentient beings not only the obligation not to make them suffer, but also the obligation not to kill them, if their future life contains more happiness than suffering, unless their killing is compensated for by births that maintain unchanged the level of happiness (despite some ambiguities, this interpretation is confirmed by regan’s criticism of those who deny beings with no sense of the long-term future to suffer harm through prematurely induced death; see regan 1983, 100102) 11. animals that are not subject-of-a-life, even if they had no inher 10 see, for example, regan 1983, 245, where the american philosopher talks about “the differences concerning our confidence about having direct duties to some (those who are subjects[-of-a-life]) and our not having direct duties to others (those who are not subjects[-of-a-life])”. 11 the ambiguities are due to the fact that sometimes regan, in accordance with his approach based on the subjects-of-a-life, seems to link the possibility of suffering harm from an anticipated death to the possession of a sense of the future at least in the short relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ francesco allegri 56 ent value, if their states of consciousness have intrinsic value, then they possess moral status and in a meaningful sense (it is prima facie wrong to make them suffer or kill). however, elsewhere regan seems to be saying that only the subjectsof-a-life receive harm from an early death. and it is only by giving certain animals the benefit of the doubt about being subjects-of-life that we can and should be compelled not to kill them (regan 1983, 367) 12. (2) regan’s notion of inherent value appears too rigid. all subjects-of-alife possess it and in an equal way; those who are not subjects-of-a-life, i.e. sentient beings without mental complexity, only living beings etc., we do not know whether they possess it or not, but for how regan has defined this value, it is more likely no than yes. even limiting the discussion on inherent value to the subjects-of-a-life, it should be noted that the characteristics that connote this typology of entities in reality do not appear in a categorical way, but at different levels. self-consciousness, rationality, sense of the future, sense of the past, etc., are features that can be possessed to a greater or lesser extent, in more or less elevated percentages. and perhaps this should play a role in assessing the inherent value of a being and consequently her moral status. a way to solve the issue just posed could be to support a gradualist conception of the value in themselves of individuals, for which the inherent value, grows on the basis of their cognitive, emotional and social complexity 13. also because such a rigid (categorical) notion of inherent term and to the concept of psychophysical identity over time (which would exclude animals as mere containers of sensations). but it is not clear why the notion of welfareinterests, which he adequately distinguished from the notion of preference-interests, does not apply also to sentient entities without a sense of the future tout court. if a being with a sense of the short-term future is harmed by premature death, why shouldn’t a being with no sense of the future (if it ever exists) receive it? this appears to be confirmed by one of regan’s examples of human subjects suffering harm from premature death: individuals with senile dementia (regan 1983, 102). 12 there is, in any case, a simple way to dissolve the problem, and it is suggested by two considerations of degrazia. according to this philosopher, (a) the range of sentient animals is limited to all vertebrates plus cephalopods (degrazia 1996, 111); (b)  all vertebrates and cephalopods are endowed, in addition to the ability to experience pleasure and pain, with some form of self-consciousness (ibid., 170, 171, 175). if degrazia is right, and it is far from implausible to think so, then all sentient beings are subjects-of-a-life, in regan’s language. and therefore all sentient beings possess inherent value, thereby ensuring their moral status. 13 i tried to develop this gradualist perspective in allegri 2018 and, more extensively, in allegri 2015. a similar approach can be found in rachels 1990 and in david degrazia’s texts (see for all degrazia 1996 and 2008). relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ respect, inherent value, subjects-of-a-life 57 value, risks creating problems of inconsistency in regan’s deliberations on practical ethics. this is a criticism that has been made to the american philosopher from several sides and that has focused on the outcome of a famous thought-experiment presented by regan himself, the lifeboat case: imagine five survivals are on a lifeboat. because of limits of size, the boat can only support four. all weigh approximately the same and would take up approximately the same amount of space. four of the five are normal adult human beings. the fifth is a dog. one must be thrown overboard or else all will perish. whom should it be? (regan 1983, 285; see also 324-325 and 351) regan’s answer, perfectly in accordance with the dictates of common sense, is that we should throw the dog overboard (ibid., 324, 351). but is such a response consistent with his theory? apparently not. because his view expressly asserts that the intrinsic dignity of the dog is the same as that of humans, both being subjects-of-a-life on an equal footing. and so the option of drawing lots would seem more coherent. how does regan justify this outcome, which seems to clearly conflict with his theoretical approach? in the case, he argues that the harm represented by death “is a function of the number and variety of opportunities for satisfaction it forecloses for a given individual” (ibid., 351; see also 314 and 324; moreover regan 2004b, xxix). for this reason, the dilemma of the lifeboat can only be solved with the choice to throw in water the dog, the subjectof-a-life who has the least to lose. it is the worse-off principle that imposes such a solution, because “the death of any of the four humans would be a greater prima facie loss, and thus a greater prima facie harm, than would be true in the case of the dog” (regan 1983, 324). in the new preface to the case, published twenty years after the book’s release and containing the critics’ replies, regan expands his argument, distinguishing the value of individuals from the value of lives (regan 2004b, xxxiv). the fact that all subjects-of-a-life possess the same inherent value – regan explains – does not mean that the value of their lives is the same. there is no correspondence between the value of an individual and the value of his or her life: “given my theory of value, the quality of an individual’s life is one think; the value of the one whose life it is, another” (ibid., xxiii). the value of a life depends on the quality and quantity of states of consciousness. the value of an individual on having states of consciousness of a certain level, independently of the use he makes of them. with regard to an early death, the equal inherent value does not therefore imply an equalization of the damage. relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ francesco allegri 58 regan’s move appears interesting and in fact he is not the only philosopher to make it 14. indeed, when we talk about the value of life, the factors that matter may be different from the factors that matter when we evaluate an individual. however, even accepting such a move, the impression is that a gradualist approach remains equally plausible. it can be argued that the value of life, if understood in a non-moral sense, depends on the richness of the experiences that a subject makes; if understood in a moral sense, it depends on the merit of the individual, on her intentions, motivations and virtues. in both cases we are dealing with values that are not equal, but change with changing attitudes and mental states. regarding the value of individuals these factors do not count. it is independent of the quality, moral and non-moral, of life. it does not follow such differences. nevertheless, it is not necessarily the case that this value is invariable the same for all individuals. without bringing into play merits, quality of life, special talents etc., there may be other factors that can make it unequal. for example, the complexity of a being on a cognitive, emotional, social level. we can argue that the value of an individual varies – is greater or lesser – with the variation of these factors. and we can maintain an element of egalitarianism by asserting that, once a certain threshold of complexity has been exceeded, this value does not change 15. a threshold, however, that cannot be the minimal one outlined by the criterion of the subject-of-a-life. i would say that to ascribe the maximum value it is necessary to possess greater capacities. therefore, if regan is right in arguing that the moral status of individuals does not change with the change of their states of consciousness, nor can it grow or diminish for merit or demerits, one may equally think that it is not the same for all subjects-of-a-life. a conception that does not make the value in themselves of individuals depend on states of consciousness or on merits or demerits or on the quality of life, does not imply that the value in themselves of individuals is equal. it may be different for reasons not related to the quality, moral or not, of life, but related to the availability of mental requirements which not all individuals possess. it is not at all necessary that he who denies this egalitarian thesis is a perfectionist and attributes greater value on the basis of talent. 14 a distinction of this kind can also be found, for instance, in mcmahan 2002, 241 f. 15 to support this thesis one could refer, as for example mcmahan proposes (see mcmahan 2002, 249 f.), to the rawlsian concept of “range property”, exemplified by rawls himself with the internal points of a circle. some of them are closer to the center, others closer to the circumference, but they all enjoy in equal measure the property of being inside the circle (rawls 1971, 508). relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ respect, inherent value, subjects-of-a-life 59 there may be a minimum beyond which the moral status should be the same. but it is doubtful that such a minimum is the one that marks the passage from mere containers of sensations to subjects-of-a-life. i think it takes something more. regan himself, on the other hand, in his theorization before the case, for instance in an examination and defense of one argument concerning animal rights, acknowledged the possibility that the inherent value knew different degrees, by distinguishing, among the subjects-of-a-life, “(i) those beings that can lead a life that is better or worse for them and (ii) those beings that can have but not lead such life” (regan 1982, 137). the former, by regan’s own admission, may have a higher inherent value than the latter 16. in summary, the gist of my two critical considerations is the following: regardless of whether or not to attribute inherent value to a sentient being, it is necessary to assign her moral status. and this status is directly proportional to her mental complexity. of course, these observations do not in any way diminish the contribution – i would say decisive – made by regan to animal ethics, which with the disappearance of the american philosopher loses one of its most relevant protagonists (if not the most important) and the main ambassador of animal rights in the world. references allegri, francesco. 2005. “il principio dell’uguale rispetto e il pluralismo morale. una critica a tom regan”. ragion pratica 24: 205-224. allegri, francesco. 2015. gli animali e l’etica. milano udine: mimesis. allegri, francesco. 2017. “peter singer and the moral status of animals: a critical assessment”. ragion pratica 48: 117-140. allegri, francesco. 2018. “the moral status of animals: a critical analysis and a gradualist proposal”. ethics & politics 20: 559-570. cochrane, alasdair. 2012. animal rights without liberation. new york: columbia university press. cohen, carl, and tom regan. 2001. the animal rights debate. lanham (md): rowman & littlefield. darwall, stephen l. 1998. “under moore’s spell”. utilitas 10: 286-291. https://doi. org/10.1017/s0953820800006221 16 and he exemplified precisely with the case of the lifeboat, although referring it only to the human world (regan 1982, 137). relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ francesco allegri 60 degrazia, david. 1996. taking animals seriously: mental life and moral status. cambridge: cambridge university press. https://doi.org/10.1017/ cbo9781139172967 degrazia, david. 2008. “moral status as a matter of degree?”. the southern journal of philosophy 46: 181-198. feinberg, joel. 1974. “the rights of animals and unborn generations”. in philosophy & environmental crisis, edited by william t. blackstone, 43-68. athens: university of georgia press. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2041-6962.2008.tb00075.x hart, herbert l.a. 1980. “death and utility”. the new york review of books 27 (8), may: 25-31. jamieson, dale, and tom regan. 1982. “on the ethics of the use of animals in science”. in and justice for all: new introductory essays in ethics & public policy, edited by tom regan and donald vandeveer, 169-196. totowa (nj): rowman & allanheld. mcmahan, jeff. 2002. the ethics of killing: problems at the margins of life. new york: oxford university press. rachels, james. 1990. created from animals: the moral implications of darwinism. oxford new york: oxford university press. rawls, john. 1971. a theory of justice. cambridge (ma): harvard university press. regan, tom. 1975. “the moral basis of vegetarianism”. canadian journal of philosophy 5: 181-214. regan, tom. 1982. all that dwell therein: animal rights and environmental ethics. berkeley: university of california press. regan, tom. 1983. the case for animal rights. berkeley: university of california press. regan, tom. 1998. “animal rights”. in encyclopedia of animal rights and animal welfare, edited by marc bekoff and carron a. meaney, 36-44. westport (ct): greenwood press. regan, tom. 2004a. empty cages: facing the challenge of animal rights. lanham (md): rowman & littlefield. regan, tom. 2004b. “preface to the 2004 edition”. in tom regan, the case for animal rights, xi-xlix. reprint, berkeley: university of california press. rollin, bernard e. 2006. animal rights and human morality. new york: prometheus book. singer, peter. 1975. animal liberation: a new ethics for our treatment of animals. new york: new york review random house. singer, peter. 1980. “utilitarianism and vegetarianism”. philosophy and public affairs 9: 325-337. singer, peter. 1987. “animal liberation or animal rights?”. the monist 70: 3-14. relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ on others’ emotions, and ours: a reflection on narratives, categories, and heuristic devices on others’ emotions, and ours a reflection on narratives, categories, and heuristic devices sabrina tonutti phd, lecturer and researcher in cultural anthropology at the university of udine, italy doi: 10.7358/rela-2013-002-tonu tonuttis@gmail.com abstract this article reflects on some epistemological and methodological tenets of cultural anthropology such as the informants’ role in ethnographical research, the relation between collective phenomena and individuals, and that between case studies (individual level) and abstraction (generalization). these tenets will be addressed focusing on the lack of recognition of animals’ individuality and agency in social relations, and on the related humans/animals opposition. with the topic of the emotional lives of animals as a starting point, the essay sets out to reflect on how the narratives we use to interpret and describe them inform our enquiry within an anthropocentric and essentialist view, consequently biasing our understanding of diversity. keywords: emotions, humans, animals, individuals, interspecific relations, ethology, ethnography, anthropology, microhistory, informants, subjectivity. 1. introduction studies by mark bekoff on animal emotions constitute significant stimuli not only for ethological research and the ethical reflections which should result from it, but also for cultural anthropology, which should assess the impact these contents have within the discipline (bekoff and goodall 2007; bekoff and pierce 2009). this also implies a more general reflection on the methods of observation of ‘behavior’ and ‘diversity’ more generally, and, furthermore, on the epistemologies which exert their influence and inform the development of knowledge about the ‘others’, be they human or nonhuman. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ sabrina tonutti 10 relations – 1.2 november 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ as a cultural anthropologist, i have been inspired by the writings of bekoff (and other ethologists who share some of his core disciplinary assumptions) benefiting from a series of insights that i find to be extremely fruitful if translated to anthropological discourse. this paper aims to provide an example of a (virtual) dialogue between disciplines (those regarding humans, and those regarding nonhumans) that for too long have been kept separate, lest the blurring of the boundaries between the disciplines (natural sciences on the one hand, humanities and social sciences on the other) and classificatory borders (human/animal, culture/nature) on which the traditional articulation of knowledge is based. this contribution is also intended as building material to be used to construct a bridge between animality and humanity, in line with the development of new and different anthropological and ethological descriptions of behavioral phenomena. echoing what matteo andreozzi writes in the editorial (see volume 1 issue 1) regarding the need to go beyond anthropocentrism and to become involved in the network of natural relations which surround our lives, the focus of this essay will not be the alleged ‘essences’ of the various classificatory categories we use to talk about ‘us’ and ‘the others’, but the dimension of relations, the context of explanation of phenomena, the connections between events and between individuals, agency, and the wealth of variability internal to collective groups (whatever is defined in cultural, ethnic or philogenetic terms). but first things first. allow me to begin with emotions: ‘theirs’ and ‘ours’. 2. emotions bekoff’s research on the emotional lives of (other) animals, their intelligence and abilities strikes us as far as the richness and the variety of its examples are concerned. in his books he presents a series of case studies, repertories and contexts related to the emotional life of some animal species, introducing us to the presence of joy, play, laughter, sense of humor, wonder at the sight of natural phenomena, grief and sadness, maternal love, falling in love, embarrassment, anger, aggression and revenge, empathy, equity, and fair game in other animals (see bekoff and goodall 2007; bekoff and pierce 2009). at the same time, bekoff outlines the existence of a ‘wild justice’, a ‘moral’ behavior in many animal species (bekoff and pierce 2009). if these terms tend to jar, the reaction springs from our pre-assumptions, in that these very terms are strongly connected with our species, being considered attributes strictly limited to homo sapiens. on others’ emotions, and ours 11 relations – 1.2 november 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ in fact, it is a common postulate of both scientific and humanistic disciplines that these behavioral expressions, along with the skills that support them, are only human prerogatives. bekoff’s decision to use the very terms referred to nonhuman animals proves positively challenging: in so doing he exerts pressure against the definitorial boundaries of the same terms, putting their descriptive efficacy to test, when applied outside the human domain. in this way, the exclusivity of certain social and emotional behavioral repertoires to humans has finally been overcome. i will address this topic in the following paragraphs. as already mentioned, the issue of animal emotions proves interesting not only as far as its contents are concerned, but also, indirectly, as it raises a number of epistemological and methodological matters, not to mention ethical, which are fundamental in a broad sense. in fact, it contributes to destabilizing some of the cultural paradigms that underpin both scientific discourse and common sense, belonging to (and expression of) our tradition of thought. in particular, the reflection around the existence of emotional lives in nonhuman animals is a crowbar with which to undermine the mechanisms of our approach to animality, and lays bare the assumptions that affect our explanation, interpretation and description of it. to keep to our theme – emotions – interiority has long been considered a uniquely human trait, and even when the existence of emotional lives in other animals has been supposed, enquiry has been brought to a standstill by the species difference. however, we should consider that even anthropological analysis of inner states of ‘other’ humans is problematic, since it is difficult to have access to them, and to attribute a value to their linguistic representation. this is magnified in the contexts in which we are faced with cultural categorizations and styles of behavior differing from ours (pignato 1997). the role of language should also be considered, since linguistic fields and noetic fields do not overlap: as for emotions, it should be stressed that the moods and their names can be non isomorphic. language, then, is not always a facilitator in the understanding of phenomena among humans, and this fact should remind us of the variety and strangeness of the languages spoken by other animal species. in both contexts, we face the challenge of being able to understand the ‘other’, with the relative risk of observing others as if they were us, in a way that is anthropomorphic (to animals) and ethnomorphic (to other cultures). but there is also the opposite and symmetrical risk: the inability to gather similarities, as they are hidden beneath idioms so different from ours, in both the anthropological and ethological sense. emotions, however, is not the only dimension claimed as exclusive to the human species. a series of skills and abilities is invoked as proof of the sabrina tonutti 12 relations – 1.2 november 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ existence of a qualitative separation between humans and nonhumans, the real matrix of all the dual oppositions pertaining to the subject, both at the level of scientific discourse, and the varied narratives we elaborate to describe our world. this dichotomous architecture is supported by cognitive operations such as reification and hypostasis (in the sense of attribution of ontological status to contents which are conventional) and trends such as essentialism and typologism: all these elements contribute to the perception of categorial separations – ‘humans/animals’ – as natural entities (stable and ‘necessary’), rather than tools of description of reality – which, as such, are contingent (tonutti 2011). 3. plural animals given the above mentioned binary opposition ‘humans/animals’, two distinct and opposite kinds of logic operate: while in order to identify a human being we seek to grasp his/her uniqueness (through a horizontal network of connections), with nonhumans we choose the opposite direction. we deny their uniqueness, putting aside the idiosyncrasies intrinsic to the category they are made to belong to and emphasize the features they share with other individuals of the same kind (in order to outline the features of the species). what follows from this definitional process is a vertical kind of knowledge which meets the needs of classification, and results in a form of taxonomy where proper names are not expected to be used, since each individual is merely regarded as ‘one’ of a class. by ‘class’ we mean the species, but also, more generally, other heterogeneous collective entities, such as ‘fauna’, and ‘animals’ (a category which improperly refers to all animals except humans). parallel to this classification process, a tendency exists which distances the observer from the ‘object’ of observation: as i will show, terminology makes this process explicit. i – at the first stage of dissociation, the animal’s individuality is removed due to the emphasis we place on the collectivity he/she is made to belong to (‘cats’, ‘primates’, ‘pets’, ‘farm animals’, etc.). ii – at the second stage, the collective name can be replaced with a general singular: ‘the cat’, ‘the dog’, ‘the cow’, and also ‘the female’ and, more generally, ‘the animal’ (see derrida 2006). general singulars presume the interchangeability of individual animals within the species, and, therefore, the irrelevance of animals’ individuality altogether. as an example of this tendency, we can mention animals exposed as specimens in zoos: except for some rare exceptions, all the displayed animals can be replaced on others’ emotions, and ours 13 relations – 1.2 november 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ with any other member of their same species. the individual animal loses its ontology to become an abstraction of the species (shapiro 1989, 189; adorni 2012). classificatory labels and other expressions, such as general singulars, are used to indicate collectivities, which we define on the basis of certain criteria and pre-assumptions and by selecting a uniform set of traits (including some features and excluding others). obviously, there are ethical consequences to this process: as we have already said, the individual animal (with his/her specific characteristics, needs, voice, beating heart, relationships, emotions, biography …) is removed from the collective imaginary, and we interpret, describe and treat animals in a way which is mediated by categories. but – we should ask ourselves – is it possible to empathize with a category? iii – a further level of abstraction consists in the transformation of categories into essences, which are thought of as objective, stable, immutable entities, as a natural mirror of reality. i claim that this entire process is rooted in further basic assumptions: • that single animals are interchangeable within the species, and that animals’ individuality is irrelevant. • that ontogenesis (biographical level) is less relevant than the phylogenesis in nonhuman animals. • that it is possible, starting from field observation, to proceed with inference and abstraction, bridging the gap between the particularistic nature of context (and its minute observation), on the one hand, and the theorizing process, on the other. for both ethology and anthropology these epistemological issues prove extremely relevant and highly problematic. the historical streams of anthropological theory – from earliest evolutionary perspectives, to historical particularism, moving through functionalism, structuralism and other guiding-theories, to recent hermeneutic and post-modern approaches – have differently addressed these focal issues. we will not dwell here on schools and theories, but only strive to single out the main points of contact between ethology and anthropology towards the resolution of these questions which revolve around ‘individuality’ and ‘biographies’. 4. the issue of representativeness one of the most original and specific traits of anthropology is the constant attention to variability: a cognitive tension is requested of researchers, inviting them to seek in the corners, in shadowy areas, facing diversity, trying to sabrina tonutti 14 relations – 1.2 november 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ grasp nuances in the expression of cultural phenomena, mostly against the tendency to standardize and homogenize them. what springs forth from this approach is (or should be) a particularistic, contextual, local knowledge, far-removed from the ambitions of earlier anthropological schools, which were inclined to construct all-encompassing theories on cultures and even on the human race. 4.1. ogotemmeli a clear example of ‘old’ anthropology is the description that marcel griaule made of dogon culture (mali) in dieu d’eau, the monograph which followed his field research in mali in 1946, during which griaule obtained information and descriptions of salient features of dogon culture thanks to conversations he had had with an exceptional informant, the elderly ogotemmeli (griaule [1948] 1975). ‘ogotemmeli’ has become a well-known name in anthropology, to the extent that it epitomizes ‘the informant’, the person who describes phenomena and traits of his/her own culture, making them understandable to the researcher. however, ogotemmeli is not ‘simply’ an informant. according to griaule, ogotemmeli had understood the interest of ethnological studies of ‘the whites’ and had waited fifteen years for the opportunity to reveal his knowledge to them. undoubtedly, the elderly dogon managed to systematize the dogon world system and to make it intelligible to those who were looking at it from afar, both the researcher and those who were to read its ethnographic account. however, some key questions arise in this respect, raised by ogotemmeli’s ‘overpersonality’ (tonutti 2007): what role did ogotemmeli play in the process of cultural ‘translation’? how much subjective, or, on the contrary, shared on the collective level, are ogotemmeli’s representation, description and systematization of dogon cultural traits? to what extent can his description be considered ‘true’ and ‘loyal’ to a supposed shared heritage of collective knowledge? to a broader extent, we are brought to question the possibility for an informant/respondent (and his/her description of his/ her own culture) to be considered in some way ‘representative’ of collective knowledge, and even the possibility for researchers to come to an ‘objective’ knowledge of cultural phenomena 1. 1 to this respect, i should mention the rhetorical and postmodern turn taken by human sciences, labeling anthropological knowledge as a form of subjective narratives, interpretations of interpretations, and even a form of ‘literature’. on others’ emotions, and ours 15 relations – 1.2 november 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ as i have already mentioned, old-style anthropology tended to consider informants like ogotemmeli as exceptional repositories of indigenous culture, and culture itself as a timeless essence, homogeneously and undifferentiatedly distributed within the group. subsequently anthropology has recognized the subjective dimension of the informants’ (and also researchers’) contribution to the interpretation, description and systematization of local culture, and has become very cautious in progressing from detailed field research to possible forms of generalization. however, if we analyze this process from the perspective angle of human-animal studies, we realize that particularization has only concerned human sciences, while it dramatically falls silent as soon as we cross the border between anthropology and ethology (and therefore we start to deal with animals’ individuality, subjectivity, ‘overpersonalities’). beyond this border which separates humans (and anthropology) from nonhuman animals (and ethology), we no longer use personal names, nor think in terms of will, agency, biographies, cultures; what we are able to see is a mere undifferentiated mass of existences, driven by natural selection, phylogeny, genes, instincts and hormones. in this respect, great influence is exerted on our approach by biological determinism, which suggests replacing bodies with the species, and species with genes, real ultimate agents of animal behavior. while, on the one hand, essentialist and anthropocentric declinations of anthropological theories confine animals to the role of objects in human actions and thoughts (depicting animals as machines, resources, metaphors, heuristic devices, etc.), on the other anthropological particularistic approach can be extremely fruitful if applied beyond its disciplinary boundary, namely to the observation of animals’ cultures and to interspecific relations. ethology, in turn, has greatly contributed to the understanding of animal behavior in objecting behaviorism (which read behavior in terms of mere stimulus-response), but, at the same time, has originated an approach where phylogeny obscures ontogeny. in contrast with this trend towards generalization and abstraction, ethological case-studies that feature individual animals (in line with anthropological particularistic approach) teach us to recognize the relevance of individual and biographical dimension in the understanding of nonhuman culture and interspecific relations. i will introduce imo as an example. 4.2. imo imo is a name as famous in animal studies as ogotemmeli is in anthropology. imo is a macaca fuscata monkey from the koshima island in japan, sabrina tonutti 16 relations – 1.2 november 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ who in 1953 prompted a series of innovations in feeding practices (such as washing sweet potatoes in salted water and washing-harvesting wheat grains in water, see matsuzawa 2003) which led to a cultural revolution transmitted within the group, and subsequently handed down from generation to generation until the present day. imo’s experiments and discoveries sprung from her curiosity, lively intelligence, uncommon personality and even her genius (ontogenetic and biographical level). from these innovations, shared cultural practices originated which ended up shaping a regional tradition worth ethnographic, as well as ethological, interest. what we are dealing with, in considering ogotemmeli’s and imo’s contributions to their culture, is two peculiar ‘excesses’ of personality: they are two unique individuals (but all individuals are unique), who not only take an active part in maintaining their culture, but even develop significant innovations. however, what are we dealing with here? individuals and biographies, or communities (like ethnic groups) and species? and: what abstractions can we draw from this knowledge? what generalizations can we glean from ogotemmeli’s and imo’s experiences? the background question is whether the individual can represent the category he/she belongs to or not. or, from a different perspective: what role should be credited in research to individual experiences (in anthropology, history and ethology) in order to understand the phenomena within a wider framework of reference. i will introduce the case of microhistory here to support the reflection on individual experience and generalizations. 5. recognizing biographies, giving voice to the mutes 5.1. microhistory the historiographical subfield known as ‘microhistory’ was formed in italy in the seventies and eighties of the twentieth century, mainly around the journal quaderni storici (published by il mulino) and the book series microstorie (published by einaudi). in brief, what characterized microhistory (and then gave foundation to a new paradigm in historiography) was: due to the influence exerted by anthropology, the rejection of broad guiding-theories such as marxism, structuralism, functionalism; particular attention paid to singular cases and individuals (especially when they imply variability, constitute anomalies, etc.); comparison of these findings with on others’ emotions, and ours 17 relations – 1.2 november 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ other similar phenomena, albeit belonging to contexts which are distant in terms of space or time; the refusal of core postmodernist tenets, namely relativism and the ‘rhetorical turn’. i want to focus on individual data as approached by microhistory, in order to assess what we can translate from this discipline to the study of the individuality of both humans and animals and their interspecific relations. first of all, as i have already mentioned, microhistory is primarily interested in anomalies, as opposed to seeking homogeneity within the contexts and serialism (i.e. what is in some way ‘measurable’) 2. the term coined by edoardo grendi, “exceptional normal” (grendi 1977, 512), gives us an idea of the microhistorians’ distrust of representative samples, and, vice versa, their quest for micro cases and individual perspectives. the micro level of historical investigation, then, is rich in insights to be translated to the macro level of analysis, related to collective and social phenomena. social phenomena, in fact, are generated by the interaction between visions, tensions, negotiations and other factors that belong first and foremost to the individual level. stressing the importance of individuals in observation of social contexts also means denouncing the non-neutrality of the categories we use to think of, speak about, describe and analyze our ‘objects’ of enquiry, be they humans, animals, species, races, social classes, etc. 3. these categories constitute ‘entifications’: by microhistorians, they are no longer referred to as heuristic devices external to the context of observation, but as contingent and contextual cultural products which inform research in its development and influence the very cultural construction of the ‘object’ of research. researchers should put these categories of analysis to test thanks to the variability which pertains to every context of observation, and then move gradually from the micro to the macro level of research, making connections in the process between micro-cases with broader phenomena. by ‘micro’ contexts i intend the cases where marginalized people have been left behind by history, and out of all official records: the poor, the exploited, and other crowded categories composed by anonymous individuals who have left no written word. to these, historians and anthropologists try to give voice (and a name, and an address). 2 this attitude is aligned with the attention i have just dedicated to imo’s case (with respect to her species) and ogotemmeli’s (with respect to the alleged homogeneity of dogon culture). 3 charles darwin remarked that nature had produced only individuals, and not species, which is a category resulting from the human process of abstraction (darwin 1859). sabrina tonutti 18 relations – 1.2 november 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ an emblematic example of this can be seen in the historian carlo ginzburg’s study of archival records of the inquisition trials which took place in friuli (northeastern italy) in the sixteenth century. from this heterogeneous and neglected corpus of documents the benandanti (a sort of shamans practicing agrarian cults, see ginzburg 1966) and the (heretic) miller-philosopher menocchio emerged (ginzburg 1976): their experiences, biographies, imaginary repertoires can be detected in traces from the records of the trials, mostly when they conflict with mainstream culture and orthodox religion. as a result of the perusal and particularistic work of this kind of archival research, voices form the past emerge, voices which we do not know and can only understand and decode with difficulty. however partial and indirect our approach to them may be, due to the temporal and cultural distance which separates us from them, clearly this is something we can and should do, in an attempt to bridge our cultural contexts. 5.2. anthropology and gender similarly to microhistory, anthropology has reflected on its ‘mutes’ as well. women, for example, have experienced this status in many anthropological studies carried out by men, and have been relegated to a silent and invisible role in ethnographic accounts. as a reaction to this tendency, gender studies developed as a specific current aimed at filling the gap by finally focusing on women. to return to our central theme, the individuality of animals, we can draw a parallel between the anonymity of subjects on which microhistory and anthropology mostly focus and those of animals, where being anonymous is almost always the rule: nonhumans are not mutes, nor unable to communicate due to the diversity of communicative and behavioral codes with respect to ours, but are rendered speechless due to our lack of attention as far as their biographical, ontogenetic dimension is concerned. i claim that this, in turn, has to do with the fact that we fail (ethically and scientifically at the same time) to recognize the importance of animals’ individuality, be they someone we meet either directly, through relations, or indirectly, in our discourses on ‘us’ and ‘them’. as shirley ardener once stated about women rendered mute by men’s anthropological accounts, “the ‘mutedness’ of one group may be regarded as the inverse of the ‘deafness’ of the dominant group, as the ‘invisibility’ of the former’s achievements is an expression of the ‘blindness’ of the latter. words which continually fall upon deaf ears may, of course, in the end become unspoken, or even unthought” (ardener 1975, 20). on others’ emotions, and ours 19 relations – 1.2 november 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ nonhumans are unseen, unheard, and are not even thought of in terms of ‘persons’ and ‘individuals’. in most, albeit not in all, daily practices, as well as in the narratives that justify them, animals are mainly reserved two roles: they are pure physicality – in that they are thought of as meat, working bodies, organs to be dissected, etc. – or are used as mere symbolic objects in our semiotic processes. in both cases, the individual animal – with his/ her own agency, and as real referent in our discourses – disappears. it is in this overview that i consider microhistories and anthropological revisions of paradigms inspirational to our reflection: their decision and effort to use new heuristic tools to try and give voice to the mute beings bear significant similarities to our attempt to try to understand what other animals communicate and experience in their own way. both actions aim at placing our attention on the huge chasm of silence generated by inequalities, be they due to historical events (the losers), gender differences (women), class (the poor), beliefs (heretics), and also species (those who are not homo sapiens). in a hypothetical scale of inequality, nonhumans are the most ‘unequal’, quintessential of all the features we have mentioned. however, the curtain of indifference which has long regarded the plight of animals and status has been breached, also thanks to the prodding of human-animal studies. this breach constitutes a starting point from which to set out in order to investigate and acknowledge the diversity of nonhumans, predisposing ourselves towards the recognition of similarities as well as the differences between humans and nonhumans. this does not necessarily mean pursuing the identification at all costs, driven by sentimentality. it means taking the cognitive effort of being willing to listen, to see, to acknowledge those who represent our object of enquiry as subjects. this attempt also implies being open to the experience of ‘estrangement’, in the sense suggested by carlo ginzburg: “[…] to understand less, to be naive, to be surprised”, an outlook employed to counteract the impoverishment of knowledge deriving from preconceived notions imposed onto reality (ginzburg 1996, 16). 6. focusing on interspecific relations such cognitive tension towards the understanding of the skills of nonhumans, their behaviors, cultures, emotions, biographies can lend itself to an ideal context of application in the relational dimension with humans. i therefore advocate the development of an interspecific declination of ethnography: by statute it should delegitimize the use of frozen hypostasis (for sabrina tonutti 20 relations – 1.2 november 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ instance the separation of humans from nonhuman animals) which bias the understanding of relations, and acknowledge the role of subjects and social actors that nonhuman animals play in them. interspecific relations taking place horizontally at the level of biographical connections between two or more individuals reclaim a central role in ethnographical observation. elements gathered at the level of small scale investigation (single case studies) can then be made objects of comparison and broader reflections and even generalizations. but how should researchers best predispose themselves in order to be able to efficiently observe interspecific relationships? what tools can they rely on to better bridge the gap that separates themselves as observers from ‘the observed’? what role do detached analysis, participant observation, intuition and ethnographic sensitivity play in this respect? furthermore, how should their efficiency and appropriateness be evaluated? what is paramount in anthropology is the attempt to reach an emic understanding of native culture, trying to look at the cultural reality experienced by the informants through their eyes. rationality, sensitivity, perception, and even empathy constitute possible channels that can lead the researcher to deepen his/her understanding of cultural phenomena. a contribution i find extremely significant in this respect is the one from the anthropologist unni wikan, who has written about the importance of ‘resonances’ both in fieldwork for researchers, and in our daily life, as people (wikan 1992). by the word ‘resonance’ (a concept which resembles empathy or sympathy) she means an effort made by both interlocutors, who need to be moved by “a willingness to engage with another world, life, or idea; an ability to use one’s experience […] to try to grasp, or convey, meanings that reside neither in words, ‘facts’, nor texts but are evoked in the meeting of one experiencing subject with another […]” (wikan 1992, 463). wikan also warns us against the interpretative turn, whose ante-position of words, concepts, text to real life can be counterproductive (wikan 1992, 464-5) 4. in fact, in addressing the question of understanding each other despite the existing cultural differences, wikan advocates the focus on people, rather than discourse, thus shifting the emphasis from anthropological representation of phenomena to individuals and the contexts they live in. without doubt wikan’s pragmatic view and methodological suggestion head toward an ethnographic experience which is far from being ‘falsifiable’, à la popper. it also triggers the risk of anthropomorphizing animals, as well as ‘ethnomorphizing’ other cultures, due to the researcher’s effort 4 under this respect, wikan’s warning seems to me echoing that of ginzburg. on others’ emotions, and ours 21 relations – 1.2 november 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ to hone into their reality. however, if used in a critical manner i claim that these heuristic devices constitute a risk worth taking, in order to overcome the impasse generated by old epistemological and methodological paradigms. 7. conclusion to complete the reflection on the categories and boundaries on which our discourse around animals is based, i wish to stress that, being heuristic devices, they can be misleading when interpreting reality and subsequently acting on it. the categories and boundaries we use to address animality are far from being neutral and natural: they are cultural constructs, influenced as such by the our ideological framework as well as by practical and utilitarian aspects. at the same time, they influence our discourse on animals, humans, ‘others’, and inform our relations with them. from this point of view, objecting the entification (and ‘sacralization’) of the categories and disciplinary boundaries which sustain the separation between humans and animals (and their relative domains) means providing a completely different ‘narrative’, where the emphasis is put on the similarities, rather than differences between humans and nonhumans, on relations and connections, rather than divisions and boundaries. this epistemological perspective should pave the way towards stimulating moral considerations regarding those individuals (humans and nonhumans) which have been cast out from the sphere of our ethical concern as a consequence of categorization. i agree with marc bekoff when he claims that scientific knowledge should re-appropriate moral reflection and passionate observation. his studies brilliantly prove the efficiency of such an approach, which bridges the diversity of the species, grounding scientific enquiry upon the recognition of the individuality and biographies of animals. in such a scientific and passionate pursuit of knowledge and understanding of ‘others’, the fieldworker’s life experience is intertwined with those he/she meets, and knowledge is always constructed with the individuals the researcher encounters. the nature of this kind of knowledge stems from collaboration, rather than from mere detached observation. starting from single individuals, with their own, peculiar, unique way of being in this world. sabrina tonutti 22 relations – 1.2 november 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ references adorni, eleonora. 2012. sotto lo sguardo umano. esposizione, rappresentazione e immaginari dell’alterità animale. un sentiero zooantropologico all’acquario di genova. ma thesis, university of bologna. ardener, shirley. 1975. perceiving women. london: malaby press. bekoff, marc, and jane goodall. 2007. the emotional lives of animals: a leading scientist explores animal joy, sorrow, and empathy – and why they matter. novato, ca: new world press. bekoff, marc, and jessica pierce. 2009. wild justice: the moral lives of animals. chicago: university of chicago press. darwin, charles. 1859. the origin of species. london: murray. derrida, jacques. 2006. l’animal que donc je suis. paris: galilée. ginzburg, carlo. 1966. i benandanti, stregoneria e culti agrari tra cinquecento e seicento. torino: einaudi. 1976. il formaggio e i vermi. il cosmo di un mugnaio del cinquecento. torino: einaudi. 1996. “making things strange: the prehistory of a literary device”. representations 56: 8-28. grendi, edoardo. 1977. “micro-analisi e storia sociale”. quaderni storici 35 (2): 50620. griaule, marcel. (1948) 1975. dieu d’eau: entretiens avec ogotemmêli. paris: fayard. matsuzawa, tetsuro. 2003. “koshima monkeys and bossou chimpanzees: long term research on culture in nonhuman primates”. in animal social complexity. intelligence, culture, and individualized societies, edited by frans b.m. de waal and peter l. tyack, 374-87. cambridge, ma london: harvard university press. pignato, carmela. 1997. “temi e luoghi di un ossimoro”. la ricerca folklorica 35: 39-52. shapiro, kenneth. 1989. “the death of the animal: ontological vulnerability”. between the species 5: 183-93. tonutti, sabrina. 2011. “anthropocentrism and the definition of ‘culture’ as a marker of the human/animal divide”. in anthropocentrism. humans, animals, environments, edited by rob boddice, 183-99. leiden: brill. 2007. “imo e ogotemmeli: eccesso di personalità. una riflessione attorno a soggettività, informatori, cultura, persone”. la ricerca folklorica 54: 115-22. wikan, unni. 1992. “beyond the words: the power of resonance”. american ethnologist 19 (3): 460-82. victims and responsibility. restorative justice: a new path for justice towards non-human animals? 111 relations – 5.2 november 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ victims and responsibility restorative justice: a new path for justice towards non-human animals? lorenzo bertolesi master student, university of milan doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2017-002-bert lorenzo.bertolesi@studenti.unimi.it abstract in this paper i argue that restorative justice is a prolific and innovative way for reformulating the problem of justice towards non-human animals. first of all, i show that the most influential theories of political philosophy (utilitarianism and contractarianism) are inadequate for this purpose, as all the speculative perspectives on justice that try to define a normative concept of justice. changing perspective and focusing on the actual victim’s experience of injustice can redefine the discussion about justice. for animals injustice is the result of the denial of their agency and a violation of their vulnerability. to think of animals as victims allows us to define humans’ responsibility for animals’ condition. this responsibility started with domestication and continues until the present domination of animals in our society. therefore restorative justice, start from this responsibility: it is, first of all, a form of humans’ admission of guilt, but not only. i argue that restorative justice provides us with he chance to repay the victims of our wrongdoing. in this way, this compensation should be thought of not as punishment to those who have done wrong but as a way to re-establish the bond with a world of alterities commanded, submitted and dominated. keywords: non-human animals, animal ethics, political theory, justice, martha nussbaum, responsibility, restorative justice, domestication, contractarianism, utilitarianism. 1. introducion le us, however, now examine the point whether we really have no compact of justice with animals (plutarch 1957, 579) in the eating of flesh, with his celebrated moral subtlety and with criticism towards stoic concepts, plutarch was set to tackle a key issue in the relation between human and non-human animals. despite this, what goes by http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ http://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2017-002-bert mailto:lorenzo.bertolesi@studenti.unimi.it lorenzo bertolesi 112 relations – 5.2 november 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the name of “animal question” starts to emerge, at least in philosophical terms, only from the 1970s through the works of peter singer (1975) and tom regan (1983). according to these authors, our relationship (if we can call it such) with animals opened a strong ethical issue: from animal testing, to the food industry, and to all those areas where animals are objectified, human beings damage subjectivities that must be taken into consideration. with the development that followed in animal studies, even political philosophy was compelled to test its theories on justice: is it legitimate to talk of justice towards non-human animals? or should we limit ourselves to compassion? in this paper i’ll attempt to analyse the answers given to these question by utilitarianism and contractarianism and then to elaborate an innovative approach to the problems of justice which could open a new path in the demand for justice of non-human animals: restorative justice. 2. utilitarianism and contractarianism: martha nussbaum’s pars destruens in frontiers of justice (2007) martha nussbaum proposes her theory of the capabilities approach in order to tackle three unresolved issues of justice, i.e. issues that contractarianism has not been able to deal with: justice towards people with disabilities, problems of global justice and justice towards nonhuman animals. before implementing her approach, the author shows the limits of utilitarianism and contractarianism to settle the issue that is being analysed: her pars destruens is particularly effective and shows in an interesting way, some evident limits in the theories mentioned above. 2.1. utilitarianism and animal ethics historically, the utilitarian perspective was the first to draw attention to the issue of the pain suffered by non-human animals. initially through bentham 1 ([1791] 1970), but then in a more structured way with peter singer (1975), utilitarianism set the course for a moral reflection regarding animals: the capability to feel (pleasure and pain) qualifies the presence of morally relevant interests in any living being, regardless of the species to which they belong. despite this, such a perspective seems unsatisfying 1 “the question is not, can they reason? nor, can they talk? but can they suffer?” (bentham 1970, 283). http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ victims and responsibility 113 relations – 5.2 november 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ under some aspects, which are directly implied by the foundations of the utilitarian perspective: as a consequence, nussbaum’s critique draws upon a wider critical perspective on utilitarianism, a perspective that moves from (not only) rawlsian arguments. let us see some of the criticism: utilitarianism is a moral theory of consequentialist origin: it is the consequence of actions that determines moral lawfulness. but can the production of the best consequences be considered as the best starting point for a theory of justice? according to nussbaum, politics shouldn’t encourage us to deal with maximisation (both in terms of preferences and community benefit) because by doing so “the political actor would trespass the territory that the liberal wants to reserve to personal choice”. (nussbaum 2007, 341) in addition to this, utilitarianism, refuses the distinction and inviolability of moral patients; aggregation, related to maximisation, cannot avoid that some groups, inevitably end up with paying the price for the good of the majority; and it is clear that when these groups are discriminated it is much easier for them to be sacrificed: and in the case of animals this is even more evident. once again, nussbaum takes a further step: “utilitarian sum-ranking seems to have no way to rule out, on grounds of basic justice, the great pain and cruel treatment of at least some animals” (2007, 343). we therefore cannot consider basic rights as values that can be crushed through calculation. the last criticism made to utilitarianism is what nussbaum calls “substantive conception of good”. be it utility, pleasure and pain or preferences, utilitarianism finds itself capable of combining together feelings, the calculation of which pushes towards the maximisation of a certain good, regardless of potentially regrettable outcomes: every right can be exchanged with another. in this view, the capability approach is based on the idea by which every fundamental right belongs to a separate set of functions, and therefore no right can be obtained or given in exchange for others, even when the advantage gained in this way is remarkable. “aggregating the pleasures and pains connected to these distinct areas [friendship and affiliation, freedom from pain, mobility, and many others] seems premature and misleading: we may want to say that animals have distinct entitlements to all of these things, based on justice” (2007, 344-5). 2.2. animal and social contract if utilitarianism is to be considered inadequate, what are the limits of contractarianism for what concerns justice towards animals? in this case the issue is more relevant and the criticism more pressing. following the http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ lorenzo bertolesi 114 relations – 5.2 november 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ author, we shall first of all try to distinguish classical contractarianism from its contemporary interpretations (among which rawls’ name stands out as prominent). 2.2.1. classical contracrarianism and the limit of social contract in traditional social contract theories (nussbaum briefly deals with authors such as hobbes, locke, kant but also hume and grozio) the demand for justice towards animals is excluded by principle. the reason for this exclusion lies actually on two separate matters that i believe should be distinguished. on the one hand, the exclusion is the result of a certain idea of what an animal is 2. authors such as hobbes, grozio, locke and kant, consider humans and animals as metaphysically different: notwithstanding the variety of positions that justify such difference, all these authors agree in considering animals as being inferior. this belief immediately entails excluding animals from social contract: they are not “free, equal, and independent” (nussbaum 2007, 25) subjects that participate in the choice (and therefore to the benefit) of the principles of justice. the only way out, in this perspective, is to think in terms of benevolence or, in kant’s case, of indirect duties (which rest on direct duties towards humanity). i would move on from this first point which could rightfully be reconsidered in the light of recent discoveries in ethology: such a vision of animality is a cultural product, and we can consider some species (think of great apes) as individuals far more complex than these authors could acknowledge. we should consider that even a different understanding of animals could not bring contractarianism to an adequate elaboration of the principles of justice. let us see why. in comparison with other authors, hume seems to be more sensitive to the suffering of animals, and precisely for this reason he appears to grasp the essential meaning of the issue. the crux of the matter revolves around two characteristics that imply the elaboration of a contract as it is intended by all social contract thinkers (including present day exponents). in the words of nussbaum we are speaking of the circumstances of justice, and of the motivation that underlies the subscriptions to the contract. hume defines specific circumstances by which justice may have a function, that is circumstances starting from which we can legitimately hypothesise an incentive to reach the conclusion of a social contract: “justice, 2 evidently, even before ethology and the darwinian revolution, knowledge regarding the abilities of non-human animals were (and in part still are nowadays) vitiated by relevant anthropocentrism. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ victims and responsibility 115 relations – 5.2 november 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ then, is a convention whose utility is directly related to the circumstances, physical and psychological, in which we are placed” (nussbaum 2007, 47); it is hume who, by drawing our attention on the issue, inevitably shows that the cardinal circumstance is the presence of an approximate equality between the contracting parties, an equality which is neither present in non-human animals (inferior because totally dominated by our control 3) nor in individuals with severe disability. this is why hume emphasises the need to exercise benevolence towards non-human animals, dominated beings that nonetheless are capable of perception and feelings; but at the same time he denies that there can be a state of justice, since it would make no sense to stipulate a contract with those who are under total domination. what, according to nussbaum’s critique, is the motive that pushes the imaginary contracting parties to agree on the principles of justice? the answer, in all forms of contractarianism is one: mutual benefit. exclusion is therefore not related to the fact that animals lack some notion of good or rationality, but rather determined by the impossibility for them to draw from these notions an advantage (guaranteed precisely by approximate equality and therefore finally by the circumstances of justice). by considering these two principles only (nussbaum acknowledges more) we understand that there is no way of thinking of a form of contractarianism able to include other individuals that do not correspond to the purpose of a contract as it is intended: individuals that can guarantee a mutual benefit through approximate equality. 2.2.2. rawls and the structure of the social contract i believe it appropriate to extend these reflections to rawls’ contractarianism (1971), which is certainly more complex; it is worth pointing out that, overall, it is the absence of mutual gain that makes rawls deny any possibility of a demand of justice both for animals and individuals with serious disabilities. let us quickly consider nussbaum’s critique of this. first of all, it is interesting to consider how rawls does not ignore the issue of animals: he speaks of “duties of compassion and humanity” which are determined by 3 “were there a species of creatures intermingled with men, which, though rational, were possessed of such inferior strength, both of body and mind, that they were incapable of all resistance […] i think, is that we should be bound by the laws of humanity to give gentle usage to these creatures, but should not, properly speaking, lie under any restraint of justice with regard to them, nor could they possess any right or property, exclusive of such arbitrary lords. our intercourse with them could not be called society, which supposes a degree of equality; but absolute command on the one side, and servile obedience on the other” (hume [1777] 1998, 8-19). http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ lorenzo bertolesi 116 relations – 5.2 november 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ their capability to suffer. but we cannot define animals as beneficiaries of principles of justice: “[…] it does seem that we are not required to give strict justice anyway to creatures lacking this capacity […]. our conduct toward animals is not regulated by these principles” (nussbaum 2007, 331-2). the reason for this exclusion is based both on rawls conception of person (inspired by kant) and the structure of contractarianism itself. surely his idea of person is enough to rule out the idea that non-human animals partake in the formulation of the principles and for them to be subjects of those principles. in political liberalism rawls defines “the two moral powers” that define the contracting individuals: the ability to have a conception of good and that of having a sense of justice, at least in a certain minimum measure. these, in his conception, pertain only to human beings: in this perspective, animals and people with serious (mental) disabilities fail the definition of people. in my opinion, the problem arises from the structure of the contract itself: no redefinition of the abilities of animals could ever bring to the inclusion of the forma mentis of the social contract! indeed, even if we were to recognise the ability for reciprocity in animals, this would be found only in some of them (even though the problems concerning unjust and cruel behaviours relate to all animals). although there can be reciprocity, this is not the type of reciprocity described by rawls, based on the possession of complex reflexive capabilities of rational and moral kind 4. it would also be useless to bracket hume-like circumstances of justices (something that, as nussbaum notes, rawls makes his own): it does not matter if we share a world which is poor of resources, and it does not matter if there is rivalry among species (comparable to the rivalry in the state of nature); “[…] the asymmetry of power between humans and nonhuman animals is too great to imagine any contract we might make with them as a real contract” (2007, 334). certainly, we cannot understand that contract as truly based on a mutual advantage; we therefore lose the rawlsian condition by which none of the contracting parties are strong enough to dominate and kill the others. in nussbaum’s words: so there is no good analogue of the circumstances of justice, no good analogue to the contractarian account of the purposes of social cooperation, no good analogue to the account of the abilities of the parties in virtue of which a contract is possible, no good analogue to their situation as “free, equal, and independent” parties. (2007, 334) 4 it is interesting to see how the weak points in rawls’ theory are very similar to those that nussbaum criticises in traditional contractualist authors: it is the structure of the contact itself that supports this criticism. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ victims and responsibility 117 relations – 5.2 november 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the impossibility of a contract, both in the traditional and contemporary sense, is simply based on hume observation: why establish a contract with creatures that are firmly controlled and dominated? it is precisely the imbalance of power that has brought us to a complex machinery of self-justifying domination in which there are no qualms in doing of animals whatever we want. 3. zagrebelsky and the cry of injustice 3.1. justice and fault after having shown the limits of the theories we have here analysed, nussbaum develops a pars construens in which the concept of flourishing becomes the core element to think of animal rights, which by protecting the ten fundamental animal capabilities, would guarantee to each of them a fair life: the idea of flourishing is what nussbaum suggests as the unifying element for a political theory about animals. however, i would rather not tackle nussbaum position and pause instead on a problem that i consider crucial to deal with the animal question in a satisfactory way. overall, we could ask ourselves why to refuse a contractarian structure in which the benevolence towards animals would grant them a satisfactory form of life. here’s what nussbaum says about compassion: so compassion, all by itself, omits the essential element of blame for wrongdoing […]. it would seem that analyzing the harms we do to animals in terms of duties of compassion alone entails blurring the important distinction between the compassion we might have for an animal who dies of a disease that is nobody’s fault and the response we might have to the sufferings of an animal who is being cruelly treated by humans. (2007, 336; emphasis added) so we are facing a case of injustice for which we must find a culprit. where does the injustice stem from and where should we look for its perpetrators? the question, baring a rhetorical tone, actually finds an interesting starting point in an essay by zagrebelsky, la domanda di giustizia 5 (martini and zagrebelsky 2003). 5 the english translation of the title is the demand for justice. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ lorenzo bertolesi 118 relations – 5.2 november 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 3.2. zagrebelsky: a different idea of justice an attentive and thorough writer, zagrebelsky heavily criticises “conceptual” and theoretical definitions that reduce justice into merely formal definitions, subordinated to certain interests or subdued to political ideas. zagrebelsky denounces the great limit of these representations of justice thought up by euclidean geometricians: “[…] as all purely formal definition, this definition of justice refers to those who have the power to establish it. rather than a formal of justice it is a principle of power” (martini and zagrebelsky 2003, 9). along with criticising utilitarianism – “i think we would agree, in believing that justice speaks in favour of ‘the smallest number’ of those excluded from happiness, and we certainly reject the idea, […] that the good of the many is just even when it contemplates the unhappiness of a few” (martini and zagrebelsky 2003, 7) – zagrebelsky, actually speaks out against rawls himself: “justice does not show its (disfigured) face with an aseptic ‘initial position’ or on the cold table of the anatomy of concepts but instead in the infections of society whence it calls out to the sky and to men” (martini and zagrebelsky 2003, 11). the weak point of these formaltheoretical conceptions of justice is precisely the speculative element: “[…] speculative, both as in what mirrors within the intellect something which is outside of us – that which is just – and as in a reasoning that autonomously constructs its objectthe ideas of justice. but justice is neither of these things” (martini and zagrebelsky 2003, 15). where does justice originate from? the best way to think of justice is to perceive it as a question, a true cry of suffering, a demand for recognition, that originates from a personal experience of injustice, or in the authors words: “[…] the aspiration to justice that originates from the experience of injustice and the pain that derives from it” (martini and zagrebelsky 2003, 16). zagrebelsky’s proposition proves very interesting when it calls for “a move from the field of definitions of justice to that of the experience of injustice” (martini and zagrebelsky 2003, 19). with this move we open a series of unprecedented issues in the field of theories of justice: a simple shift in perspective can nonetheless radically modify our way of understanding justice towards non-human animal. that’s to say that we are not discussing the principle of justice that parties, approximately equal, stipulate via a contract; we are not developing a calculation that weighs pleasure and pain; we are on the contrary focusing our attention of something more original but at the same time more effective: a victim that suffers violence, objectified, enslavement. while zagrebelsky actually does speak of infraspecific forms of injustice, it is also undeniable that we cannot arbitrarily http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ victims and responsibility 119 relations – 5.2 november 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ exclude also other forms of life: injustice materialises as forms of exploitation and destruction both of physical vulnerability and agency 6; both these characteristics disappear the zoological lines that differentiate species and that give us back an image of the world as a constellation of individuals who have agency and are vulnerable to violence. it is precisely the focus on the victims that allows us, in my understanding, to deal, in an original way, with the issue of justice towards non-human animals: it is necessary to recognise vulnerability and agency as conditions for the possibility of injustice (which gives rise to a legitimate demand for justice) but at the same time an admission is required of the responsibility of the fault on behalf of the culprits. 4. a new hypothesis: zagrebelsky and garapon’s restorative justice 4.1. human responsibility and historical guilt the admission of responsibility is a fundamental element that can only emerge in this perspective: indeed if nussbaum 7 develops a complex system of legal rights intended to protect those who have been excluded from the social contract, we are once again facing a choice that sublimates 6 i would like to note a very important point: i have indicated the violation of agency and of physical vulnerability as two elements that define the onset of injustice. this choice is far from arbitrary and is instead based on some reflections about animal ethics. on the one hand, acampora (2006) taking up some reflections of merleau-ponty’s phenomenology defines the field of ethics around the idea of vulnerability perceived in the other; on the other hand, vulnerability by itself can be considered as an element on which to develop a series of only negative duties: not to damage those who are vulnerable. the problem, which even nussbaum sees, cannot be reduced to this alone: and agency can be considered as a starting point even to think about possible positive obligations or duties, something that encourages protection and the flourishing of capabilities to act. to block and repress agency is a serious violation of the wellbeing of all individualities, but at the same time can be considered as an element to protect and encourage from a legal point of view. 7 although nussbaum’s theory places itself on the lines of rawls’, it is also true that the solutions that she deals with are extremely concrete. despite this i believe it is important on the one hand to focus on the conceptual pair responsibility-reparation and on the other to notice how the solutions offered in frontiers of justice are problematic in that they focus exclusively on guaranteeing a minimum limit to make life worthy of being lived. despite some reservations on some suggestions made by the author, i believe her work is noteworthy. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ lorenzo bertolesi 120 relations – 5.2 november 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ in a freudian manner the responsibility of our action, a responsibility which is individual and collective (and, may i add, historical). this new perspective on justice allows us to focus on an element which i consider fundamental in the process that leads to recognising justice towards all forms of injustice: that is, our responsibility 8. indeed, in the case of animals, what should be taken into serious account is our responsibility for what concerns their condition: the structure of domination that we have built around many species is the result of a historical process of domestication, one that allows us to think of “faults” towards animals. in this perspective we may consider the domestication process and its subsequent developments (such as the creation of the zootechnical industry) as a form of “historical” guilt. 4.2. justice and history one author who has tackled these questions is antoine garapon who in chiudere i conti con la storia 9 ([2008] 2009) analyses some recent examples of “historical faults” (colonisation, shoah, comfort women, apartheid, stolen generation etc.) from a judiciary perspective, showing how restorative justice has operated during these processes (analysing the advantages and drawbacks of this approach to justice). let us try and quickly understand which is the logic underlying this “coming to terms”: firstly, the goal of restorative justice is, in garapon definition, to “return to status quo ante” ([2008] 2009, 125-38) that is a state of things that injustice has irremediably disrupted. coming to terms with this 8 the rhetoric of responsibility has been the basis of hans jonas thought, and opened the way to bioethical and environmental considerations; in his the imperative of responsibility: in search of an ethics for the technological age (1979) jonas pointed at ethics as taking responsibility with regards to our actions: given how human techne had become capable of disrupting the order of planet earth, it was obvious how new dimension of agency implied new responsibilities. the core of jonas’ idea is a crucial element in ethical thought in general: the pair action-responsibility is in my view is a useful guide to follow even within animal ethics, and could for example be used against some of nussbaum’s ideas regarding intervention aimed at defending weaker animals from those more threatening; it is our actions (as individuals and societies) that should be taken into account from an ethical and political point of view. at the same time, i believe it would be interesting to think of jonas’ suggestion and to consider the reach of our actions as the source of our responsibility: this consideration allows in my view, to notice how techne, with respect to non-human animals, in that it has created new forms of mistreatment towards animals – has now appeared in breeding mechanisms aiming at taming species that have still not been domesticated. 9 the english translation of the title is coming to terms with history. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ victims and responsibility 121 relations – 5.2 november 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ history means attempting to repair the mistakes of the past. this restitution, obviously, most come from those who are guilty, who only after admitting their responsibility (that is, we should emphasise, the responsibility of a fault) must try and calculate the amount of the damage, which via a civil procedure, (not penal) leads to the payment of money given to the victims. we can consider this frame work as a blueprint to which to refer for experiences of reparation justice, by this also considering its difficulties. the first difficulty, as garapon notes, is that a return to the status quo anterior is impossible, also because often the trauma is too indelible in the life of the victims or simply because the victims are no longer alive (think of colonisation and of the victims of the shoah). the second problematic point is, in my view, the financial restitution, but, once again garapon analyses the matter carefully. however i would like bypass the problematic aspects of restorative justice as garapon describes them, and to look at the crux of this approach. 4.3. restorative justice and non-human animals the approach of restorative justice allows to emphasise two points that may be fundamental in treating our historical fault towards animals. admitting our responsibility is in my view the crucial point: in the legal battle that saw the japanese government opposing comfort women, the denial of responsibility on behalf of the government, provoked enormous grief in the victims, who refused the money coming from private enterprises: “in this way the government actually did recognise the terrible damage suffered by the victims, without however connecting these to a crime perpetrated by the state, and instead to the sphere of private justice, thus avoiding to account for its responsibility” (garapon [2008] 2009, 154). in this instance we understand more than ever how rather than a true official reparation in financial terms, what restorative justice aims for is a form of recognition: the code of debt is used not so much to obtain money […] but to obtain a representation of what exceeds formal political relation, of the injustice which is impossible to represent otherwise. the metaphor of debt is used to bridge a political gap and to attempt to repair it. (garapon [2008] 2009, 100) i have described the domestication of animals as a historical fault. there is something however that makes such a fault peculiar in comparison with those that garapon speaks about: it is peculiar because it still not over 10. it 10 this peculiarity deletes, or at least diminishes, the great problem of historical faults and collective responsibility. sandel in justice: what’s the right thing to do? (2009) http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ lorenzo bertolesi 122 relations – 5.2 november 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ is a historical dynamic which continues and has actually improved the technique by which the reproduction of animals is perpetuated and controlled, and is a process that happens in accordance the principles of legality, as many of the crimes of which garapon speaks about. now if we insist on the rhetoric of reparation and recognition, we can use the spirit of restorative justice to make us bring such circumstances to an end, recognising a debt of responsibility that can lead to a way of repairing the injustice. i would like to immediately underline this: restorative justice, through a request for recognition, allows a reconfiguration of the problem of justice towards non-human animals: a reconfiguration which also lends new resources to think of possible forms of reparation of the injustice. 4.4. reconnect the tie how to go about the injustice? by putting in relation responsibility and injustice, a new perspective opens on how to think of our relation with the non-human world: the possibility of compensating the victims of evil; this recognition should be thought of as not to punish those who did wrong but to reconnect the tie (martini and zagrebelsky 2003, 31-2) with a world of otherness which has been controlled, submitted, subjugated and dominated. stressing the historical responsibility allows to think of forms of justice that have never been thought of in relation to animals. as garapon asserts: acts of reparation aim at the creation of a new bond through the recognition of a debt […]. reclaiming a debt is nothing but the sign of the will to abandon a relation of hostility, clearing the third type of relation, the denial of the other, from the face of the earth. (garapon [2008] 2009, 118) we can use the african idea of justice, ubuntu, of which desmond tutu spoke during apartheid in south africa: he distinguishes the european idea of justice, aimed at retribution, or more simply at the victors justice from the spirit of african justice, aimed instead at reconciliation and mutual acceptance, at the recognition of the humanity of a person, to make it resurface after it was humiliated, not just by the crime that was suffered but also by that which was committed. (martini and zagrebelsky 2003, 37) shows us the conflict between those who ask for retribution of historical faults and those who refuse to acknowledge their responsibility for actions perpetrated, for example by their ancestor. in this sense, domestication is an event that culminates – historically speaking in every plate and every moment of use of animals for human purpose, if which we still make a vast use today. surely, an indication like this can be useful in solving issues that critics of collective responsibility place against restorative thought. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ victims and responsibility 123 relations – 5.2 november 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 5. conclusion the spirit of restorative justice, through the idea of reparation, that is the admission of responsibility and of a tie to reconnect, may be a useful guide to rethink the question of animal rights. obviously, many problems need to be solved: i believe there are a variety of difficulties, pointed out by garapon himself, in the structure of restorative justice itself and even more so when this is applied in the case of animals: surely, including animals in this procedure rises even further problems to the difficulties of restorative justice. we can think of questions such as: can animals make requests, claim rights, demand recognition? would it make sense to speak of an economical reparation towards animals? these are difficulties that animal ethics has already confronted and still has to solve. despite this, i believe that the admission of our responsibility for the condition of non-human animals, determined by the imbalance in power is a first crucial step to start a rethinking of justice that should not fall back on previous theories that prove to be inadequate. even within the idea of reparation as recognition of an otherness (that has been negated) the issue of animality can find a strong foothold, both for the philosophical question and the reformulation of solutions for coexistence, that can revolve around the attempt of reconnecting the tie that we have broken, precisely by the domination started with domestication. to conclude we can consider restorative justice as a fruitful way to reconsider the theme of justice towards non-human animals: it is a radically different approach to the idea of justice, and it is precisely its peculiarity that allows to shed light on some passages that no theory of justice seems to have considered, passages which in my view are instead crucial to the understanding of the question of animality and that concern our behaviour; furthermore not just in acknowledging but also in elaborating a series of duties or rights, restorative justice might be an interesting point of reference for an ethic of care that can retie the communal bond with beings whose belonging to our community has always been denied. references acampora, ralph. 2006. corporal compassion: animal ethics and philosophy of body. pittsburgh, pa: the university of pittsburgh press. bentham, jeremy. 1970. an introduction to the principles of morals and legislation. london: the athlone press. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ lorenzo bertolesi 124 relations – 5.2 november 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ garapon, antoine. (2008) 2009. chiudere i conti con la storia. colonizzazione, schiavitù, shoah, translated by daniela bifulco. milano: raffaello cortina. hume, david. (1777) 1998. an enquiry concerning the principles of moral. oxford: clarendon press. jonas, hans. (1971) 1984. the imperative of responsibility: in search of an ethics for the technological age. chigago: the university of chicago press. martini, carlo maria, and gustavo zagrebelsky. 2003. la domanda di giustizia. torino: einaudi. nussbaum, martha. 2007. frontiers of justice: disability, nationality, and species membership. cambridge: the belknap press. plutarch. 1957. “the eating of flesh”. in plutarch’s moralia, vol. xii, edited by frank cole babbitt, 537-79. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. rawls, john. 1971. a theory of justice. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. 1996. political liberalism. new york: columbia university press. regan, tom. 1983. the case for animal rights. berkeley: university of carolina press. sandel, michael j. 2009. justice: what’s the right thing to do? new york: farrar, straus and giroux. singer, peter. 1975. animal liberation. new york: review books. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ zoe in comic books: post-human poetics in lnrz zoe in comic books post-human poetics in lnrz valentina gamberi independent researcher younganthropologist87@gmail.com lnrz. 2014. golem. milano: bao publishing. 280 pp. € 25.00. isbn 978-886543-257-0 lnrz. 2015. astrogamma. milano: bao publishing. 160 pp. € 23.00. isbn 97888-6543-528-1 this review examines two graphic novels realised by the italian visual artist lrnz (aka lorenzo ceccotti), namely golem (lrnz 2014) and astrogamma (lrnz 2015). these two works share several affinities, so that we can determine a specific poetics of lrnz. i identify this poetics with what bennett calls “vibrant matter”, namely the creative spontaneity of the non-human in acting “as quasi agents or forces with trajectories, propensities, or tendencies of their own” (bennett 2010, viii). this new conceptualisation of the non-human is a direct derivation of the notion of nature as conceived in ancient times. in fact, the word nature derives from the latin nascor,“to live”, “to be born”, which originates from a greek verb meaning the vegetative, and so nature would coincide with a meaningful life without thought, something which is generated from its interior but is opposed to what is human, specifically language and intellectual activity (merleau-ponty [1956] 2003, 3). it is precisely the non-constructed feature of nature which would lead one to think of it as an aprioristic given, a primordial origin which incorporates what is established and instituted (merleau-ponty [1956] 2003, 4). accordingly, nature would be conceived of as a permanent entity, infinitely producing (merleau-ponty [1956] 2003, 15). therefore, nature is, at the same time, an object and a subject, a produced matter and a producer. nature is indeed an enigma because it is not just an object in front of which the subject was born, and this is true both at the individual and at the social mailto:younganthropologist87@gmail.com http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 valentina gamberi 232 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ and historical levels. […] nature shows this ambiguity: at the same time it is stratified and is presented as an original that was already here before any stratification. as such it disorients objective thought, as it constitutes the immemorial past that appears at each new moment, the “here and now” of a past that has never been present. it is an involuntary memory, even more radical than that of the body, because it is a memory of being. if then one still wants to admit that nature exists and has existed apart from being known by a knowing subject, one must recognize a conceptual statute for this notion that is different from that of being-subject and of being-object, a third term which is pre-objective and pre-subjective. nature is not merely a product because it is at the same time a producer. (vanzago 2014, 34) strictly intertwined with the ambiguity of nature as a product and a producer, there are its features of agency and passivity, naturans and naturata. though nature can refer to a stable substrate of brute matter, the term has also signaled generativity, fecundity, isis or aphrodite, or the “spring” movement of antonio vivaldis’ four seasons. this creativity can be purposive or not. the contrast between nature as brute or purposive matter and nature as generativity is nicely captured by the distinction, key to baruch spinoza’s ethics, between natura naturata and natura naturans. natura naturata is passive matter organized into an eternal order of creation, natura naturans is the uncaused causality that ceasellesly generates new forms. (bennett 2010, 117) the main consequence of this original meaning of nature is a new type of ontology where the hierarchical distinction between the non-human and the human is transcended in favour of a horizontal process of becoming within an umwelt or environment. the aim of this review is to indentify the expressive means by which lrnz reflects upon this new type of ontology, by advocating a particular post-human ethics. the link between lrnz’s poetics and a “vibrant matter” is explicit in the title of the first graphic novel. in fact, “the word ‘golem’ appears once in the tanakh in psalm 139:16 as the hebrew gol’mi, which means (my) unshaped outline or ‘matter’ without form” (weiner 2011, 53), then lrnz alludes to a protean capacity of transformation. the story is centred around two different perspectives of materiality. on the one hand, the futuristic society in which the story is set, that of “eurasia” ruled over by “four sovereigns” (with the implicit symbology of the four elements), is based upon a capitalistic ideology, where things are consumed and continually substituted and which controls the citizens and the urban environment 1 through the concepts of purchasing and possession by substituting 1 for instance, in a scene there are two nurses who tell a dying man that it is forbidden to die in public. in a bigger caption, we see the two protagonists of the story, steno http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 lnrz, “golem”; lnrz, “astrogamma” 233 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the citizens’ sense of responsibility with a rapacious need for consumption. on the other hand, we have an anarchic community, the skorai, established in order to preserve the invention of the nanomachine g, the golem of the story or the essence of self-production. created by the father of the young protagonist, steno, this machine is a particle which recombines matter on a molecular level just by absorbing water and light. as the four sovereigns of eurasia declare, the nanomachine g destroys the bases of capitalism. so, put differently, we have a society regulated by the dissipation of matter and a revolutionary group that claims matter’s infinite productivity. matter, in lrnz’s narration, becomes a huge organism, characterised by a hybrid and continually changing form. this is particularly clear in astrogamma (lrnz 2015), where nature’s power and energy intially invest insects, which form a gigantic fetus and then something in between a super-human and an ambiguous conglomerate. this analogy between what is made and what grows recalls ingold’s reflection on growing and making and, more generally, on materiality (ingold 2000, 2007, 2013; ingold and hallam 2014). ingold advocates a kind of ontology where artefacts coincide with organisms. he stresses the importance of the process of becoming, of things as forces, rather than of the forces of things, of agency and life contained in organisms and things. according to his view, then, the distinction between living beings and artefacts is transcended in favour of the horizontal relationships between them and the surrounding environment. this last consideration is particularly true for lnrz’s graphic novels, especially when we examine the relationships between the characters. lrnz, in the foreword of golem (lnrz 2014), declares that the entire work can be considered as an alchemical metaphor. it is not coincidental, then, if the graphic novel, as well as in astrogamma (lrnz 2015), insists on the symbology related to adolescence, as the age of a rite of passage between infancy and adulthood. for instance, the main characters of the story, steno and rosabella, are portrayed as androgynous as opposed to the hypersexualisation of their classmates. a type of initiation which is reproduced on an explicit level when steno is introduced to the community of the shorai. here, he discovers that the shorai cook on their own and read real books, things that, in the eurasian society, have been substituted by smart technology which replaces the body’s functionality. then, self-production is also a way of phenomenologically repossessing the body. some scenes of the graphic novel represent images that are disjointed from the main narration, probably steno’s visions during dream. in these and rosabella, staring with surprise at a flower, grown in a corner of a concrete building. even biological existence, then, is subordinated to the laws of consumerism. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 valentina gamberi 234 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ scenes, the bond with the body is particularly evocative: we see the reflection in water of a screaming, anthropomorphic body. in another scene, we see two eyes glaring at us in the darkness. because of the substantial confusion between internal, body sensations and external appareances, those scenes remind me of merleau-ponty’s notion of flesh. in the visible and the invisible, merleau-ponty defines the osmosis or fusion between body’s internal mechanisms and external perceived things as flesh, namely when the perceiving body “sees itself, touches itself seeing and touching the things” (merleau-ponty [1964] 1968, 146), thus determining a collapse between bodily sensations and the perceiving body. the body grasping a rough thing becomes the sense of the rough, following “a magic pact” (merleau-ponty [1964] 1968, 146) between the perceived things and the perceiving body, so that things use the body’s surface in order to impress themselves. in this operation, perception is organised and not left to chaos: “the flesh (or the world or my own) is not contigency, chaos, but a texture that returns to itself and conforms to itself” (merleau-ponty [1964] 1968, 146). the carnal pictures in golem, therefore, are different aspects of the creative flux of becoming and making of the golem nanomachine or, in other words, of “vibrant matter”. lrnz does not limit his art work to a carnal depiction of body, but he also describes the relational dynamic occuring within the “vibrant matter”. in golem (lrnz 2014), the nanomachine g is connected to steno’s feelings, so that it is activated when steno suffers. in astrogamma (lrnz 2015), an elegant quotation from leopardi’s zibaldone clarifies the fact that suffering is a relative condition. clearly, the contact and hybridisation with otherness is what allows lrnz’s characters to emphatise with the suffering and feelings of the non-human. the idea that different actors form a unit because of their process of identification was firstly developed by the biologist uexküll: “[…] an organism is what it is capable of becoming, insofar as it already is the other that it becomes in the harmonious relation” (buchanan 2008, 34). however, in astrogamma (lrnz 2015) the “vibrant matter”, in the final fight with the super-human davide (a transmutation of the boy protagonist of the graphic novel), declares that feelings are the reasons why humans have failed in their attempt to impose themselves as a species: the power of the “vibrant matter” derives from the fact that it has no memory, no emotive ties. the strength of this “vibrant matter” coincides both with the capacity of fusing every living form and with contamination. if, on the one hand, this characteristic reflects the egalitarian relationships of the umwelt, on the other hand, it reveals a destructive power. we have seen in this review that lrnz expresses a new type of ontology in his graphic novels, as elaborated within the last academic debate http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 lnrz, “golem”; lnrz, “astrogamma” 235 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ on materiality and nature, with a post-human proposal for an egalitarian dialogue and transcending of the categories of human and non-human. as defined by llored (2014, 117) in his analysis of derrida’s main argumentation in the beast and the sovereign, lrnz’s poetics is characterised by a “porosity” between nature/animality and culture/sovereignty. references bennett, jane. 2010. vibrant matter: a political ecology of things. durham: duke university press. buchanan, brett. 2008. onto-ethologies: the animal environment of uexküll, heidegger, merleau-ponty and deleuze. albany, ny: suny press. ingold, tim. 2000. the perception of the environment: essays on livelihood, dwelling and skill. london: routledge. 2007. “materials against materiality”. archaeological dialogues 14 (1): 1-16. 2013. making. anthropology, archaeology, art and architecture. london: routledge. ingold, tim, and elizabeth hallam, eds. 2014. making and growing. anthropological studies of organisms and artefacts. farnham: ashgate. llored, patrick. 2014. “zoopolitics”. substance #134 43 (2): 115-23. lnrz. 2014. golem. milano: bao publishing. lnrz. 2015. astrogamma. milano: bao publishing. merleau-ponty, maurice. (1956) 2003. nature. course notes from the collège de france, translated by robert vallier. evanston, il: northwestern university press. (1964) 1968. the visible and the invisible, translated by alphonso lingis. evanston, il: northwestern university press. vanzago, luca. 2014. “the problem of nature between philosophy and science”. discipline filosofiche xxiv (2), special issue on merleau-ponty and the natural sciences, edited by luca vanzago: 23-44. weiner, robert g. 2011. “marvel comics and the golem legend”. shofar. an interdisciplinary journal of jewish studies 29 (2): 50-72. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 titolo 177 relations – 5.2 november 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ laboratory and farm animal law opportunities for ending animal use christina dodkin 1 kimberley jayne 2 1 research director, animal defenders international 2 senior researcher, animal defenders international doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2017-002-dodk christinadodkin@ad-international.org research@ad-international.org 1. from farm to laboratory: comparing the legislation directives set out general regulations applicable across the european union; which member states transpose into national law as appropriate. a number of directives govern the use of animals by humans. animals kept or bred for farming fall under directive 98/58/ec: protection of animals kept for farming purposes and the use of animals for research is regulated by directive 63/2010/eu: protection of animals used for scientific purposes. every year nearly 360 million pigs; sheep; goats and cattle as well as several billion poultry are killed in eu slaughterhouses. the european fur industry adds another 25 million animals to the figure. hatcheries kill around 330 million day-old-chicks which are surplus to the egg industry. the control of contagious diseases may also require the killing of thousands to millions of animals (european commission 2016). almost 11.5 million animals are used for research in the eu; including those for basic biological research; genetic modification experiments; toxicology testing and research and development of drugs (european commission 2011). the most used species are mice; rats and fish; totalling around 10 million; as well as over 17.000 dogs; almost 4.000 cats and more than 6.000 primates (european commission 2011). the economic value of livestock farming in the eu represents an annual value of €149 billion. the use of experimental animals is estimated to an annual value of €930 million (european commission 2012). the focus of both directives is on the keeping animals for use by humans with the intention of promoting animal welfare. however; both http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ http://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2017-002-dodk mailto:christinadodkin@ad-international.org mailto:research@ad-international.org christina dodkin kimberley jayne 178 relations – 5.2 november 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ are led by economics; with directive 98/58/ec aiming at “eliminating distortions of competition” (council directive 98/58/ec 1998) and directive 2010/63/eu setting out to harmonise laboratory animal standards to reduce disparities between member states which are “liable to constitute barriers to trade in products and substances” (directive 63/2010/eu 2010). both directives present conflicting ideals about the treatment of animals; by making statements on the importance of animal welfare; whilst setting standards for a life which inevitably involves suffering. directive 98/58/ec states how animals shall not be kept unless it is “without detrimental effect on its health or welfare” (council directive 98/58/ec 1998). however; the minimum conditions for intensive factory farming is detrimental to health and welfare by nature; the routine use of antibiotics for example is a widespread practice to prevent the spread of disease (landers et al. 2012). directive 2010/63/eu affirms how animals “have an intrinsic value which must be respected” and recognises animals as “sentient creatures”; whilst licensing their use as tools in research which is known to cause pain; suffering and distress (directive 63/2010/eu 2010). one of the main differences between the laboratory and farm animal directives is how they perceive animal use. directive 98/58/ec makes no comment on intrinsic value of animals; or any desire to put an end to the use of animals in food production (council directive 98/58/ec 1998). directive 2010/63/eu however; acknowledges the use of animals in research to be ethically objectionable; noting the capacity of animals to feel pain; fear and distress whilst outlining a desire to end their use through the promotion and application of advanced scientific methodology; the 3rs; specifically replacement (directive 63/2010/eu 2010). 1.1. the difference in perception allows a legislative move away from animal research this subtle but important difference in the spirit of directive 2010/63/ eu; allows for opportunities and potential for the eventual elimination of animal research; through a combination of review; assessment and implementation of non-animal methods. recital 10 states: while it is desirable to replace the use of live animals in procedures by other methods not entailing the use of live animals; the use of live animals continues to be necessary to protect human and animal health and the environment. however; this directive represents an important step towards achieving the final goal of full replacement of procedures on live animals for scientific and educational purposes as soon as it is scientifically possible to do so. to that end; it seeks to facilitate and promote the advancement of alternative http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ laboratory and farm animal law 179 relations – 5.2 november 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ approaches. it also seeks to ensure a high level of protection for animals that still need to be used in procedures. this directive should be reviewed regularly in light of evolving science and animal-protection measures. (directive 63/2010/eu 2010; emphasis added) this encompasses the main tools available within the directive for a phase out of animal testing: promotion and advancement of alternative methods; review of the legislation and consideration of scientific evolution; all legitimised by the final goal of full replacement of animals.  the principles of replacement; reduction and refinement are outlined in article 4 of directive 2010/63/eu. member states are required to ensure that “wherever possible; a scientifically satisfactory method or testing strategy; not entailing the use of live animals; shall be used instead of a procedure” (directive 63/2010/eu 2010). reduction and refinement (keeping the number of animal used in a procedure to a minimum and keeping pain; suffering or harm to animals to a minimum; respectively) are provisions which attend to animal welfare; but do not contribute to the aim of full replacement of animals in research. article 47 of directive 2010/63/2010 stipulates further obligations for the commission and member states to “contribute to the development and validation of alternative approaches which could provide the same or higher levels of information as those obtained in procedures using animals” (directive 63/2010/eu 2010); to set up laboratories for validation of alternative methods and ensure dissemination of these approaches. 2. rationale for ending animal use the use of animals in scientific procedures with the intention of benefiting humans is fundamentally flawed due to “species differences”. animal tests are an unreliable way to predict effects in humans because each species responds differently to substances. for example; penicillin is a useful antibiotic for people but it is lethal when tested in guinea pigs (hamre et al. 1943). the breast cancer drug tamoxifen was designed as an oral contraceptive. it is in rats; but in women it has the opposite effect. it is now used in the treatment of breast cancer; despite causing cancer in rats in some studies (read 1988). the cancer drug 6-azauridine can be used in humans for long periods; but in dogs small doses produce potentially lethal results in a few days (weatherall 1982). phenylbutazone works through the body slowly in humans; but in dogs it disappears in hours (lees et al. 2004). the list of substances and their effects in different species is immeasurable. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ christina dodkin kimberley jayne 180 relations – 5.2 november 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ furthermore; the reliance on data from animals can produce unexpected adverse reactions in people in clinical trials; even fatal outcomes. tgn1412  – an experimental drug was given to human volunteers and caused life-threatening reactions; yet monkeys were given doses 500 times higher than the human volunteers and no side effects had been seen (duff 2006). most recently; the french bia 10-2474 drug trial; despite animal toxicity testing; went fatally wrong when given to human volunteers – one died; four showed evidence of brain damage (callaway and butler 2016). the substance had been tested on mice; rats; rabbits; dogs and monkeys for toxic effects on various organs as well as reproductive toxicity. monkeys were given doses approx 75 times that given to the human volunteers (figures calculated from bial – portela & ca s.a. 2015; calculations available on request). there are also ethical concerns held for animals used in research. the public are less accepting of the use of companion animals; such as dogs; cats and horses; as well as animals which are more like humans; such as monkeys. 75% of the uk public agree that more should be done to find alternatives to animals in research (ipsos mori 2016). in the political arena; there is also a strong desire to end the use of some of our closest relatives in research. 433 meps signed written declaration 40/2007 calling for a timetable to be set to end all experiments on non-human primates in europe; at that time; the most supported written declaration on an animal protection issue ever (animal defenders international 2007). within various industries; non-animal technologies have been identified emerging areas with a potential to drive economic growth. this includes recognition of concerns about the predictivity of animal testing; acknowledgement of the scepticism of some researchers to move away from animal research; and the potential to improve safety and efficacy testing of chemicals and pharmaceuticals (innovate uk 2015). 3. advancing replacement of animals directive 63/2010/eu is progressive in that in includes provisions to advance the replacement of animals as described in article 58: the commission shall review this directive by 10 november 2017; taking into account advancements in the development of alternative methods not entailing the use of animals; in particular of non-human primates; and shall propose amendments; where appropriate. the commission shall; where http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ laboratory and farm animal law 181 relations – 5.2 november 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ appropriate; and in consultation with the member states and stakeholders; conduct periodic thematic reviews of the replacement; reduction and refinement of the use of animals in procedures; paying specific attention to non-human primates; technological developments; and new scientific and animal-welfare knowledge. (directive 63/2010/eu 2010; emphasis added) the first paragraph recognises the need for legislation to be able to keep up with changes in science and pace of technological advancements. thematic review; cited in the second paragraph; has the potential to provide a mechanism by which areas of animal research; or particular experiments; can be replaced with alternatives. but this must be effectively implemented by the commission. 3.1. advancing thematic review the concept of thematic review provides a clear mechanism to keep pace with advances in technological and scientific progress; and move toward the ultimate goal of replacing animals in research. this can be achieved if the european commission acts on article 58 and implements a system of biennial thematic review; allowing relevant stakeholders to identify specific candidate areas of research for consideration and review. the european commission could coordinate europe-wide activity; with member states initiating projects. it is suggested that submissions relating to replacement of animals are prioritised over reduction or refinement; due to the former being able to contribute to the phasing out of animals use; the goal of this directive. the process of conducting thematic review could be carried out using existing mechanisms for gathering data and scientific opinion; via a specific scientific committee. proposals for the european commission to carry out thematic review are as follows: step 1: commission call for candidate submission following a call by the commission; stakeholders should submit information on their rationale for proposed area of research for review; including referenced information such as: • area or method proposed for review. • estimates of number of animals involved and outline the typical procedures. • an outline of the rationale for the proposal including; but not restricted to: available non-animal methods; evidence of unreliability of the model or lack of proven benefits or utility; severe suffering of animals with little or no demonstrable benefits; methods no longer used in certain countries; including outside the eu; consideration of evolving public opinion in particular research areas or using certain species. • identifying barriers and a demonstration of how these may be overcome. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ christina dodkin kimberley jayne 182 relations – 5.2 november 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ step 2: candidate selection the commission should select a minimum of four candidates for replacement and one candidate for reduction or refinement to go forward for further review. the complexity and work required for each review may vary greatly from subject to subject; so the number of topics put forward for review may vary. step 3: in-depth review and research the selected candidates would be given to a “thematic review committee” for further review. for each candidate; the committee will study each proposed aspect of the rationale for review; gather further information and make decisions on the potential steps towards replacement which can be made. ultimately this process would result in the publication of a report by the thematic review committee with recommendations for each of the candidates; including proposals for establishing timetables for action. step 4: report and establishment of timetables or dates for replacement/abandonment taking into account all of the information gathered over the course of the review; the commission should establish a timetable of actions on each review topic. depending on the status of the non-animal method; the nature of barriers and assessment of the actual value of the animal use; the timetable may span months or years; or may permit immediate implementation. the strategy may also include a number of courses of action; such as re-diverting funding; legislative changes or amendments and notifying member states about the unacceptability of the particular use of animals. 4. the importance of ending animal use in comparison to directive 98/58/ec; directive 63/2010/eu has scope for making progress towards the goal of ending animal use in this area. replacing the use of animals with alternative methods is important for reliable science; human health; economic reasons and because of ethical concerns which the public hold about subjecting animals to experiments. with the global recognition that animal agriculture is a major cause of ill health; early death and climate change; directive 98/58/ec should emphasise plant food production and emulate the provisions included within directive 63/2010/eu towards the final goal of ending animal use replacing animal food production with healthier plant options. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ laboratory and farm animal law 183 relations – 5.2 november 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ references animal defenders international. 2007. european parliament sets historic target to end experiments on primates. accessed july 10, 2017. http://www.ad-international. org/mmap/go.php?id=1128&ssi=65. bial – portela & ca s.a. 2015. clincial study protocol no bia-1024-74-101. version 1.2. accessed july 10, 2017. http://ansm.sante.fr/content/ download/84681/1069223/version/1/file/protocole_bial_102474+10122012016131259.pdf. callaway, ewen, and declan butler. 2016. “researchers question design of fatal french clinical trial”. nature 529: 263-4. doi: 10.1038/nature.2016.19189. council directive 98/58/ec of 20 july 1998 concerning the protection of animals kept for farming purposes. 1998. official journal of the european communities l 221: 23-7. directive 63/2010/eu of the european parliament and of the council of 22 september 2010 on the protection of animals used for scientific purposes. 2010. official journal of the european union l 276: 33-79. duff, gordon w. 2006. expert scientific group on phase one clinical trials: final report. norwich: the stationary office. european commission. 2011. seventh report on the statistics on the number of animals used for experimental and other scientific purposes in the member states of the european union. accessed july 10, 2017. http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legalcontent/en/txt/?uri=celex:52013dc0859. 2012. communication from the commission to the european parliament; the council and the european economic and social committee on the european union strategy for the protection and welfare of animals 2012-2015. accessed july 10, 2017. http://eur-lex.europa.eu/resource.html?uri=cellar:57576a4359e3-4e99-aa3a-517b34804bc2.0003.03/doc_2&format=pdf. 2016. slaughter & stunning. accessed july 10, 2017. http://ec.europa.eu/ food/animals/welfare/practice/slaughter/index_en.htm. hamre, dorothy m., geoffrey rake, clara m. mckee, and harold b. macphillamy. 1943. “the toxicity of penicillin as prepared for clinical use”. the american journal of the medical sciences 206 (5): 642-52. innovate uk. 2015. a non-animal technologies roadmap for the uk. technology strategy board: department for business; energy & industrial strategy. accessed july 10, 2017. http://www.nc3rs.org.uk/sites/default/files/documents/nonanimaltechco082_rye_4_nrfinal2.pdf. ipsos mori. 2016. attitudes to animal research in 2016. department for business; energy & industrial strategy. accessed july 10, 2017. https://www.ipsosmori.com/researchpublications/publications/1858/attitudes-to-animalresearch-in-2016.aspx. landers, timothy f., bevin cohen, thomas e. wittum, and elaine l. larson. 2012. “a review of antibiotic use in food animals: perspective; policy; and potential”. public health reports 127 (1): 4-22. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ http://www.ad-international.org/mmap/go.php?id=1128&ssi=65 http://www.ad-international.org/mmap/go.php?id=1128&ssi=65 http://ansm.sante.fr/content/download/84681/1069223/version/1/file/protocole_bial_102474+101-22012016131259.pdf http://ansm.sante.fr/content/download/84681/1069223/version/1/file/protocole_bial_102474+101-22012016131259.pdf http://ansm.sante.fr/content/download/84681/1069223/version/1/file/protocole_bial_102474+101-22012016131259.pdf http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/en/txt/?uri=celex:52013dc0859 http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/en/txt/?uri=celex:52013dc0859 http://eur-lex.europa.eu/resource.html?uri=cellar:57576a43-59e3-4e99-aa3a-517b34804bc2.0003.03/doc_2&format=pdf http://eur-lex.europa.eu/resource.html?uri=cellar:57576a43-59e3-4e99-aa3a-517b34804bc2.0003.03/doc_2&format=pdf http://ec.europa.eu/food/animals/welfare/practice/slaughter/index_en.htm http://ec.europa.eu/food/animals/welfare/practice/slaughter/index_en.htm http://www.nc3rs.org.uk/sites/default/files/documents/nonanimaltechco082_rye_4_nrfinal2.pdf http://www.nc3rs.org.uk/sites/default/files/documents/nonanimaltechco082_rye_4_nrfinal2.pdf https://www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/publications/1858/attitudes-to-animal-research-in-2016.aspx https://www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/publications/1858/attitudes-to-animal-research-in-2016.aspx https://www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/publications/1858/attitudes-to-animal-research-in-2016.aspx christina dodkin kimberley jayne 184 relations – 5.2 november 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ lees, peter, maria f. landoni, jerome giraudel, and pierre louis toutain. 2004. “pharmacodynamics and pharmacokinetics of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs in species of veterinary interest”. journal of veterinary pharmacology and therapeutics 27: 479-90. read, cathy. 1988. “breast cancer: drug ready to stand trial”. new scientist 3: 36-7. weatherall, miles. 1982. “an end to the search for new drugs”. nature 296: 387-90. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ editorial. relationship over entities 7 relations – 1.i june 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ relationships over entities editorial 1 matteo andreozzi phd candidate in philosophy at university of milan, italy matteo.andreozzi@unimi.it there are countless relationships that connect all of us to the other forms of life, as well as all life to the abiotic environment. these relationships have existed since life appeared on earth, and perhaps even earlier in a different form. yet, it is less than a century that we hold not only a local, but also global connection to nature. many thinkers and cultures of the past had intuitively sensed the existence of thick bonds and their interconnection with nature. while they formed part of this network of relationships, we are the first human beings in history to have a thorough, scientific, and increasingly widespread knowledge of it. we are now realizing in a more meaningful way that we are taking part in a network of natural relationships. unfortunately, the more we gain a thorough awareness of this relationship, the more we realize that we have to rectify the errors of the past, if we still want to live on this planet. we must, in essence, correct the exploiting, the abusing, and the damaging of nature, that were made out of superficiality or ignorance. we must strive to build a world vision, a culture, and a world that does not yet exist. even if we focus our energies on solving basic, practical problems such as climate change, deforestation, and the loss of biodiversity, the solution lies in something which is much more deeply rooted in human cultures. an important step is to become aware of the global environmental crisis our earth is facing, but if we really want to take effective measures, we need to change our cultural principles and our way of thinking first. we need to endorse a new philosophical worldview and develop a new way of being in the world. to perceive ourselves as part of both several relationships and one wide network of relationships at the same time, 1 i wish to thank adele tiengo and joel macclellan for helpful comments on earlier versions of this editorial. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ matteo andreozzi 8 relations – 1.i june 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ we certainly need to develop a cross-cultural perspective. but even more than that, we need new interdisciplinary thinking. to put it another way, we need new stories that reintegrate our stories within the whole story of nature. in order to be co-authors of these kinds of stories, it must be clear in our minds who the protagonists are and what the setting is. the characters and setting must in fact come together and merge with nature. we already know that the triggering event, our endangered present, gets our plot underway. so, the first task on the to-do list becomes: save the planet! but what is missing? contemporary scientists tell us a story of nature that was completely unknown only a few decades ago. they have been explaining who the characters of the story are and their respective roles. the story begins far far away from life as we know it, and describes a universe in which our earth is just a tiny little planet in the middle of nowhere. in this planet, we are just little knots in a complex network of forms of life. this network, scientists claim, is what we call nature, a system characterized by a continuous change, also known as evolution. furthermore and for the first time, we are told that life is neither an organism aimed only at reproducing, nor an organism struggling for survival. we are told that what makes something ‘alive’ involves more than itself. to be alive is to connect with a dynamic environment. these relationships allow life forms to survive and potentially reproduce. their story continues with a big twist. we come to realize that while species could be either real or not, the term ‘species’ is one of convenience. it only makes sense on a narrow time scale and tells only a small, and sometimes misleading, portion of the wider story of the variety of life, that is necessary to keep life itself vibrant and lush. furthermore, it is impossible to identify any single hierarchy in this deeply interconnected living world. life, we learn, is made up of rings of inclusive hierarchies in which each level – from cells up to the ecosphere – is connected to the others and holds a profound relationship. it is arbitrary, unfair, and misleading to think that human beings are ‘superior’ just because of their complexity, amazing technical skills, and language. there are different levels of complexity and each living being has several distinctive features, but nothing could ever objectively justify the assumption that a certain feature is ‘better’ than another one. if we consider the ability to dominate and suppress nature a valid criterion, then it would be appropriate to put human beings at the pinnacle of creation. criteria like this, however, are not only arbitrary, but can even be counterproductive in light of the need to couple dynamically with nature. in fact, any criterion is arbitrary. relationships over entities 9 relations – 1.i june 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ in short, contemporary scientists’ story has not only life and the environment as co-protagonists: they blend into one another. thus, the boundary that separates life and the environment is very blurred: nature is a complex system of life forms, which have co-evolved and co-adapted and we, humans, are all both dependent on and implied by this network of relationships. another slightly gloomier story has been told by several activists who tell the story of a few small groups enriched at the expense of many larger communities. the health and environmental effects suffered by these impoverished civilizations are alarming, but so are the economic, social, and psychological crises affecting developed societies. furthermore, we are told the wrongs that we perpetrate on the world of nonhuman animals. let’s think – just to name a few – about our (non-)relationship with animals: farm animals bred, raised, used, and killed for food; animals used for fur and clothing, bred or captured and then killed to produce luxury goods; wild animals, hunted and captured for experimentation or for entertainment in parks, shows, bullfights, rodeos, festivals and zoos. it is very easy to see that something is deeply wrong with this story. activists tell a disturbing story of our past and present, but also give us the chance to start a new, very exciting story. we usually think of nature as an unlimited resource available for human use. moreover, the continuous growth of our technological power has led to at least three major contemporary crises attributable to irresponsible human activity. first, the environmental crisis, which involves landscapes and natural resources and affects the supply of cultural and vital services emerging from life-environment relationships. it addresses humans indirectly, through their desires, and consists of a rapid and exponential process of deterioration, whose consequences will reverberate for a long time. second, the ecological crisis which affects the ecosystem services that protect life on the planet. we are referring to irreversible damage of more than half of these services. it addresses both humans and other living beings indirectly, through their needs. lastly, the crisis of life in a broader sense, which involves directly all of life. the speed and the rate of extinction of various life forms have increased dramatically, while biodiversity has declined. these crises, while alarming, provide a pretext for efforts to bring about change. in fact, this pretext is raised by philosophers and writers especially, who tell us the story of how the future should be. they tell us about a future where it is easier to think in a way that focuses neither on humans nor on the nonhuman world, but on the different kinds of relationships in which humans and nonhuman entities coexist. we are told that matteo andreozzi 10 relations – 1.i june 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ future is not only made up of rational thought, but also of our emotions: for example, empathy can play a key role in helping us build a balanced relationship with nonhuman nature. in the future, we are told about ethics as that which comes from the desire to live in harmony with each member of the natural community to which we belong. in this beautiful future, we have understood that preserving nature does not just mean to protect some of the means to our ends. it is to recognize a value in nature that is independent from our judgment or – at least – from our present utility. to put it another way, it means to go beyond anthropocentrism! that is the impetus for this journal. led publisher and i have launched this peer-reviewed journal just to create a professional interdisciplinary forum to discuss moral and scientific issues that concern the increasing need to question the narrow anthropocentric paradigms in studying both interspecific and intraspecific relationships between all biological ‘species’ – humans included – and between these and the abiotic components of the environment. we all need to be personally involved in the network of natural relationships, and we need it because every relationship is important when making the above sketched never-ending story a reality. relations will play a key role both in making the never-ending story of these relationships truly worth telling and in going beyond the anthropocentric approach to them. now the characters, the setting, and the plot have been put into play. so, if you are interested in fleshing out this narrative, perhaps your time has come: tell us your story! introduction: the importance of tom regan for animal ethics 5 is sn 2 2 8 0 -9 9 5 3 beyond anthropocentrism 1 • january 2013 inside the emotional lives of non-human animals a minding animals international utrecht 2012 pre-conference event special issue (genoa, italy, 12-13 may, 2012) edited by m. andreozzi, r. bennison, a. massaro, s. tonutti capabilities approach and animal bioethics • michele panzera animals and our emotions. how to approach the study of an interspecific community? • sabrina tonutti advocacy and animal rights • kim stallwood the emotional lives of animals: a christian perspective • alma massaro – gianfranco nicora animalia: ontology and ethics in weak antispeciesism • leonardo caffo the contemporary debate on experimentation • susanna penco – rosagemma ciliberti non-human animals and genetic engineering • arianna ferrari the relationship between humans and other animals in european animal welfare legislation • paola sobbrio human’s best friends? • matteo andreozzi elationsre l a t io n s . b e y o n d a n t h r o p o c e n t r is m 1 • 2 0 1 3 r 7.1-2 november 2019 the respect extended to animals: studies in honor and in memory of tom regan conference event special issue (florence, italy, february 20, 2018) edited by francesco allegri editorial exploring non-anthropocentric paradigms 7 francesco allegri introduction the importance of tom regan for animal ethics 13 francesco allegri studies and research contributions verso i diritti degli animali. riflessioni e dibattiti nella storia 19 del pensiero vilma baricalla respect, inherent value, subjects-of-a-life: some reflections 41 on the key concepts of tom regan’s animal ethics francesco allegri animalismo e non violenza. l’incidenza della lezione gandhiana 61 sul pensiero di tom regan luisella battaglia almost like waging war: tom regan and the conditions 77 for using violence for the sake of animals federico zuolo relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ relations. beyond anthropocentrism 6 comments, debates, reports and interviews ricordo di tom regan. intervista con luigi lombardi vallauri 95 francesco allegri author guidelines 99 relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 13 the importance of tom regan for animal ethics introduction francesco allegri università degli studi di siena doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2019-0102-all2 allegri2@unisi.it this special issue of relations is dedicated to the animal ethics of tom regan, the american philosopher who passed away in early 2017 1. it is not necessary to explain in so many words the importance of tom regan to the readers of relations, being a figure well present in the pages of this journal. he is the philosopher who, together with peter singer, in the seventies of the twentieth century marked a fundamental turning point in the moral consideration of non-human animals. if until then the prevailing philosophical thought had prescribed only indirect obligations towards sentient beings not belonging to our species (with several exceptions in the history of philosophy, as we will see from vilma baricalla’s article), in the middle of the decade, with the publication of peter singer’s animal liberation and tom regan’s works, especially the case for animal rights, animals enter fully into the moral community, as patients to whom we have direct moral obligations. as cochrane writes, the theories of peter singer and tom regan has been the most influential contributions to animal ethics: animal liberation and the case for animal rights have provided a reference point for all subsequent scholarly works on debates about our obligations to nonhuman animals. (cochrane 2012, 7) if, in order to justify the attribution of full moral status to non-human sentient beings, singer refers to a utilitarian moral theory, regan instead develops an opposite approach, basing moral consideration towards other animals on deontological grounds and using the language of rights. but on a practical level his position is convergent with singer’s in con 1 exactly on february 17, 2017. relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2019-0102-all2 mailto:allegri2@unisi.it https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ francesco allegri 14 demning all human activities in which animals are denied the moral relevance they deserve. a year after regan died, in february 2018, the italian institute of bioethics wanted to remember him by organizing a conference in his honor entitled the respect extended to animals: remembering tom regan one year after his death, which was held in florence. in addition to the writer, the conference was attended by vilma baricalla, luisella battaglia, luigi lombardi vallauri, corrado migliorucci, francesca mugnai, simone pollo and federico zuolo. in the following pages most of the papers presented at that conference are published in a revised and corrected version. the order in which the texts are placed is as follows. at the beginning we put a historical introduction to the theme of animal ethics. then a presentation and an evaluation of the theoretical framework with which regan believes he can justify his innovative positions in terms of animal ethics. subsequently, the questions of practical ethics, which in the interventions of the conference lead to issues of political philosophy. finally, a memory and a testimony of someone who knew the american philosopher in person. vilma baricalla introduces the topic of animal ethics through an excursus on some of the thinkers who in the history of western thought have anticipated the current philosophical theses in defense of animal rights, moving against the prevailing approach that denied animals any moral status. the article by francesco allegri reconstructs the theoretical premises of tom regan’s animal ethics, focusing the attention on three key concepts of kantian nature (used by the american philosopher in order to extend the concept of right to the animal world): respect, inherent value, subjects-of-a-life. the conclusions of the author are that, although regan’s theory still remains the most rigorous foundation of an animal ethics alternative to peter singer’s utilitarian approach, it is not without unresolved problems or not entirely satisfactory solutions. in the final part of the paper allegri points out some of them and he try to overcome them by inserting elements of gradualism into the reganian theoretical framework. the following two contributions are more specifically aimed at regan’s practical ethics, and in particular at the link between non-violence and the defense of animal rights. luisella battaglia in “the impact of the gandhian lesson on tom regan’s thinking” analyzes the importance of gandhian reflection for regan’s animal ethics. in particular, battaglia points out that, although non-violence has often been defined as a patient acceptance of sufferrelations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the importance of tom regan for animal ethics 15 ing, a passive resistance exemplified by the gospel precept of turning the other cheek, it is in reality a strenuous commitment, a courageous action aimed at asserting conculcated rights, a strategy that aims at effectiveness in the search for justice. according to battaglia, in opposition to the anthropocentric model of domination, in gandhi as in regan there is the full recovery of an ethical-philosophical tradition based on the model of kinship or fraternity and that insists on the possibility of extending the rules of justice to all living beings. the result of this perspective is the duty of vegetarianism and the radical opposition to any practice that treats animals as means at the service of human interests. federico zuolo identifies an ambiguity and a potential contradiction in regan’s position about the conditions for the legitimate use of violence for the sake of animals. although regan does not shy away from the possibility that violence might be needed under certain circumstances, thus rejecting absolute pacifism, he says that such conditions are never met in practice. however, according to zuolo, his overall position is more likely to justify violence than he admits. by means of a comparison between regan’s considerations on violence and just war theory, he shows that regan is admittedly less supportive of violence than his theory would afford. zuolo concludes by gesturing towards some possible changes that his thought should undergo in order to adjust this incoherence. finally we have the contribution of lombardi vallauri, who preferred to express his reflections on regan through an interview. in it, in addition to recalling his personal encounters with the american philosopher, he highlights the points of reganian animal ethics that most impressed and influenced him. in particular his connection with gandhi and indian thought. references cochrane, alasdair. 2012. animal rights without liberation. new york: columbia university press. relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ narrating the death narrating the death cristina rebuffo researcher, centro studi sul pensiero contemporaneo (ce.s.pe.c.) professor, scuola superiore per mediatori linguistici (ssml) a. macagno rebuffocristina@gmail.com sisto, davide. 2013. narrare la morte. dal romanticismo al post-umano. pisa: ets. 220 pp. € 19.00. isbn 978-88-467-3851-6 i could open my review with a short praise on the literary quality of davide sisto’s book for its rare elegance and then i could concentrate my attention on the success of his work relating to contents, trying to outline as much as possible the structure of this dense essay about death but this strategy would be reducing, fragmentary and not that precise. both the elements, the literary style and the contents, are just the two faces of the same prism. the “narrative” style adopted by the author is precisely the only way to put into practice the message that it wants to transmit to the reader: the chosen literary style is indeed an act of devotion to reflections transmitted by its. sisto seems to say, even in the title of the book, that the unique possible structure of a speech about death has a narrative nature. this narration is, of course, a philosophical narration but just because philosophy acts as a glue between many other types of narration, many inter-disciplinary references. so it is not a coincidence that the book starts with a cinematographic quote which will be used during the whole treatise as a leitmotiv or that at the beginning of each chapter the author wrote a quote taken from the history of rock of the last twenty years – a subject of which sisto demonstrates to know the most sophisticated and precise aspects, including in this way his extra-academic experience as a music writer. moreover, the prism i wrote about before shows a third face which is not less important than the others, i mean the pedagogic-educational aspect. i guess that sisto does not want only to elaborate a good theoretical essay about the chosen theme, i mean the end of the life. starting from a genuine philosophical speech about the death, sisto also wants to offer “the theme from which philosophy tries to take again the cultural lead of the western society” (17). sisto’s aim – especially shown in an introductive paragraph titled lontano dallo stordimento. la coscienza mailto:rebuffocristina@gmail.com http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 cristina rebuffo 244 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ della morte – is not to define the death as whatever concept, even because this would be “a concept empty in itself, like ‘the walnut skin’, because without any corresponding intuition” (35). his aim is to educate on the reflection about death, on the becoming conscious of our limit, of our ontological status as a “reed”, as pascal wrote. therefore, the speech around death can be elaborated in two very different ways, thus to which the two parts of the work are dedicated. at first exactly the narrative procedure, used by the author, “concentrated on the agreement of knowledges in view of a ‘visceral’ interpretation” (21), fitting a schellingian, symbolical conception of the death. on the other side a second type of comprehension of the death which “aims at the knowledge of phenomena and events which proceeds through the orderly strategy of the opposition and of the sectioning” (21) from which a mechanistic vision of the nature and the typical post-human idea of immortality are inferred. in the first case (the cosmopolitan philosophy) the narration flows from the consciousness about the opacity of the death’s image and from the consideration that even if humans know and have consciousness about their death as the reality which interests them at most, nevertheless they do not know its essence. for this reason that narration just tries to conduct a meditation starting from that reality without taking the risk of a (fallacious) scientific report. in the second case (the meta-level philosophy), at contrary, the analysis tries to give a rationalistic explication, to elaborate defining theories of the concept of death. well, i find that the cinematographic quote used as a springboard of the entire treatise, i mean the 2003 drama film directed by iñarritu 21 grams, is in fact very perceptive. protagonist paul rivers’ vicissitudes themselves are actually emblematic for what concerns the double perspective facing the death individuated by sisto. during the first part of the movie paul seems to be in line with the meta-level philosophy perspective as demonstrated by his attempt of life extension through a very delicate heart transplant to avoid his sad destiny. on the other hand, in the second part, the protagonist refuses medical care proposed by his doctor since the first appearance of reject symptoms of his new heart by his body. during that phase rivers becomes conscious about the inevitability of the death, and this consciousness becomes explicit in the final monologue, when he compares the vagueness of the death to a stack of five nickels, to a hummingbird or to a chocolate bar. cosmopolitan philosophy, then. a “philosophy which feels at home everywhere”, as written by sisto: in a movie, in a rock song, in an artwork, in poetry, in literature generally. this kind of philosophy can adopt a hermeneutic view facing the death’s ontological opacity, i mean a view really more successful than scientistic descriptions. “through descriptions and http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 davide sisto, “narrare la morte. dal romanticismo al post-umano” 245 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ dialogues between the characters, representing the range of the writer’s personality or fantasy aspects, a certain phenomenon – the death, in this case – is plumbed from many points of view, which can in this way reveal more aspects of that phenomenon instead of the scientific survey and its formal strictness” (43). so, regaining gabriel marcel’s famous dichotomy, the cosmopolitan philosophy is that approach which honestly addresses itself to the death like to a mystery which cannot find – by definition – a solution, and not like to a problem where the subject and the object are extern each other, producing in this way an analytical approach addressed to a solution which – it is important to repeat it again – is not possible when we are dealing with the death. there is not separation between us and our death, therefore it is not possible to give a definition or a conceptual explication about it forgetting completely the participation of the i who live it and experiment it. like when we describe a city – sisto writes alluding to giuseppe longo – we cannot exclude smells, noises and colors we perceive, when we try to describe the death we cannot forget the typical vagueness that phenomena have when we are totally absorbed in them. this kind of phenomena must be felt more than thought. well, sisto regains exactly in this perspective the german romanticism’s teaching, especially schelling’s one, maybe his favorite author. the thanatological conception elaborated in that cultural environment, a conception based on the importance of the symbol and through it, has been able to “catch an interpretation of the relationship between visible and invisible and a spiritual conception of the nature which confirm the anti-dicothomical character of the cosmopolitan philosophy as a narration addressed to the polygamy of knowledges” (53), against the modern cartesian tradition. so sisto ventures into a long, complex and incisive analysis of the german term sinnbild starting from its scission in its two structural elements, i mean sense and image, spirit and nature, to observe that the romantic idea of the death as a palingenetic event (so an event able to re-establish the correct relationship between the sense/spirit and the image/nature) was able to conduct to the liberation of the spirituality contained in the nature itself. and about this nature romanticism gave a completely particular vision, “totally removed from a comprehension which outlines it as a mere matter or as a mechanicistic instrument in the hands of a human-subject provided with consciousness” (77) and “deeply woven with the spiritual weave” (77). this romantic narration of the symbolical death was then the mirror of the human condition in its more dramatic but real aspect, i mean a condition always hanging in the balance between the sense and the non-sense and describable – as i wrote before – just through a never ending mix of the philosophicalrational reflection and the narration. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 cristina rebuffo 246 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ now, this schellingian configuration has been passed, since hegel and during the contemporary age, in view of a dualistic cartesian structure of the choice and of the separation, giving a rational and logical-formal interpretation of the reality. the meta-level philosophy, to which the second part of the book is dedicated, exactly born from this inclination to the separation and the contradiction as the only ways about the interpretation of reality, the link between the man and the world, the life and the death. the death has been pushed in that way out of the life, and all in all this has complicated more and more the comprehension of the relationship between life and death. as the author says, this is also demonstrated by the contemporary difficulty in defying what the natural death is, where this difficulty is emphasized by the results of the secularization and by the biomedical progresses, as if the death was a cultural and historical construct more than an existential and biological fact. for these reasons, we can see how much this essay is important for what concerns the recent debates around the bioethics field, especially because the reflections about what the natural death is, also conducted, in the contemporary age, to the definition of the “juridical death”, which radicalized the soul/body cartesian dualism in the body/brain one. the death – as underlined in the fourth paragraph of this second chapter – has been, in the contemporary age, literally “removed” and not just “domesticated”, as already written by philippe ariès. the estrangement of the thought about the death from the contemporary humans’ consciousness has been possible, and it also was considered necessary, in a society like ours, thanks to the deep techno-scientific transformations in which that society has its roots; those transformations, in fact, have de-symbolized and de-mythologized both life and death: “[…] the elimination of any symbolic or mythic character from the woven life and death processes – sisto writes – goes at the same speed with their radical medicalization and professionalization” (138). thanks to that medicalization, the death stopped to be an upsetting event for people lives and it stopped to weigh that deeply, for example, on the dead one’s relatives and friends because that process also conducted towards one more solipsistic condition of dying. today men often die, in fact, alone in hospitals, very far away from the social environment where they always have lived, and this underlines still more the separation already very deep between life and death, or, in this case, between the alive ones, who can still take outside the death, and the dying one, which has already the death inside. sisto lets us highlight that it is not for hazard that any medical science handbook contains information about how the problem of death must be considered or managed: the medical science’s objective is to save and prolong lives and not to give answers about their end. therefore, sisto seems to http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 davide sisto, “narrare la morte. dal romanticismo al post-umano” 247 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ declare – recuperating a very incisive image contained in günther anders’ outdatedness of human beings – that the medical science can, if at all, give us the illusion of being something like peaches in syrup, reproducible in series forever and never expired. for all these reasons, the contemporary impossibility of defying what the natural death is, is just the result of this ascent of the “technological” and the parallel descent of the “natural” and so of the bodily as well, where this is considered the real responsible of the humans’ lacking immortality. in conclusion, the philosophical path drawn by sisto tries to show that at the end death is such of a watershed between two big perspectives: on one side, the one which derives from the romanticism, sustained by who feels his death, who includes the death in his life, and on the other side the one sustained by who totally excludes that thought pushing it out from his life. the narratologic perspective and the scientistic one, and an unsurmountable limit between them. in this way he remembers us that the first type man is the only one who can reconnect the nature and the spirit, the image and the sign, introducing the exteriority of the death-event in his life, and so he is the only one who can recognize and accept his genuine and limited identity, recognizing himself as “human, all too human” and rejecting the promethean presumptions, which are the bastion of the posthumanism. references sisto, davide. 2013. narrare la morte. dal romanticismo al post-umano. pisa: ets. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 cows, cookstoves, and climate change: a non-anthropocentric view of household energy use in the rural indian himalayas 137 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ cows, cookstoves, and climate change a non-anthropocentric view of household energy use in the rural indian himalayas deepti chatti school of forestry and environmental studies yale university, new haven, ct usa doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2018-001-chat deepti.chatti@yale.edu how are cows, cookstoves, and climate change connected? how do human/non-human relations affect energy use in rural homes in the indian himalayas? how are these themes related to air pollution, health, and climate change? household air pollution in the form of smoke from cookstoves in low-income homes in the global south adversely affects the health of people exposed to the smoke, particularly women and children, and contributes to global climate change (smith 2010; balakrishnan et al. 2011; lim et al. 2012). many development actors and government organizations have attempted to transition poor families away from “traditional” cookstoves to “modern” cookstoves, many with noble energy justice intentions in mind, but have met limited success 1. many families continue to use their “traditional” cookstoves, which typically use a combination of solid biomass fuels such as firewood, animal dung, and crop residue. energy studies researchers have attempted to understand the development failures in household energy, and have proposed factors such as expenses, inability of the cooktove to meet local cooking needs, and gender dynamics (mobarak et al. 2012). based on research in the rural indian himalayas, 1 i bracket “traditional”, “modern”, and “improved” (used later in this article) in quotes to draw attention to the fact that these are contested terms with unstable meanings. what is “traditional”, “modern” and “improved” depends on the context and the perspective of the observer. however unstable these categories are, they are useful analytics to retain for the rest of the paper, so i will continue to use them within quotes. these terms are used frequently in household energy literature, and so i find it productive to remain in conversation with these terms, while still drawing attention to the problematic assumptions built into them. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ http://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2018-001-chat mailto:deepti.chatti@yale.edu deepti chatti 138 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ this paper will demonstrate how efforts to promote improved cookstoves bring different visions of stoves together in rural kitchens – as a technology meant to generate heat for cooking food, and as a device at the heart(h) of energy and mass flows between people, their livestock, and their fields. drawing on eighteen months of fieldwork conducted between 2013-17 in rural himachal pradesh in india, this paper will examine the effect that human-animal relationships have on household energy decisions, ultimately affecting individual health and the environment. this approach expands existing scholarship in energy studies, which has historically been anthropocentric. multi-species entanglements are constitutive of life on earth, and anthropological scholarship has increasingly recognized that the study of the human cannot exclude “our entanglement with other kinds of living selves”, what eduardo kohn has called the “anthropology of life” (kohn 2007). environmental anthropologists have long studied the relationship between people, animals, and plants, but new scholarship in multi-species ethnography aims to push beyond the exploration of relations; it “aims to decenter the human in ethics and theory” (ogden et al. 2013). scholars are ethnographically illustrating the connections between humans, animals, and plants, seeing non-humans as agentive beings, and human/ non-human relationships in non-hierarchical ways (haraway 2008; kirksey and helmreich 2010). this relatively recent scholarship builds on a much deeper scholarly engagement on the way human society is connected to its environment. in this paper, i add further empirical evidence to this conversation by showing that limiting our analysis to the human misses important cross-species connections that influence household energy use in the rural indian himalayas. energy use by low-income families across developing countries has drawn a lot of attention from development and environmental organizations, as i will discuss in some detail below. questions about why people use energy in certain ways cannot be fully answered if we restrict our lens to human family members. by expanding our boundary of the household to include human and non-human family members, we gain a more nuanced understanding of the various aspects that rural families need to consider while making energy decisions. based on ethnographic research carried out in the western indian himalayas, this paper discusses how cows, cookstoves, and climate change are inextricably linked. but why is household energy use important to study? approximately 40% of the world’s population meets their daily energy needs by using stove technologies made locally and burning solid biomass fuels like wood, dung, and crop residue (masera et al. 2015). these are subsistence energy needs, mainly for cooking, which is vital to the survival of low-income http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ cows, cookstoves, and climate change 139 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ families all over the world. the smoke from cooking fires causes death and disease when inhaled; researchers estimate that in 2010, 3.5 million premature deaths annually could be attributed to solid biomass fuel use, called “household air pollution” (lim et al. 2012) 2. in some regions of the world, like south asia, household air pollution is the leading risk factor for disease (lim et al. 2012). in india alone, a million people die prematurely every year due to household air pollution, and it is the leading cause of death and disease for indian women and children (smith and sagar 2014). in addition to the adverse health effects discussed above, household air pollution also exacerbates global climate change when emitted into the atmosphere (sagar and kartha 2007), in addition to causing hotspots of forest degradation in some areas (bailis et al. 2015). the climate impacts of woodfuel smoke comes from black carbon emissions, which are particles that increase radiative forcing by trapping more solar radiation in the atmosphere (for a detailed explanation of the global environmental impacts of household energy, see bond et al. 2004). the adverse health and environmental effects of this “mundane bioenergy” (chatti et al. 2017) have prompted numerous development organizations and government agencies to attempt to transition families to “modern” energy technologies such as “improved” biomass cookstoves, and liquefied petroleum gas (lpg) or electricity. however, these programs have seen mixed success in terms of changing the way that low-income families cook 3. in rural himachal pradesh in the western indian himalayas, where i conduct my research, many families have multiple cookstoves using a variety of fuels. these include a mud stove called a mitti ka chulha, a dual purpose cooking-and-space-heating metallic stove called a tandoor, a stove that runs on lpg, and a stove that runs on electricity (called an “induction” stove). all of these are usually used in indoor settings. additionally, it is common to have a three stone fire outdoors for heating bathing water, and cooking food for livestock. most families in this region rely on agriculture (a combination of grains, fruits, and vegetables) and livestock (typically goats) for their livelihoods, and several households keep cows to provide dairy for family consumption. as eloquently described in radhika govindrajan’s article the goat that died for family, interspecies kinship in the indian himalayas is produced through the “embodied experience of 2 for comparison, ambient air pollution accounted for 3.1 million deaths in 2010 (lim et al. 2012). 3 for a history of failed cookstove programs in india, see meena khandelwal and colleagues’ excellent paper in world development (khandelwal et al. 2017). for a description of the modest successes and unique regional challenges of improved cookstoves programs in india, see barnes et al. 2012. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ deepti chatti 140 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ everyday entanglement in relations of care” (govindrajan 2015). while govindrajan’s article focuses on a different topic – the affective relationship, much like that between a parent and child, between humans and goats who are ritually sacrificed, my research explores the relations of care and kinship that emerge between humans and cows through the everyday acts of providing food for one’s family, human and non-human. feeding one’s cows requires collecting fresh grass and leaves for them twice a day in one’s fields or common wooded areas, and carrying it back for them to eat. it requires cooking food for the cows once a day, and providing them with fresh water. feeding one’s human family requires collecting a fuel, and burning it to cook food. when i asked jyoti 4, a farmer with two cows who cooked her daily meals on two kinds of stoves – a mud stove using solid biomass fuels, and a metallic stove using lpg gas – if she could ever imagine a time in the future when she wouldn’t use her “traditional” mud stove, she replied: “as long as i have cows, i will use my mud stove. i need to feed them everyday, don’t i! i will always need to bring them leaves to eat. i burn the leftover branches in my stove when i cook my food. what will i do with all these branches if i don’t have a mud stove?”. this puzzled me, as in the literature on cookstoves i had only ever encountered “cow” as a part of the word “cow-dung”, in the context of combustible biomass. but here jyoti was saying something else – that her responsibility to provide food for her non-human family, her cows, linked her to her responsibility to cook for herself and her human family. once her cows nibbled the green leaves off the branches she had brought for them, jyoti dried them, and used them as fuel in her “traditional” mud stove. as long as jyoti kept cows, she planned to keep her “traditional” stove. in jyoti’s mind, her kitchen, fields, and livestock were interconnected places to be managed together. efforts to get households to adopt “improved” cookstoves have always been intertwined with attempting to get households to dis-adopt their “traditional” stoves, as it is the use of the latter that is seen as the root of environmental and social issues. some newer stoves, especially ones that use lpg as a fuel, are aspirational technologies that many families desire to acquire and use. however, the adoption of new stoves does not automatically lead to the dis-adoption of older stoves, and this vexes and puzzles household energy researchers. in project meetings and conferences of cookstove researchers, a big theme of discussion is how to get families to move away from their traditional stoves. whether their motivations are health, climate, or gendered time use, the traditional chulha (cookstove) 4 following ethnographic conventions, all names of people in this article are pseudonyms. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ cows, cookstoves, and climate change 141 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ is seen as the problem. however, as discussed in a recent paper based on fieldwork in the same region, there are a complex web of factors that need to be understood to properly understand energy choices (jagadish and dwivedi 2018), and in this paper i argue that understanding human-animal relations is integral to this. references bailis, robert, et al. 2015. “the carbon footprint of traditional woodfuels”. nature climate change. balakrishnan, kalpana, et al. 2011. “air pollution from household solid fuel combustion in india: an overview of exposure and health related information to inform health research priorities”. global health action 4. barnes, douglas f., priti kumar, and keith openshaw. 2012. cleaner hearths, better homes: new stoves for india and the developing world. new delhi: oxford university press world bank. bond, tami, chandra venkataraman, and omar masera. 2004. “global atmospheric impacts of residential fuels”. energy for sustainable development 8 (3): 20-32. govindrajan, radhika. 2015. “‘the goat that died for family’: animal sacrifice and interspecies kinship in india’s central himalayas”. american ethnologist 42 (3): 504-19. haraway, donna jeanne. 2008. when species meet. minneapolis london : university of minnesota press. jagadish, arundhati, and puneet dwivedi. 2018. “in the hearth, on the mind: cultural consensus on fuelwood and cookstoves in the middle himalayas of india”. energy research & social science 37: 44-51. khandelwal, meena, et al. 2017. “why have improved cook-stove initiatives in india failed?”. world development 92: 13-27. kirksey, stefan, and stefan helmreich. 2010. “the emergence of multispecies ethnography”. cultural anthropology 25 (4): 545-76. kohn, eduardo. 2007. “how dogs dream: amazonian natures and the politics of transspecies engagement”. american ethnologist 34 (1): 3-24. lim, stephen s., et al. 2012. “a comparative risk assessment of burden of disease and injury attributable to 67 risk factors and risk factor clusters in 21 regions, 1990-2010: a systematic analysis for the global burden of disease study 2010”. the lancet 380 (9859): 2224-60. masera, omar r., et al. 2015. “environmental burden of traditional bioenergy use”. annual review of environment and resources 40: 121-50. mobarak, a.m., et al. 2012. “low demand for nontraditional cookstove technologies”. proceedings of the national academy of sciences of the united states of america 109 (27): 10815-20. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ deepti chatti 142 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ogden, laura a., billy hall, and kimiko tanita. 2013. “animals, plants, people, and things: a review of multispecies ethnography”. environment and society 4 (1): 5-24. sagar, a.d., and s. kartha. 2007. “bioenergy and sustainable development?”. annual review of environment and resources 32: 131-67. smith, kirk r. 2010. “what’s cooking? a brief update”. energy for sustainable development 14 (4): 251-2. smith, kirk r., and ambuj sagar. 2014. “making the clean available: escaping india’s chulha trap”. energy policy 75: 410-4. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ against animal rights? a comment on "contro i diritti degli animali? proposta per un antispecismo postumanista (against animal right? a proposal to a post-human antispeciesism)", by roberto marchesini against animal rights? a comment on contro i diritti degli animali? proposta per un antispecismo postumanista (against animal right? a proposal to a post-human antispeciesism), by roberto marchesini alberto giovanni biuso associate professor of theoretical philosophy, university of catania doi: 10.7358/rela-2016-002-bius agbiuso@unict.it for horkheimer, the “indescribable, unimaginable suffering of the animals, the animal hell in human society, […] the sweat, blood, despair of the animals” (1978, 66-7) are the grounds of capitalism. however, it is clear that these features are not exclusively capitalistic. our fear for animality is ancient, profound, ancestral. this fear of ours is understandable, after all, because it is based on the need to mark the territory, identify the pack’s identity, impose a hierarchy. all these elements are obviously deeply related to an animal nature. the homo sapiens shows his animality precisely as he is trying to distance himself from it. this particular animal, then, has had to create conceptual and practical means to protect himself from himself, using his own tools. herein lies the root of the humanist paradigm. there are many well-known examples of this view: the adoption of the human as the measure of all things (greek sophists), pico della mirandola’s de hominis dignitate, the vitruvian icon by leonardo da vinci, representing a human being at the centre of the universe. in order to describe these and other manifestations of humanism at its fullest, richard ryder came up with the term speciesism in 1970, with a clear analogy with racism and sexism. this term is rather ambiguous as it flattens animal specificity within the intra-specific discriminations of our species, but is nevertheless useful to define the consequences of something much deeper: namely, the humanist paradigm. this is paradigm à la kuhn and, in this sense, it increasingly shows its weaknesses, flaws, mistakes, contradictions and unresolved conundrums. the aim of roberto marchesini’s reflection as a whole and of his mailto:agbiuso@unict.it http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 alberto giovanni biuso 218 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ latest monograph in particular is precisely the criticism of speciesism. this criticism is intended and practiced as a signal, a caesura, a fracture, a break within the humanist paradigm and supports a new and more correct anthropological and epistemological paradigm. the goal is to identify the speciesist roots of humanism and the humanist roots of speciesism. indeed, humanism is based on some fundamental principles, a few precise negations and several categorisations. the principles are the following: “1. the paradigm of the human incompleteness […]. 2. the concept of culture as autopoietic, autarkic, disjunctive and elevating […]. 3. the ergonomic view of techne, conceived of as the art of making tools that, in an ancillary way, improve the inherent predicates without polluting the purity of the human. 4. the concept of episteme as the measure and subsumption of the world […]. 5. the idea of the human as an end and as a meaning, consequently emptying all other entities of significance” (marchesini 2014, 23-4). this very short list is enough to understand that speciesism concerns the view that homo sapiens has of himself rather than his evaluation of the other animals. speciesism is a way to consider his position in being rather then a set of discriminative or violent behaviours towards the rest of being. being born out of fear, humanism is primarily a radical negation of animality as such. first of all of one’s own animality and, only then, of the animality of others. the humanist confuses her animal being with the mere corporeality and mistakes the animality of the non-human for the simple mechanism of its organs. the deep spiritualism of this reductionist conception of animality shows that “the humanist paradigm is based on a substitution that, following the theocentric medieval canon, simply replaces god with the human being. in this perspective of the human being, we can talk about a onto-utopia, namely an ontopoeisis placed within a devaluation of nature, which is considered distopic respect to the human predicates” (marchesini 2014, 25). theocentrism is, therefore, one of the constitutive cores of humanism, which restlessly operates in favour of distancing and, at the same time, of homologation. the aim is to distance the human from the rest of animality, while homologating animality into uniform categories which is an obvious mistake both on an ontological and on a logical level. simply, the animal does not exist. this categorisation causes the dismissal of the only real difference: not the one between the human and other animals, but rather the one between animals, humans included. it is “clear that our species is different from the others, but the same cannot be said for chimpanzees, elephants, hummingbirds – just to make some examples. […] this interpretation gives life to an essentialist anthropocentrism, able to disjoint the human being from the network of living beings and connect him to a dimension which http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 against animal rights? 219 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ is other from nature” (marchesini 2014, 89). in this way, the heterospecific is flattened, discredited, simplified and dissolved. with the same mistaken gesture, the human as contiguous to the nature that he is, along with difference within the nature that he inhabits, is flattened, glorified, simplified and dissolved. hence some behaviours that are supposed to respect difference and, instead, are fully part of the humanist paradigm. it does not make sense, for instance, to ask what animal is the most intelligent because this question obviously takes a very precise form of intelligence – that of humans – as a hierarchical criterion. and human intelligence is, too, the result of hypersimplification, as there are several and different kinds of intelligence within the human species. the conviction that the animal different from us it totally other and unknowable derives from this simplification/devaluation. on the contrary, many cases – e.g. that of the gorilla koko, who learnt and used the language of american deaf-mutes – demonstrate that “the unknowable animal is a humanist invention, and the umwelten are not separated entities but rather overlapping contexts with several thresholds of encounter” (marchesini 2014, 53). therefore, the negation of human animality is based upon and explained by the negation of identity and difference. it is a negation of difference because “speciesism is the negation of the otherness of heterospecifics” (marchesini 2014, 28). this negation of identity unifies the entire animality as active life of matter, and is the core of the human presumption of being something special in the living realm. the human is unique, of course, as unique as the form of existence of any other living being. every life form is unique in biological terms: there are no gaps or breaks, but rather developments and differences within continuity. even in some antispeciesist practices “the separation between the human and the non-human is actually a form of speciesism, as it relies on an aprioristic dichotomy between the two terms, that is, it is radically based on humanist speciesism” (marchesini 2014, 105). thus, real overcoming of speciesism implies overcoming the very concepts of centrality and primacy of any entity in the world. difference is a shared by all the species: it is an identity that unifies us in difference. speciesism also means to think that this difference is not ontological but hierarchical. this is what happens whenever – with the best intentions – we claim that the heterospecific only has a lesser ability compared to the human. “are we sure”, though, “that by saying that between the human and the other species there are only quantitative differences, we do not fall into an even worse anthropocentric statement? viewing the others as subjects minus habentes and not as owners of different predicates, aliud http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 alberto giovanni biuso 220 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ habentes, is one of the most boorish forms of anthropocentrism” (marchesini 2014, 58). on the contrary, we must understand and accept that it is not possible “to establish if the perceptive canon of a cat or a horse is the best, as these perceptions are specialised in in order to accomplish functional goals that do not overlap. the function of an attribute cannot be considered in terms of plus and minus, and no species can be the measure of another, because adaptive means cannot overlap and each species  – including the human – is not a neutral entity but emerges from an immersive declination” (marchesini 2014, 65). speciesism also means being convinced – as many philosophies and “progressive” political stances have historically been – that there is no such thing as human nature and that the homo sapiens coincides with that described by pico della mirandola, leon battista alberti and other humanists: namely, a historical, voluntary and autopoietic entity. but “considering the human being as the exclusive result of social or historical contingencies means supporting the humanist idea of pico’s manifesto. if human nature is negated or reduced to the point of being inconsistent, what follows is a clear form of speciesism” (marchesini 2014, 104); “[…] those who reject speciesism and yet negate the complexity and articulation of human nature inadvertently adhere to the very disjunctive mechanism that grounds speciesism” (marchesini 2014, 93). the negation of human nature is also articulated by attributing temporality only to homo sapiens as well as describing non-human nature as the realm of the invariable and the same. “on the contrary, if we consider the thought of complexity, as it emerges from the 1960s onwards, it is clear that the meaning of time, in its two terms of contingency and necessity, has come back to the fore” (marchesini 2014, 95). the twofold negation of the temporality of nature and of the consistency of the human originates from some forms of “progressive” speciesism, which are as subtle as it is tricky. it originates the acknowledgement of the necessity guiding the natural world and the assignment of free will only to the human being, “seen as free, responsible for his destiny as he is undetermined and therefore able to escape a canon, to emancipate and determine himself” (marchesini 2014, 89). it originates the universalism of rights and therefore the application, to non-human beings, of criteria of liberation typical of our species; this universal principle is “already anthropocentric per se, as it is informed by the human matrix that thinks it can take a framework (which is a right) that can also apply to the non-human sphere” (marchesini 2014, 100). despite the merits of their works, scholars such as peter singer and tom regan belong to the universal canon and, “in homage to the theoretihttp://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 against animal rights? 221 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ cal, anthropometric coordinates, they follow an inclusive logic towards the human universal instead of the pluriversal required for the formulation of ‘different rights’. the inclusion of non-human animals in the human universal is the most speciesist act there can be, even though its discriminative expression is hidden by an obviously and courageously emancipatory intention – the revolutionary implications of these thesis must be acknowledged with frankness” (marchesini 2014, 101). hence the contraposition between the innate (animal/natural) element and the apprehended (human/cultural) element, while the truth is that complex reality of being-in-the-world consists of the recursion that every animal experiences between the modalities allowed by its structure (innate) and the refinement of practices allowed by that structure (apprehended). all of this mainly produces the concept and the practice of utopia as the separation from the chthonic state of the human and as “the humanist aspiration not to be animals, the utopian desire for a different reality, the concrete fear of seeing ourselves in the eyes of the non-human” (marchesini 2014, 23). if there is no such thing as human nature, all of this is possible. however, all of this is possible only for the human, who sets himself, once again, beyond the identity/difference relationship with the rest of animality. therefore, as marchesini clearly states, “utopia, however disguised it may be, is a speciesist topos because, in accordance with human virtuality and the negligence towards the telluric, it highlights neverland rather than the real. […] whoever professes a utopia inevitably negates human nature and, therefore, places the human being in a different domain to the heterospecifics’, thereby actually supporting the humanist dichotomy between the human and the other species, which is propaedeutic to every speciesist ideology” (marchesini 2014, 99-100). utopia also expresses another fundamental character of humanism: its dualism. “so: a) the animal belongs to nature, while the human to culture. b) the former is the product of phylogenesis, while the latter is destined to ontogenetic freedom. c) the former is closed off within an umwelt, while the latter is able to dwell within a welt” (marchesini 2014, 90). beyond historicisms, (human) rights, utopias and dualisms, the reality of human animality consists of an original and constant hybridation with other animals, and of the hybridation of all those animals with collective, relational and instrumental technologies marking the dynamism of life on our planet: “an introjective anthropocentrism gives birth to such a rooted forma mentis that it is even hard to make oneself understood when claiming that human predicates are the product of hybridation with otherness. the result of this is a trivialisation of the heterospecifics and today’s total negligence of the human towards the relationship with the non-human: we http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 alberto giovanni biuso 222 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ believe we are self-sufficient in our ontological dimension and, at most, we read biodiversity through the ecologic, aesthetic, economic, preservationist lens. in so doing we do not realise that, by depriving the heterospecific of their referential meaning, we will find out that the human is the emperor with no clothes” (marchesini 2014, 82). contra gehlen’s anthropology – marchesini’s ancient and constant polemical target – it must be understood that culture does not exempt the homo sapiens from some biological lack, but rather creates a lack filled by the continuous and necessary relationship with the sphere of other animals, machines 1 and the sacred. this relationship is what we call culture, which is not set against nature (as reduced to matter and res extensa), but is profoundly symbiotic with it in linguistic, operational, and conceptual terms: “we can therefore claim that culture is not a ‘crutch’ used to compensate for the lacks or flaws of human nature, but is like falling in love: namely, it is the construction of a hybrid, expressive space which connects us to the other and associates the thought of ourselves as separated from our partner to a feeling of lack” (marchesini 2014, 131). a self-aware anti-speciesism, thus, rejects any form of ludditism or romantic naturalism. rather sciences “able to give us some descriptive and explanatory frameworks that are increasingly less anthropocentric” (marchesini 2014, 64) and knowledge – even in technological terms – are for antispeciesism a means of contamination with animal otherness, of anthropo-decentrism, of common liberation (of every animal, us included) from the sphere of some needs to which other animals have been functional for centuries. the hope is to reach, slowly but steadily, the goal expressed in the interview presented at the end of the book. in his answers to eleonora adorni, marchesini says that the aim is to “see the animal as a companion and not as an exploitable machine” (marchesini 2014, 167). this itinerary is based on the post-humanist principles that question “a) the ontological exclusivity of the human. b) the pretension to take human features as the term of comparison or measure of non-human entities. c) the idea that the human subsumes the characters of the world. d) the autarkic vision of the anthropoietic process” (marchesini 2014, 144). overcoming these claims, exclusions and hierarchies means preserving the human from his 1 “each technology is like a virus entering the human cell, namely its predicates, and modifying it by re-organising its functions-structures, namely its predicates” (marchesini 2014, 108). “if, conversely, we question the patient, obsequious obedience to techne, suspending the anthropocentric conception of ancillary nature. we realise that the instrument is a bad servant and, contrary to what we might believe, it heavily impacts on the definition of its goals, as it shows new horizons into which we can project ourselves” (marchesini 2014, 111). http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 against animal rights? 223 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ own autopoieitic dreams, which are ready to turn into the nightmare of the inadvertent destruction of his own identity, along with the difference. “de facto, whoever dismisses the importance of otherness, stresses species solipsism, or exalts anthropocentrism seriously endangers human future” (marchesini 2014, 143). it is confirmed, thus, that speciesism is an anthropological and hermeneutic question, and for this reason it is also animal: “the speciesist core does not consist, if not as a temporary geography of discussion, of animal predicates bur rather of the way in which the human being thinks of himself” (marchesini 2014, 90). in this way, one can glimpse one of the most intimate, albeit hidden, elements of nietzsche’s übermensch, whose meaning and anti-speciesist implications are clear: this notion states the overcoming of any hierarchic separation between the human and animality, which the former is and will always be. “the animal that we are and are not is more certain than our cogito, experiments life and is able to find its sources of happiness; it is a body that expresses, in a dionysian way, a will within the impotence that challenges the laws of thermodynamics and transforms resources into endowments, laws into spaces of freedom, and time into an internal universe to be infinitely filled” (marchesini 2014, 55). references horkheimer, max. 1978. dawn & decline: notes 1926-1931 and 1950-1969, translated by michael shaw. new york: seabury press. marchesini, roberto. 2014. contro i diritti degli animali? proposta per un antispecismo postumanista. casal monferrato: sonda. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 philosophy of nutrition: a historical, existential, phenomenological perspective 57 relations – 5.1 june 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ philosophy of nutrition a historical, existential, phenomenological perspective enrico r.a. calogero giannetto full professor of history of science, university of bergamo doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2017-001-gian enrico.giannetto@unibg.it abstract the paper develops a philosophy of nutrition, based on the idea that nutrition is the fundamental condition of possibility of the existence: being presupposes eating. eating meat historically presupposes preying, hunting or fishing, that is killing other animals. this violence is at the roots of our civilisation: it transformed human way of life, human way of being. violence over other species then spreads as violence at the level of the same human, social, relationships. violence over other species has been called “work” and now the division of work allows the majority of individuals for a life without preying and without violence and so for spreading a new way of thinking and feeling, a new way of living. a new antispeciesist ethics become possible, based on a vegan style of living. keywords: nutrition, antispeciesism, ethics, concrete phenomenology, existential philosophy, anthropology, carnivorism, eros/thanatos, origin of violence, human dominion over nature. 1. introduction the philosophy of nutrition could be understood as a new sub-discipline of the more general philosophy, with a thematic object rather overlooked. this perspective arises from the conviction that nutrition would be a trivial biological activity, possibly to be studied mostly in the natural sciences. if anything, it might recognize that nutrition has historically been also linked to religious requirements, then also translated into ethical philosophies or confessional theologies. in this view, the (even the secular contemporary) ethics of nutrition would be not only a marginal part of philosophy, but also a kind of undue infiltration into philosophy, derived from the secuhttp://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/79 http://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2017-001-gian mailto:enrico.giannetto%40unibg.it%20?subject= enrico r.a. calogero giannetto 58 relations – 5.1 june 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ larization of religious reasons and cultivated only by new forms of secular sectarianism, and indeed questioned by anthropological (ethnic) relativity of ethics and of nutrition. feuerbach wrote as a joke that der mensch ist was er isst (man is what he eats) by using assonance as a possible etymological relationship between the two verbs of being and eating in german language (in greek language, there is assonance between estin and the verb esthio) (feuerbach 1866, 1-35). however, one can state that eating is the first action constitutive of being. as nutrition is more and more analysed, we understand that nutrition is an activity that is part of the priority spheres of our relationship to the world which determines our existential pre-understanding: in this way, nutrition historically determines, as their root, all our philosophical theoretical constructions. nutrition is the necessary but not sufficient condition of possibility of existence. this is not a merely biological condition but determines the whole mode of existence as an answer to the basic structure of our finite existence which shows itself as need, as a form of lacking. different forms of nutrition involve different modes of existence. we shall understand ourselves when we shall make an anthropological and historical analysis of our existence in respect to its condition of possibility. heidegger started with an analysis of daily existence in terms of care (heidegger 1927) and marcuse in marxian terms of work (marcuse 1928, 45-68; 1929, 111-28; 1930a; 1930b, 15-30, 304-26; 1931, 541-57; 1932, 13674; 1965), but we cannot understand mankind without an inquiry on its origins. we have to develop a historical phenomenology of existence. our knowledge of the origins of mankind has pointed out that there was a transition from the frugivorous diet of hominids to an omnivorous diet, including meat. now, the point is that eating meat involved perhaps two stages of evolution: a first one, in which human beings ate flesh of already dead animals; a second one, in which human beings became hunters and killed animals to eat them. this second stage transformed completely human beings into predatory animals, basing their nutrition on a violent mode of existence. 2. carnivorism and its origins this violent way of providing nutrition to itself transformed the whole existence of mankind. we are what we eat (feuerbach 1975 [1866], 357407): if we eat other living animals and not the fruits of plants and trees, http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/79 philosophy of nutrition 59 relations – 5.1 june 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ our flesh is constituted by the flesh of other living animals to which we have taken off life. our life as long as we are carnivorous beings is the effect of violence and murder of other living animals: even the energy of a caress or of a kiss comes from this violence that constitutes our body, our existence. carnivorism is at the origin of inter-specific and intra-specific violence. if we started as eating dead beings, then we transformed ourselves into predators. becoming predators, we distorted our pleasure function: we no longer feel pleasure only by eating to preserve our life or by loving acts to transmit and to create life, but as predators we associate the pleasure of eating to that of giving sufferance and death to the living animals, who are objects of preying in such a way that the pleasure of giving sufferance can be separated from the same act of eating. thus, violence can give pleasure. eisler (eisler 1951; giannetto 2011, 13-29) has so explained the rise of sadism from carnivorism, but indeed violence at every level can become an important part of our life because our pleasure function was distorted and violence can generate pleasure and increasing pleasure can be derived from the growth of violence. violence can be pleasure in itself and selfincrementing. in this way, hunting and fishing can become sports, hobbies. the violence without aim of the nazis can thus be explained. impulse to death ceases to be only related to the end of self-sufferance and can be extroverted to the end of other living animals, it can become an impulse to death of other animals. thus the death instinct has been distorted and becomes related to the as well as distorted principle of pleasure and so to violence. the violent practice of preying was the first way to reduce other living beings to objects of our pleasure. this violent mode of existence implies a pre-understanding of the world, of everything that is a part of the world, as an object of our preying and of our pleasure. the first way of classifying every being of the world into a two-sided table of values, good/bad, has to be related to something that can conserve life and to something that can destroy life. thus, there was something that may be eaten and something, like another living animal, that may not be eaten. when becoming carnivorous, conservation of life by means of nutrition started to become paradoxically associated to the destruction of other living beings this ethical table of values has been turned upside down. good became simply what can be eaten and bad something else that cannot be eaten. the first kind of evil related to killing other living animals, then, by carnivorism became transformed into a good skill to provide flesh as food. eros seems to be limited and forbidden in human life by a social-politic “principle of reality” which could make it unrealizable. eros seems confined http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/79 enrico r.a. calogero giannetto 60 relations – 5.1 june 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ only within the human sphere, because a biological “principle of reality” (struggle for life and inter-species violence) seems to negate the extension of eros to relations with other living beings. marcuse’s perspective (marcuse 1955) makes a deconstruction of this freudian idea of reality and necessity. it is only an absolutization of a particular historical, economicsocio-politic, and evolutive, anthropological and environmental condition which is indeed contingent. marcuse makes real an utopy. the eschatological utopy of a future civilisation, based on eros and to be realized through a multilevel revolution, has its foundation on the memory of a primeval condition of a non-carnivorous mankind. indeed, human beings, since their appearance on the earth, have been ejected into an environmental condition where there was a struggle for life: preying animals have been hunting even human beings. in this kind of environmental contexts, even defending themselves could have implied killing other preying animals. and a mimesis of these predator animals like wolves could have transformed human beings into preying animals. in any case, however, the partial or total lack of vegetal food within a particular environment could have induced human beings to negate eros within inter species sphere for the aim of individual survival giving rise to a new species of human beings as preying animals. beginning by satisfying hunger with flesh of other already dead animals, human beings, as well as other animals who then transformed themselves into preying animals (by epigenetical switching on and off some genes) and have been taken as models by humans, have been developing a dependence from the death of other animals and became slaves of flesh food that transformed them into predators and killers of other animals. the death instinct which was part of eros and served to make sufferance cease has been extroverted by a cultural solution: becoming predator animals and eating the flesh of other animals. this was not necessary: humans or other animals could have come back to an environment full of vegetal food and so to a vegetarian diet by switching back on and off some genes. we have to understand darwinian evolution in a new synthesis with epigenetics. struggle for life in the sense of animal preying happens only when a certain animal wants to be constantly present for long times relevant for nutrition within a non-fitting-to-animal-life environment (for human beings: arctic ices, desert zones or other non-fitting environments). successive migrations are not a sufficient motivation to change diet. there are fitting and non-fitting animal life environments: struggle for life and natural selection happen only within environments which are non-fitting for animal life and therefore induce some animals to preying other animals. i believe that no living being was born as carnivorous predator, but became such by some choice of diet at some existential bifurcation (to http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/79 philosophy of nutrition 61 relations – 5.1 june 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ survive by eating meat or to die): epigenetics now explains as phenotypic variations can switch on and off genes and can produce heritable alterations. carnivorous predators are not such by “nature”, but by evolution: carnivorism can be explained as an epigenetical effect that can be modified by a new way of living and eating. we must recognize that some other animals, as carnivorous predators, as dogs and cats that have made a violent pact with human beings to share the fruits of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, to share the food of dominion, have distorted their “philosophy of life” into violence before us, but also that many other living beings have never left the vital dimension of eros. the whole vital power an animal has to live and to be maximally happy is converted against other animals which have to be captured, killed and reduced to food: it becomes violence, destructive power of other living beings. life instinct is so converted into pulsion of killing other living beings. the same body is converted in a sort of “war-machine” against other forms of life. the same pleasure is converted into something related to doing violence. being carnivorous is involved by the rejection of our structural being-for-death. 3. carnivorism implications the non-acceptance of own individual death even if living implies killing other living beings extroverts death instinct: it becomes a destructive instinct against others. death instinct becomes autonomous from eros and opposes it: it becomes thanatos. life opposes death and so life opposes other life. life becomes slave of thanatos and living is reduced to preying, becoming instrument of violence and death, will to power and to dominion, which operates a distortion of pleasure, now slave of dominion. the active principle of life, the vital energy of life, that is eros, is not only subject of sublimation, but also converted into an instrument of death, into thanatos. rationalization is not only a process of removing and repressing eros, but also a legitimation of thanatos. existence becomes a struggle between eros and thanatos, and finally an ethical and political choice/decision between life and death. living an authentic full human existence implies a worldanimal-revolution. hunting and fishing changed our perception of animal life ad of the world, but also our perception of space and time: space is not anything to be contemplated with wonder, but to be crossed running to prey and to obtain flesh; time is not the quiet measure of the peaceful growing of the varieties of life, but is to be shortened for better preying and killing. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/79 enrico r.a. calogero giannetto 62 relations – 5.1 june 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ technical tools had to be developed to overcome the biological inferiority of human beings in respect to other species. agriculture implied another radical change in human existence: working the land involved the slavery of other animals as principal workers and has been giving rise to zootechnics, related to animal farming. realizing a dominion over earth and over other animal species has been called human work. before killing and eating other animals was better their exploitation: of their own milk, of their fur, of their workforce and, at the end, of their flesh, of their skin, of their bones. by animal farming, flesh became ever suitable to be eaten and a carnivorous diet became dominant. sacrifice of other animals to gods became the ideological legitimation of farming and killing by means of religion. the human dominion over earth and all the other animal species constituted a new order of the world (giannetto 2015, 221-41). this neolithic revolution (giannetto 2005, 37-41) in human life changed the improvised form of violence into an organized system. the division of preying, exploitating and killing other animals became the “division of work”. legitimating dominion by means of ideological constructions became another kind of work, intellectual work, separated by manual work. human beings became able to tame not only other animal species, but also their so hidden ferocity ruled by the division of work and by a system of law. human beings did not limitate themselves to prey and to kill but started to accumulate the objects of preying and of exploitation for the future and to develop new technologies of exploitation and of killing. carnivorous diet became part of a wider system of violence and of dominion. another change in our perception of the world, of life and space and time happened. our anxiety for death became stronger and stronger: our “civilised” life became sedentary and quiet, but the rejection of death involved a new distorted perception of time and of the future. we started to become slaves of our violence, of our technologies and of our work. 4. conclusions now, we are no more conscious of this original violence, because our lives are, for the most, free from the direct violence of preying: we find flesh (often without any recognizable form) to eat in supermarkets. only few human beings work as killers of non-human beings, and killing another animal no longer implies any aggressive behaviour, due to the mechanization of violence and to the act of killing using artificial machines. thus, we become unconscious of the origin of human violence from carnivorism http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/79 philosophy of nutrition 63 relations – 5.1 june 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ (carnivorism is the original sin) (eisler 1951; giannetto 2011, 13-29) and we can be carnivorous and non-directly-violent (non-aggressive) persons because we do not directly participate to the act of preying and killing. paradoxically, this mechanization and industrialization of violence and killing which has led to the highest level of violence and of systematic extermination of other living beings has also allowed the detachment of carnivorism from a violent behaviour and with it the possibility of rejecting the carnivorism itself and of a new, radically non-violent, way of thinking. our intellectual work was a legitimation of our violence: what we think is what we eat, and our way of thinking is part of our phagocytation metabolism process. thinking is a process which is one with living. thus, thinking is related to the pleasure of living and loving. when the pleasure of living is related to phagocytation of other animals and to giving sufferance and death to other beings, thinking becomes involved in phagocytation, in its preying and dominion strategies, and indeed it becomes a symbolic phagocytation and a strategy for actual phagocytation. thinking as verbal reasoning is no more an expression of eros, but an expression of thanatos: eros is transformed into thanatos (marcuse 1955). human culture became not only a sublimation of eros, but a form of thanatos, a form of virtual phagocytation. the analysis operated by verbal reasoning is a kind of anatomy of the body flesh teared to pieces and dismembered into pieces by preying and then by metabolism: phagocytation becomes the transcendental material condition of possibility to understand verbal reasoning. however, we can change our mind: the same separation of work allowed for a transformation of the role of legitimation of violence into a form of a criticism of violence. thus, we can change our carnivorous diet into a vegan one and our philosophy into a criticism of violence and of its ideologies and into an universal ethics of reverence for all forms of life (schewitzer 1923, 331; giannetto 2012, 22-33; giannetto 2015, 75-87). references eisler, robert. (1946-1949) 1951. man into wolf: an anthropological interpretation of sadism, masochism, and lycanthropy. london: routledge. feuerbarch, ludwig andreas. 1866. “das geheimnis des opfers oder der mensch ist, was er isst”. in sämmtliche werke, vol. x. leipzig: wigand. (1866) 1975. “über spiritualismus und materialismus, besonders in beziehung auf die willensfreiheit”. in l. feuerbach, werke in sechs bänden, vol. iv: kritiken und abhandlungen iii (1844-1866), edited by erich thies, 357-402. frankfurt am main: suhrkamp. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/79 enrico r.a. calogero giannetto 64 relations – 5.1 june 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ giannetto, enrico r.a. 2011. “robert eisler e l’origine della violenza nel carnivorismo”. in r. eisler, uomo lupo. saggio sul sadismo, il masochismo e la licantropia, edited by massimo doni and enrico r.a. giannetto, 13-29. milano: medusa. 2012. “la natura come persona”. animal studies 1: 22-33. 2015. “essere”. in a come animale, edited by leonardo caffo and felice cimatti, 75-87. milano: bompiani. heidegger, martin. 1927. sein und zeit. tübingen: max niemeyer. marcuse, herbert. 1928. “beiträge zu einer phänomenologie des historischen materialismus”. philosophische hefte i: 45-68. 1929. “über konkrete philosophie”. archiv für sozialwissenschaft und sozialpolitik: 111-28. 1930a. “transzendentaler marxismus”. die geselleschaft vii (2): 304-26. 1930b. “zum problem der dialektik i”. die geselleschaft vii (1): 15-30. 1931. “zum problem der dialektik ii. zugleich ein beitrag zur frage nach den quellen der marxschen dialektik bei hegel”. die geselleschaft viii (1): 541-57. 1932. “neue quellen zur grundlegung des historischen materialismus”. die geselleschaft ix (7): 136-74. 1955. eros and civilisation: a philosophical inquiry into freud. boston: the beacon press. 1965. kultur und gesellschaft, vols. i-ii. frankfurt am main: suhrkamp. schweitzer, albert. 1923. kulturphilosophie, vol. i: verfall und wiederaufbau der kultur; vol. ii: kultur und ethik. münchen: beck. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/79 animal consciousness and science matter: anthropomorphism is not anti-science 61 relations – 1.i june 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ animal consciousness and science matter anthropomorphism is not anti-science 1 marc bekoff phd, professor emeritus of ecology and evolutionary biology at the university of colorado, boulder, and co-founder with jane goodall of ethologists for the ethical treatment of animals doi: 10.7358/rela-2013-001-beko marc.bekoff@gmail.com 1. introduction in 2007 i published a book called animals matter (bekoff 2007a) and at about the same time erin williams and margo demello published a book called why animals matter (demello and williams 2007). and just some months ago another book called why animals matter by marian dawkins (2012) has been published. i think of it as ‘dawkins’ dangerous idea’. it is often very interesting how communication among colleagues and the publishing industry works and this brief backstory shows this clearly. to wit, in mid-february 2012 i received a review copy of professor dawkins’ book from an editor at oxford university press asking me to write a supportive comment for the cover. i was very surprised to receive this request because i had actually learned about the book a few weeks before in an email message from my colleague bruce friedrich who works for farm sanctuary about another matter in which professor dawkins told him, “[…] marc may no longer speak to me when he sees a book that is about to come out!” (friedrich, february 4, 2012). i was taken by surprise on both occasions because not only was i unaware of another book called why animals matter when i saw dawkins’ email but also that i would be asked to support a book that clearly took me (and many others) to task. if dawkins’ criticisms were merely about me i would have let them go but one does not have to read between the lines to see that she is putting forth a sweeping dismissal or denial of a large body of solid scientific data that have passed the litmus test of credibility in that they have been published 1 the current paper first appeared in the online journal psychology today, in may 2012 (bekoff 2012b). adapted by permission of the author. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ marc bekoff 62 relations – 1.i june 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ in the most prestigious peer-reviewed professional journals and books by renowned scientists, many of whom remain agnostic (at least publicly) about how their findings can be used for promoting or increasing animal protection. they do not have any agenda other than do the best scientific research they can, and often harm other animals in their efforts to learn more about them. 2. anthropomorphism despite dawkins’ not so veiled warning, i began reading the uncorrected galley proofs and immediately learned why dawkins wrote her ominous note although i would be more than happy to talk with her. in my brief response to her new book, i want to be fair. there is a lot of very useful food for thought in dawkins’ new and challenging book but not much new. however, i was literally shocked by some of her accusations about my and other colleague’s positions on topics including the best ways to explain animal behavior, animal emotions, and animal consciousness. i often assess books by reading about topics with which i am most familiar, including an author’s rendition of my own work, and i was very surprised to read dawkins’ take on my position on these and other matters. there is a slippery slope between reasoned criticism and insult and i frankly feel that dawkins’ criticisms not only are ungrounded but also demeaning, disrespectful, and insensitive in her rendition of my and other’s views on animal consciousness, anthropomorphism, and science. early in dawkins’ book i learned that “others, most notably marc bekoff, go in for full-blooded, genuine anthropomorphism” (dawkins 2012, 21). dawkins goes on to write that my and other’s brand of anthropomorphism “may well be right” and then, misleadingly claims, “bekoff is essentially saying that there are no limits to how we interpret animal behavior” (dawkins 2012, 22). nothing can be further from the truth. while i maintain we should consider all sorts of data i have also written on many occasions that solid and noninvasive science are needed as well to assess their reliability. dawkins then goes on to cite something i wrote and still stand by, “to live with a dog is to know first hand that animals have feelings. it’s a no brainer” (2012, 26). dawkins follows: it began to look as though no further thought or investigation were going to be necessary. even worse, this new wave of anthropomorphism threatened the very scientific basis of the study of animal behaviour itself, particularly that branch of it known as cognitive ethology. (dawkins 2102, 26) animal consciousness and science matter 63 relations – 1.i june 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ this is really over-dramatic and plain wrong as many researchers see the heuristic value of ‘being anthropomorphic’ and then determining how correct or incorrect these sorts of explanation may be. 3. biocentric anthropomorphism and anecdote: expanding science with care i was even more shocked to read this because i have never set up an ‘anthropomorphism vs. science’ dichotomy and while on occasion i can be critical of science i also am proud to be a scientist and to do science. indeed, in an essay i published in bioscience in 2000 following the publication of the smile of a dolphin (bekoff 2000a) in which numerous distinguished scientists wrote essays about the emotional and conscious lives of the animals they studied i had written about what i called biocentric anthropomorphism, following up on gordon burghardt’s notion of critical anthropomorphism, and how we can use science to access the minds of other animals. here is what i wrote: the way human beings describe and explain the behavior of other animals is limited by the language they use to talk about things in general. by engaging in anthropomorphism – using human terms to explain animals’ emotions or feelings – humans make other animals’ worlds accessible to themselves (allen and bekoff 1997; bekoff and allen 1997; eileen 1999). but this is not to say that other animals are happy or sad in the same ways in which humans (or even other conspecifics) are happy or sad. of course, i cannot be absolutely certain that jethro, my companion dog, is happy, sad, angry, upset, or in love, but these words serve to explain what he might be feeling. however, merely referring acontextually to the firing of different neurons or to the activity of different muscles in the absence of behavioral information and context is insufficiently informative. using anthropomorphic language does not have to discount the animal’s point of view. anthropomorphism allows other animals’ behavior and emotions to be accessible to us. thus, i maintain that we can be biocentrically anthropomorphic and do rigorous science. (bekoff 2000b, 867) dawkins also writes, “rampant anthropomorphism threatens the very basis of ethology by substituting anecdotes, loose analogies, and an ‘i just know that the animal is thinking so don’t bother me with science’ attitude to animal behavior” (dawkins 2012, 33). i have argued elsewhere that what i call the ‘a’ words, namely anthropomorphism and anecdote, play a large role in helping us to understand animal behavior and consciousness but they are not substitutes for solid science. marc bekoff 64 relations – 1.i june 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ so, what is science got to do with it? a lot. frankly, i find dawkins’ misrepresentation of my and other’s view to be off-putting, serving no purpose other than to set up sides on the important issues at hand. we may indeed disagree on some matters but being anthropomorphic and paying attention to anecdotes is not to be against the need for good science. later in her book dawkins notes, “animal welfare needs new arguments […] it needs the best scientific evidence available, not wishful thinking or anthropomorphism” (dawkins 2012, 175). this not so subtle implication that other researchers and i are anti-science is truly insulting. dawkins goes on to discuss different areas of animal consciousness, remaining skeptical throughout because the scientific evidence is “indirect” and that “there is no proof either way about animal consciousness and that it does not serve animals well to claim that there is” (dawkins 2012, 111-2). she goes on to write “the mystery of consciousness remains. the explanatory gap is as wide as ever and all the wanting in the world will not take us across it” (dawkins 2012, 171-2). i firmly disagree with this assertion, and i know i am not alone. while the mystery of consciousness, nonhuman and human remains, we have made great advances in reducing the explanatory gap. there is ample and solid direct scientific evidence that shows that many other animals are conscious beings – including, for example, fish (bekoff 2007b; broom 2007, 99-108; braithwaite 2010) and magpies – and that we know enough right now to use this information for interpreting and explaining the behavior of a wide range of species and for developing and implementing strict guidelines for animal protection – i just learned about some very interesting research using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fmri) on dogs (berns, brooks, and spivak 2012). charles darwin’s ideas about evolutionary continuity also strongly argue in favor of other animals being sentient and conscious beings and it is important to stress that their sentience and consciousness does not have to just like ours to make them members of the sentience and consciousness club. dawkins seems to be taking more of a dualistic approach that in my opinion is rather weak not only because it questions continuity but also because it ignores much of what we already know about other animals. along these lines it is important to note that the lisbon treaty, passed on december 1, 2009, recognizes animals as sentient beings meaning “they can feel pain and suffer; learn from experience; make choices; feel joy, fear or misery; and enjoy the company of others” (webster 2009). animal consciousness and science matter 65 relations – 1.i june 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 4. skepticism dawkins (2012, 115) claims that to make animal welfare more of interest to the masses we need to appeal to human self-interests and not rely on anthropomorphism or flimsy science. there is something to the argument that we can have animal welfare without consciousness (dawkins 2012, 116-26), but there is ample evidence that many other animals are conscious and care about what happens to them and that innumerable people care as well because of what science tells us about them. so, do i recommend this book? well, yes and no. surely, to be fair to the people whom she takes to task, it is essential for students and others to know more about existing data and alternative views that are indeed based on solid science. when i put dawkins’ combative style aside i can see her skepticism helping to keep the discussion going for a while, but it should not be at the expense of my and other’s professional reputations – including renowned scientists donald griffin, michel cabanac, jaak panksepp, and joseph ledoux; however, she is a fan of temple grandin (bekoff 2010) – and/or by offering misleading views on our attitudes toward science, and surely not by ignoring solid research. there is really not that much new about which dawkins has not written or spoken elsewhere, other than a more strident effort to set up false and misleading divisions and the same old skepticism that surprisingly dismisses much solid scientific research. she claims: it is much, much better for animals if we remain skeptical and agnostic [about consciousness] […]. militantly agnostic if necessary, because this keeps alive the possibility that a large number of species have some sort of conscious experiences […]. for all we know, many animals, not just the clever ones and not just the overtly emotional ones, also have conscious experiences. (dawkins 2012, 177) i disagree and frankly do not see how anyone who works closely with any of a wide array of animals could remain skeptical and agnostic about whether they are conscious. i really do not know anyone who does. they say repetition is boring conversation but many others and i see a wealth of scientific data that makes skepticism, and surely agnosticism, to be anti-science and harmful to animals. as time goes on and more data are amassed dawkins seems to be upping the ante in that there never seems to be enough data for her on topics such as animal emotions and animal consciousness. as i wrote above, while the mystery of consciousness may remain and the knowledge about the nitty-gritty details of consciousness may still (and perhaps always) marc bekoff 66 relations – 1.i june 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ remain elusive, we know enough now to use it in interpretations and explanations of animal behavior and in arguments for animal protection. dawkins worries that bad science will drive people away from being concerned with animal welfare but i maintain that if we remain so skeptical of what we already know it undermines our efforts to learn about who other animals are and to protect them. dawkins’ sweeping claim that “what has become the new orthodoxy about animal welfare – that anthropomorphism is all we need […]” (dawkins 2012, 176) truly misrepresents the views of numerous people around the world, researchers and non-researchers alike, who are keenly interested in making the lives of other animals far better than they are. i am not a science-basher nor do i ridicule scientists for “pointing out how hard it is to study consciousness” (dawkins 2012, 184) and i believe professor dawkins has done a disservice to the many researchers with whom she takes issue and whose hard work she easily discounts in pushing, once again, her skepticism de jour. one of my colleagues who read this piece thought i was being ‘too nice and forgiving‘ given dawkins’ rather harsh words about what she takes to be my views on the matters at hand. my colleague felt there was something ‘disturbingly unprofessional’ about dawkins’ strident and dismissive prose. be that as it may, i do not feel the need to push my agenda by putting others down. on the one hand dawkins could also be taken to be anti-science, or more specifically ‘anti the science with which she disagrees’, as much of the research she questions (or ignores) has been published in highly prestigious peer-reviewed professional journals and books. on the other hand i thank her for making me think about the issues at hand and for helping me come to a firmer basis for rejecting much of what she writes. while dawkins feels that loose science and anthropomorphism will harm efforts to protect animals i argue that her skepticism – nay-saying, doubt, and denial that fly in the face of available data – and failure to heed what we know is more harmful. additional research that is noninvasive such as that done recently on empathy in rats (bartal, decety, and mason 2011, 1427-30; gewin 2011) is what is sorely needed. much research can be enriching to the animals who are studied and does not have to be (bekoff 2000b, 861-70) nor should it be harmful. we also need to factor in what we know about free-ranging animals who are able to perform the full array of species-typical behavior patterns. although we can always welcome more data, we know enough now about a wide array of animals to use this information to work hard to protect them. animal consciousness and science matter 67 relations – 1.i june 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 5. conclusion so, why do animals matter? animals matter because they exist, not because of what they can do for us, although they surely do a lot. by paying attention to what we know about their fascinating lives and who (not what) they are we can and must all work together, in harmony, to make their lives better. as i travel all over the world i see that we are making much progress because so many people really do care about the well-being of other animals. we can rewild our hearts (bekoff 2011) by respecting who other animals are and by working on their behalf. and we can rest assured that solid science firmly supports our efforts to offer more protection to the billions of animals who are abused in myriad ways 2. references allen, colin, and marc bekoff. 1997. species of mind. the philosophy and biology of cognitive ethology. cambridge, ma: mit press. bartal, inbal ben-ami, jean decety, and peggy mason. 2011. “empathy and prosocial behavior in rats”. science 334: 1427-30. doi: 10.1126/science.1210789. bekoff, marc, ed. 2000a. the smile of a dolphin: remarkable accounts of animal emotions. london: orion publishing book. 2000b. “animal emotions: exploring passionate natures”. bioscience 50 (50): 861-70. doi: 10.1641/0006-3568(2000)050[0861:aeepn]2.0.co;2. 2007a. animals matter. boston: shambhala publications. 2007b. “aquatic animals, cognitive ethology, and ethics: questions about sentience and other troubling issues that lurk in turbid water”. diseases of aquatic organisms 75: 87-98. doi: 10.3354/dao075087. 2010. “going to slaughter: should animals hope to meet temple grandin”. psychology today, february 6. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ animal-emotions/201002/going-slaughter-should-animals-hope-meet-templegrandin. 2011. “rewilding our hearts: maintaining hope and faith in trying times”. psychology today, december 19. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ animal-emotions/201112/rewilding-our-hearts-maintaining-hope-and-faith-intrying-times. 2012a. “scientists finally conclude nonhuman animals are conscious beings”. psychology today, august 10. http://www.psychologytoday.com/ blog/animal-emotions/201208/scientists-finally-conclude-nonhuman-animalsare-conscious-beings. 2 in july 2012 a group of prestigious scientists wrote the cambridge declaration on consciousness declaring that many animals, including all mammals, are conscious, using the same data that marian dawkins rejected in her book (bekoff 2012a). marc bekoff 68 relations – 1.i june 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 2012b. “animal consciousness and science matter. anthropomorphism is not anti-science”. psychology today, may 7. http://www.psychologytoday.com/ blog/animal-emotions/201205/animal-consciousness-and-science-matter. bekoff, marc, and colin allen. 1997. “cognitive ethology: slayers, skeptics, and proponents”. in anthropomorphism, anecdote, and animals: the emperor’s new clothes?, edited by robert w. mitchell, nick thompson, and lyn miles, 31334. albany, ny: suny press. berns, gregory, andrew m. brooks, and mark spivak. 2012. “functional mri in awake unrestrained dogs”. plos one 7 (5), may 11. doi: 10.1371/journal. pone.0038027. braithwaite, victoria. 2010. do fish feel pain? oxford: oxford university press. broom, donald m. 2007. “cognitive ability and sentience: which aquatic animals should be protected?”. diseases of aquatic organisms 75: 99-108. doi: 10.3354/dao075099. dawkins, marian. 2012. why animals matter. oxford: oxford university press. demello, margo, and erin e. williams. 2007. why animals matter. new york: prometheus book. eileen, crist. 1999. images of animals: anthropomorphism and animal mind. philadelphia: temple university press. friedrich, bruce. e-mail to marc bekoff, february 4, 2012. gewin, virginia. 2011. “rats free each other from cages. altruistic acts raise questions about whether the rodents feel empathy”. nature. international weekly journal of science, december 8. doi: 10.1038/nature.2011.9603. webster, john. 2009. “the lisbon treaty: recognizing animal sentience”. compassion in world farming, december 1. http://ciwf.org.uk/news/compassion_ news/the_lisbon_treaty_recognising_animal_sentience.aspx. the philosophical origins of vegetarianism: greek philosophers and animal world 13 relations – 5.1 june 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the philosophical origins of vegetarianism greek philosophers and animal world letterio mauro full professor of history of philosophy, university of genoa doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2017-001-maur 3830@unige.it abstract coeval philosophical texts provide no information about the extent to which the ancient world practiced vegetarianism or about its concrete aspects. however, they offer a rich array of the arguments used to both justify and promote it. the present paper will focus on the four main philosophical arguments in favor of vegetarianism. these arguments were proposed and revised by various authors. the four arguments that will be studied are: the ascetic-religious one, mainly used by the orphic tradition and then taken up by various authors, especially the pythagoreans; the one based on the biopsychological affinity of all living beings, and coherently promoted by theophrastus; the one based on the dignity and value of the animal world, widely developed especially by plutarch; and finally the one, central to porphyry’s treatise, that relates abstinence from meat to the need of the soul to elevate itself to the divine and be purified of any element linking it to the body. keywords: vegetarianism, animals in antiquity, philosophical anthropology, orphism, pythagoreanism, neoplatonism, middleplatonism, philosophical lifestyle in antiquity, sacrifices of animals, dignity and value of the animal world. 1. the four main arguments in favor of vegetarianism in the ancient philosophy coeval philosophical texts provide no information about the extent to which the ancient world practiced vegetarianism or about its concrete aspects. however, they offer a rich array of the arguments used to both justify and promote it (haussleiter 1935). the present paper will focus on the four main philosophical arguments in favor of vegetarianism. these arguments were proposed and revised by various authors, sometimes http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/79 http://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2017-001-maur mailto:3830%40unige.it%20?subject= letterio mauro 14 relations – 5.1 june 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ together or linked to others (e.g. the difficult preparation and digestibility of meat), especially by porphyry in his on abstinence from killing animals (de abstinentia) – probably written after 270 ce (bouffartigue and patillon 1977, xviii-xix). thanks to its ample documentation, porphyry’s treatise represents the most important ancient philosophical source on this topic. the four arguments that will be studied are: the ascetic-religious one, mainly used by the orphic tradition and then taken up by various authors (pre-socratic and not), especially the pythagoreans; the one based on the biopsychological affinity of all living beings, and coherently promoted by theophrastus; the one based on the dignity and value of the animal world, widely developed especially by plutarch; and finally the one, central to porphyry’s treatise, that relates abstinence from meat (a food difficult to obtain, prepare and digest, and thus having a negative effect on body and mind) to the need of the soul to elevate itself to the divine and be purified of any element linking it to the body. 2. orphism and pre-socratic thinkers from its very origins, vegetarianism has been an option that goes beyond the mere selection of a menu, able to embrace the manifold meanings (symbolic and not) of food. indeed, it has brought into question the lifestyle and behaviors promoted by the societies of which it was a part; moreover, it also seems to have been linked with the refusal of the sacrificial practices of official religion and with the special position attributed to humans in the great chain of being. its first appearance in archaic greece seems to have been connected with orphism (vi century bce), a religious reformation movement that had significant and well-known philosophical consequences. without radically rejecting traditional polytheism, orphism condemned one of its fundamental rituals, abhorring the bloodshed on the altars of the gods. in so doing, orphism introduced a new set of beliefs and above all a new interpretation of human existence into greek civilization (pugliese carratelli 2001; bernabé and cristobal 2007). the basis of orphism was the affirmation of a clear anthropological dualism: the human soul, of divine origin and thus immortal and incorruptible, was condemned to be united with a mortal and corruptible body in order to expiate an obscure guilt, being reincarnated in successive bodily existences (not only in human forms but also in animals). therefore, the soul aspired to be released from its corporeal confinement and from the reincarnation cycle in order to be reunited with the divine. this could be obtained through purifications, rituals and a lifestyle based on abstinence http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/79 the philosophical origins of vegetarianism 15 relations – 5.1 june 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ from any material reality, above all from the consumption of meat, considered able to bind the soul to the body. meat-eating was also prohibited for another reason: the idea of the transmigration of souls into animals suggested that it was possible to kill and eat the body of a being into which the soul of a friend or relative had entered. therefore, abstinence from meat was a characteristic feature of the orphic lifestyle, as plato stated several centuries later: some say it [body] is the tomb (soma) of the soul, their notion being that the soul is buried in the present life […]. but i think it most likely that the orphic poets gave this name, with the idea that the soul is undergoing punishment for something; they think it has the body as an enclosure to keep it safe, like a prison, and this is, as the name itself denotes, the safe (soma) for the soul, until the penalty is paid. (plato, cratylus, 400b-c) 1 later, several pre-socratic thinkers shared the ban on killing and eating animals with orphism. according to porphyry (233/234-305 ce) and iamblichus (ca. 250 ca. 325 ce), this ban was adopted by pythagoras of samos (ca. 570 ca. 490 bce) and the community he founded (porphyry, vie de pythagore, lettre à marcella, 34-9, and iamblichus, on the pythagorean life, xxi, 98-100) 2. from its beginning, this community was characterized by an interest in the mathematical sciences and by the triumph of the collective spirit over the individual element. this last point makes it difficult to distinguish pythagoras’ contribution from that of his followers and affiliates, “the so-called pythagoreans” (aristotle, the metaphysics, i, 5, 985b 23-4) 3. according to porphyry (vie de pythagore, lettre à marcella, 19), pythagoras was the first to introduce to greece the doctrine that the human soul is immortal and transmigrates into other species of living beings, as well as the doctrine of the affinity of all living creatures. these teachings gave rise to rules of purification and abstinence (including abstinence from meat-eating) aimed at purifying the body and rendering it submissive to the soul. however, although it shared the idea of vegetarian 1 cf. also plato, laws, vi, 782c-d: “the custom of men sacrificing one another is, in fact, one that survives even now among many peoples; whereas amongst others we hear of how the opposite custom existed, when they were forbidden so much as to eat an ox, and their offerings to the gods consisted, not of animals, but of cakes of meal and grain steeped in honey, and other such bloodless sacrifices, and from flesh they abstained as though it were unholy to eat it or to stain with blood the altars of the gods; instead of that, those of us men who then existed lived what is called an orphic life, keeping wholly to inanimate food and, contrariwise, abstaining wholly from things animate”. 2 in republic, x, 600b 2-5 plato explicitly praises pythagoras’ contribution to the formulation of the “pythagorean way of life”. 3 on the question of the creation, development, nature and downfall of the pythagorean community see boudouris 1992, 49-69. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/79 letterio mauro 16 relations – 5.1 june 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ism with orphism, we cannot characterize pythagoreanism as a mystery religion or as a movement rivaling the traditional religious beliefs of the greeks. in contrast with orphism (some of whose theses it reformed, merging them with philosophy), pythagoreanism related the liberation of man from the reincarnation cycle not to celebrations or religious rites but to the practice of mathematical sciences, considered the most effective instrument of purification and thus cultivated as a means and not an end. the ban on the killing and eating of animals was also proposed by another pre-socratic philosopher empedocles (ca. 485 ca. 432 bce) in his purifications (katharmoi), a work close to the magical-sacred tradition of pythagoreanism and devoted to the purification of the soul. here again, his position was based on the belief that the soul, understood as a fallen spirit, experiences successive reincarnations (dk 31 b 117) and after a long and difficult itinerary of purification can be freed of all evils caused by its connection with the body. this itinerary includes a number of dietary prescriptions as well as condemnation of the killing of any living being, especially when related to religious sacrifices (dk 31 b 128 and 136). according to sextus empiricus (ca. 160 ca. 210 ce), both pythagoras and empedocles believed that a single spirit, widespread throughout the universe, establishes some sort of fellowship not only among humans and between humans and gods, but also between humans and animals. therefore, if animals are man’s fellows, to kill them and eat their flesh is an unjust and impious act. as he clearly affirmed: pythagoras and empedocles and the rest of the italian company declare that we have some fellowship (koinonian) not only with one another and with the gods but also with the irrational animals. for there is one spirit (pneuma) which pervades, like a soul (psyches), the whole universe, and which also makes us one with them. wherefore if we slay them and feed on their flesh we shall be doing what is unjust and impious, as destroying our kindred. hence, too, these philosophers advised abstinence from animal (ton empsychon) food, and declared that those men were impious ‘redden’d the blessed ones’ altars with warm blood pouring from victims. (sextus empiricus, against the physicists, i, 127) 3. theophrastus the justification of vegetarianism and rejection of cruel sacrifices by theophrastus (371-287 bce) is different, according to the fragments of his peri eusebeias transcribed in porphyry’s on abstinence from killing animals. although he was aristotle’s successor at the lyceum, theophrastus did not http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/79 the philosophical origins of vegetarianism 17 relations – 5.1 june 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ accept his teacher’s hierarchical and anthropocentric view of living beings based on the idea that man was at the apex of the phenomenal world since “man alone of the animals possesses speech [logon de monon anthropos echei ton zoon]” (aristotle, politics, i, 2, 1253a 9-10). on the contrary, theophrastus believed that there is a biopsychological affinity (oikeiotes) not only among all human beings but also between them and animals and thus it is necessary to treat the latter with pietas (dierauer 1977). humans and animals belong to the same community, being of the same race (suggheneis); they share both the principles of their bodies and the fact of being alive, along with what that entails: appetites, movements of the soul related to sensation, reasonings (loghismoi) (on abstinence from killing animals, iii, 25, 1-3 = peri eus. fr. 4 bernays). this is the basis of theophrastus’ strong sense of the value of animal life and his belief that, just as the existence of wicked men who harm other men does not negate the affinity among human beings, the existence of instinctively ferocious, and thus harmful, animals does not negate the affinity between humans and harmless animals. in other words, the relationship between humans and animals, like that among humans, must be rooted in justice. therefore, just as it is appropriate to kill a man who behaves unjustly, it is legitimate to kill an animal that instinctively attacks 4, and likewise, as it is necessary to behave fairly with fair humans, it is right and proper to be fair with harmless animals (on abstinence from killing animals, ii, 22, 1-2 = peri eus. fr. 4 bernays). to theophrastus it is precisely this “juridical equality” between humans and animals that renders ritual sacrifices impious towards the gods (as well as unjust towards animals), and he emphasizes that the value of such sacrifices is not absolute but linked to precise historical contingencies. he identifies two distinct phases in human history. during the first, governed by aphrodite, goddess of love and fertility, humans lived in peace among themselves and with all living beings; they had total respect for all forms of life because they perceived their affinity with the other animals and this was reflected in their offerings to the goddess, consisting of part of their harvests and of sober libations. during the second phase, governed by ares, god of war, conflict prevailed in the relationships among humans but also in those with the other living beings. once human customs had been corrupted by the habit of shedding blood, it became usual and legitimate to practice cruel sacrifices in honor of the gods, thus breaching the bond 4 the legitimacy of killing only animals harmful by nature was argued earlier by democritus (ca. 460 ca. 380 bce), dk 68 b 257. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/79 letterio mauro 18 relations – 5.1 june 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ of friendship (philia) that was to embrace all living beings (on abstinence from killing animals, ii, 21, 1-3; 22, 1-3). therefore, theophrastus presents a new way of understanding man’s place within reality and the need to reform the traditional religious customs through the abolition of cruel sacrifices. however, the motivations are biological rather than ethical-religious. theophrastus’ general stance in regard to the human-animal relationship, based on their affinity, leads him to affirm the insuppressible nature of the primary right to life and to maintain, on ethical-juridical grounds, the existence of a relationship of continuity between humans and animals (battegazzore 1996, 81-93). 4. plutarch’s “de esu carnium” moralia by plutarch (46/50 after 120 ce) includes three essays about animals – on the eating of flesh (de esu carnium), beasts are rational (bruta animalia ratione uti), whether land or sea animals are cleverer (de sollertia animalium) – in which vegetarianism is proposed as part of a cogent discussion of the dignity and manifold qualities of animals. as usual, plutarch’s polemic is directed mainly towards the stoics and their belief in the supremacy of man as the only possessor of rational thought. in de esu carnium, composed of two brief conferences (logoi) part of whose text is now missing, the illegitimacy of meat-eating is based on two precise arguments. the first concerns the unnaturalness of the consumption of meat, shown by the fact that the human body lacks those anatomical parts that permit carnivorous animals to attack and eat their prey: it is absurd […] to say that the practice of flesh-eating is based on nature. for that man is not naturally carnivorous is, in the first place, obvious from the structure of his body. a man’s frame is in no way similar to those creatures who were made for flesh-eating: he has no hooked beak or sharp nails or jagged teeth, no strong stomach or warmth of vital fluids able to digest and assimilate a heavy diet of flesh. (plutarch, on the eating of flesh, i, 994 f 995 a) plutarch explains that meat-eating could be justified in early times when agricultural techniques had not been introduced and humans had not learnt to use all the resources offered by nature. however, it cannot be justified today now that all these techniques have been acquired; thus meateating is a perverse human tendency to satisfy unnatural and false tastes. as plutarch affirms: you who live now, what madness, what frenzy drives you to the pollution of shedding blood, you who have such a superfluity of necessities? why slander http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/79 the philosophical origins of vegetarianism 19 relations – 5.1 june 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the earth by implying that she cannot support you? why impiously offend law-giving demeter and bring shame upon dionysus, lord of the cultivated vine, the gracious one, as if you did not receive enough from their hands? are you not ashamed to mingle domestic crops with blood and gore? (plutarch, on the eating of flesh, i, 994 a-b) finally, he observes the negative effects of this diet on both the human body, which fills with unhealthy humors, and the mind, which is unduly weighed down: “the eating of flesh is not only physically against nature, but it also makes us spiritually coarse and gross by reason of satiety and surfeit” (plutarch, on the eating of flesh, i, 995 d-e). the second argument is based on the injustice of killing animals, an act that violates their natural innocence and elegance, inflicting on them terrible suffering merely for the sake of gluttony, as clearly expressed by the examples provided in the text (on the eating of flesh, ii, 996 e 997 a). their voices, he explains, are not inarticulate sounds but rather prayers and pleadings for justice. hence killing animals is contrary to every principle of humanity. from a philosophical standpoint, vegetarianism appears as a nobler attitude than its counterpart: nothing abashed us, not the flower-like tinting of the flesh, not the persuasiveness of the harmonious voice, not the cleanliness of their habits or the unusual intelligence that may be found in the poor wretches. no, for the sake of a little flesh we deprive them of sun, of light, of the duration of life to which they are entitled by birth and being. then we go on to assume that when they utter cries and squeaks their speech is inarticulate, that they do not, begging for mercy, entreating, seeking justice […]. do but consider which are the philosophers who serve the better to humanize us: those who bid us eat our children and friends and fathers and wives after their death 5, or pythagoras and empedocles who try to accustom us to act justly toward other creatures also? (plutarch, on the eating of flesh, i, 994 d-e; ii, 997 e) moreover, harking back to the orphic-pythagorean tradition, plutarch recalls the doctrine of transmigration of souls into other forms of life and thus the possibility that by eating meat one might actually risk feeding on the body of a loved one. although he believes this doctrine to be insufficiently demonstrated, the very doubt that it might be true should suggest abstinence from meat-eating: “yet even if the argument of the migration of souls from body to body is not demonstrated to the point of complete belief, there is enough doubt to make us quite cautious and fearful” (plutarch, on the eating of flesh, ii, 998 c-d). 5 the reference is to the ancient stoics, in particular chrysippus who undoubtedly advised that form of anthropophagy; cf. ioannes ab arnim 1979, iii, 186-7. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/79 letterio mauro 20 relations – 5.1 june 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 5. plutarch’s “bruta animalia ratione uti” and “de sollertia animalium” in plutarch’s other two essays devoted to animals, vegetarianism is addressed in a less direct manner. however, by amply illustrating the natural abilities of animals, these works also highlight the unreasonableness and injustice of meat-eating and thus argue for its abolition. in bruta animalia ratione uti (a dialogue among several speakers influenced by the expressive manner of the cynic school and in strong philosophical dispute with stoicism), plutarch clearly affirms that the comparison in terms of virtues between humans and animals demonstrates the superiority of the latter: indeed, animals are naturally endowed with virtues while human beings gradually acquire them or are forced to do so. this is the case, for instance, of courage, temperance and, more generally, the ability to limit themselves to satisfaction of natural, necessary desires and pleasures, and to act with moderation in response to natural but unnecessary ones (beasts are rational, 989 f). with particular regard to the desires related to eating and drinking, the moderation of animals with respect to humans is shown by the fact that each species, following nature, eats only one type of food whereas man “in his pleasures is led astray by gluttony to everything edible; he tries and tastes everything as if he had not yet come to recognize what is suitable and proper for him; alone of all creatures he is omnivorous” (plutarch, beasts are rational, 991 b-c). here plutarch returns to and clarifies the considerations in de esu carnium concerning the unnatural nature of a diet based on animal flesh. such a diet does not derive from a real need or the lack of more suitable foods but merely from vice and satiety which compel humans to seek new unnecessary foods. this is a recurrent theme in plutarch’s writings on animals: that meat is an appetizer (opson), capable of producing – and this is the new element introduced here – impurity in man since it is derived from the killing of a living being: his [of man] eating of flesh is caused by no lack of means or methods, for he can always in season harvest and garner and gather in such a succession of plants and grains as will all but tire him out with their abundance; but driven on by luxurious desires and satiety with merely essential nourishment, he pursues illicit food, made unclean by the slaughter of beasts; and he does this in a much more cruel way than the most savage beasts of prey. blood and gore and raw flesh are the proper diet of kite and wolf and snake; to man they are an appetizer (opson). (plutarch, beasts are rational, 991 c-d) finally, in de sollertia animalium, a lively dialogue in two parts devoted to the question of whether land or sea animals are cleverer, vegetarianism http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/79 the philosophical origins of vegetarianism 21 relations – 5.1 june 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ is presented as the better option on the basis of the recognition in animals of memory, emotions and passions, but also of a form of rationality (“all animals partake in one way or another of reason and understanding”). this thesis is advanced by two of the speakers, aristotimus and phaedimus, who provide a broad and concrete array of examples (whether land or sea animals are cleverer, 966 b 985 b). reasoning in animals is undoubtedly less perfect than in humans, although the difference is merely in degree, like that observed for other characteristics much more developed in the animals (e.g. speed, strength, sight and hearing). as plutarch states: mere reason is implanted by nature, but real and perfect reason is the product of care and education. and this is why every living creature has the faculty of reasoning; but if what they seek is true reason and wisdom, not even man may be said to possess it. for as one capacity for seeing or flying differs from another (hawks and cicadas do not see alike, nor do eagles and partridges fly alike), so also not every reasoning creature has in the same way a mental dexterity or acumen that has attained perfection. (plutarch, whether land or sea animals are cleverer, 960 a; cf. also 962 c) from this it follows that human behavior towards animals, beings also endowed with reason, should not entail, as often happens, utilitarian exploitation or, even worse, cruelty and injustice. reproposing a thesis advanced earlier by theophrastus, another speaker named autobulus declares that it is necessary to apply a criterion of justice in the relationship with the animals. meek animals, whose collaboration can facilitate the necessities of life, should be treated humanely whereas it is legitimate to kill those that are harmful and dangerous: there is no injustice, surely, in punishing and slaying animals that are antisocial and merely injurious, while taming those that are gentle and friendly to man and making them our helpers in the tasks for which they are severally fitted by nature. (plutarch, whether land or sea animals are cleverer, 964 f) another consequence of the preceding affirmations is the need to ban all those practices or activities that cause pain or violent death to animals not harmful to man, such as meat-eating, cruel spectacles of the arena, hunting and fishing: for living is not abolished nor life terminated when a man has no more platters of fish or pâté de foie gras or mincemeat of beef or kids’ flesh for his banquets – or when he no longer, idling in the theatre or hunting for sport, compels some beasts against their will to stand their ground and fight, while he destroys others which have not the instinct to fight back even in their own defence. for i think sport should be joyful and between playmates who are merry on both sides […]. just so, in hunting and fishing, men amuse themhttp://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/79 letterio mauro 22 relations – 5.1 june 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ selves with the suffering and death of animals, even tearing some of them piteously from their cubs and nestlings. the fact is that it is not those who make use of animals who do them wrong, but those who use them harmfully and heedlessly and in cruel ways. (plutarch, whether land or sea animals are cleverer, 965 a-b) 6. porphyry porphyry’s treatise on abstinence from killing animals is divided into four books and is written as an open letter to his friend firmus castricius who, after initially embracing vegetarianism, had abandoned that lifestyle and had “reverted to consuming flesh” (i, 1, 1). porphyry sought to lead his friend back to vegetarianism, believing it to be essential to an authentic philosophical life: “an inanimate, simple diet, available to all, takes these [evils: a condition of somnolence, intensity and frequency of illness, provocation of sexual desire, thicker exhalations, heavy chains] away from us, offering peace for the reasoning power which provides us with security” (on abstinence from killing animals, i, 47, 2). indeed temperance permits him who is truly philosophical and thus considers the rational soul to be his real self, despising material pleasures, to approach the god in purity of body and soul. however, vegetarianism is more than just a sober and virtuous diet. unlike plants, animals cannot be used as food unless they are killed (since humans do not eat animals that have died of old age or disease) and this represents a fundamental problem to porphyry: do animals differ so much from man as to justify his killing them? rejecting the idea, held mainly by the stoics, that animals lack reason (logos), and thus are extraneous to the human (and divine) community and to the possibility of being treated according to common criteria of justice (on abstinence from killing animals, i, 4, 1-2), porphyry argues instead that animals are fundamentally similar to humans. reporting extracts from works by other authors (including theophrastus and plutarch) he points out that the bodies of animals consist of the same elements as human bodies and that their physical and emotional responses, like those of humans, possess a recognizable meaning. moreover, they are able to communicate with each other through species-specific languages (humans are unable to understand these languages just as they do not understand those different from their own, as porphyry explains by means of many examples in on abstinence from killing animals, iii, 3-4) and to a certain extent with humans; this is shown by the fact that http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/79 the philosophical origins of vegetarianism 23 relations – 5.1 june 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ whether the humans are angry or friendly or calling, whether the voice is hunting or wanting something or giving something, in short, whatever it is doing: to every one they respond appropriately. they could not do this unless like worked upon like in understanding. (porphyry, on abstinence from killing animals, iii, 6, 1) above all, however, animals appear to be aware of the situations in which they find themselves from time to time, they predict future situations, they show practical wisdom and the ability to remember and learn (on abstinence from killing animals, iii, 7-15). these behaviors are testaments to the presence in them of logos, even if, as previously mentioned, in a form different from humans, so that it must be admitted that the difference is a matter of more and less, not of complete deprivation, nor of a have and a have-not. […] so, even if we think more than they do, animals are not to be deprived of thinking, any more than partridges are to be deprived of flying because falcons fly more, or indeed falcons because the goshawk flies more than they and all other birds do. (porphyry, on abstinence from killing animals, iii, 8, 7-8) 6 porphyry proposes these ideas in the various books of his on abstinence from killing animals, albeit not always in a systematic way: “his arguments are cumulative rather than sequential” (porphyry 2000, 13). however, thanks to the broad nature of his argumentation, drawing on various sources and traditions 7, it is possible to have an idea of the different positions for and against vegetarianism, especially the philosophical ones which, as he explains at the beginning of his work, are his main focus: many people have argued against abstinence from animate [foods], and […], among philosophers, the peripatetics, the stoics and the epicureans have made most effort to oppose the philosophy of pythagoras and empedocles […]. i shall set out their practical and general questions about the teaching, leaving aside those which specifically attack the arguments of empedocles. (porphyry, on abstinence from killing animals, i, 3, 3-4) the arguments against vegetarianism, based mainly on the idea that only humans possess logos, indicate that this practice was perceived as a threat in the ancient world since it represented a break not only from the institu 6 see also porphyry, on abstinence from killing animals, iii, 24, 7: “it is no wonder that humans are so different from animals in ability to learn, quickness of thought and all that concerns justice and community. many animals too surpass all human beings, some in size and swiftness, others in strength of sight and keenness of hearing, but this does not mean that humans are deaf or blind or powerless. we run too, even if more slowly than deer, and we see, even if worse than falcons, and nature has not deprived us of strength and size, even if we are nothing in comparison with elephants and camels”. 7 on this topic cf. porphyry 1977, 9-41, and porphyry 1979, 9-50, 138-51. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/79 letterio mauro 24 relations – 5.1 june 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ tions and customs of the time but also from the common mindset (bouffartigue and patillon 1977, lxviii). porphyry believes that, while it is legitimate to compare animals and humans, this is not the case for animals and plants: in fact: “it is the nature of animals to have perceptions, to feel distress, to be afraid, to be hurt, and therefore to be injured. plants have no perceptions, so nothing is alien or bad to them, nothing is harm or injustice” (porphyry, on abstinence from killing animals, iii, 19, 2). therefore, killing an animal and eating its flesh is equivalent to murder, which can only contaminate both the body and the soul of the perpetrator. for the same reason, no animal can be an appropriate sacrifice to the gods and anyone who thinks differently has an ignoble idea of the divine. this second point, based on the necessity of a religious reformation (because a true god cannot be satisfied with the wholly material cult deriving from animal sacrifice), even if primarily addressing the issue of sacrifice and not of meat-eating, is also clearly linked to a vegetarian stance. these two points become central in porphyry’s justification of vegetarianism. thus, he reclaims some features of ancient vegetarianism: the necessity that the soul have supremacy over the body, that it weaken its link with it as much as possible, thus subduing its demands, and therefore that meat be excluded from the diet. indeed, if meat-eating severely impairs the health of the body, being a heavy food that is difficult to digest, it also strongly contaminates the soul, increasingly binding it to materiality and thus compromising its effort to ascend to the divine. it is not surprising then (in fact this seems to be an argument peculiar to him) that porphyry clearly states that meat-eating introduces evil spirits and the souls of the killed animals into man (on abstinence from killing animals, ii, 43 and 47). hence the truly philosophical person, being a priest of the intelligible god (on abstinence from killing animals, ii, 49), understands that “the best offering to the gods is a pure intellect and a soul unaffected by passion; it is also appropriate to make them moderate offerings of other things, not casually but with full commitment” (porphyry, on abstinence from killing animals, ii, 61, 1). after his broad discussion (based on theophrastus) of the natural affinity of all living beings, porphyry concludes book iii of his treatise by taking his thesis a step further: someone who does not restrict harmlessness to human beings, but extends it also to the other animals, is more like the god, and if extension to plants is possible, he preserves the image even more […]. which is like the god has true riches by that very assimilation. no one who is rich and needs nothing commits injustice. (porphyry, on abstinence from killing animals, iii, 27, 2 and 5) http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/79 the philosophical origins of vegetarianism 25 relations – 5.1 june 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ according to porphyry, the idea that abstention from meat, especially if practiced collectively or by a spiritual elite, has even greater benefits for human communities is demonstrated by a series of historical examples (from greece and other communities). if vegetarianism produced a general condition of health and peace, as well as great affinity to the gods, in archaic greece (on abstinence from killing animals, iv, 2), the same can be said about the lifestyle practiced by egyptian priests, jewish essenes, persian magi and indian brahmans (on abstinence from killing animals, iv, 6-18). in the final part of his work, porphyry recalls the model of the true philosopher dedicated to elevating himself to the divine and becoming similar to it. in so doing, he reaffirms the reason underlying his defense of vegetarianism, that is to contribute to that effort though abstention from foods considered contaminants (such as meat) and whose consumption is contrary to pietas, to justice and to wisdom: a man who engages in philosophy should prescribe for himself, as far as possible, the holy laws which have been determined by gods and by people who follow the gods. it is evident that the holy laws of peoples and cities impose purity on holy people and forbid them to eat animate food, and indeed prevent the masses from eating some kinds, whether from piety or because the food causes some harm. (porphyry, on abstinence from killing animals, iv, 18, 9) references aristotle. 1959. politics, translated by harris rackham. london cambridge, ma: w. heinemann harvard university press. 1961. the metaphysics, translated by hugh tredennick. london cambridge, ma: w. heinemann harvard university press. battegazzore, antonio mario. 1996. “la concezione teofrastea dell’oikeiotēs e del dikaion verso gli animali alla luce di un passo controverso di porfirio (de abst. ii 22, 1-3)”. in odoi dizēsios: le vie della ricerca. studi in onore di francesco adorno, edited by francesco adorno and maria serena funghi, 81-93. firenze: olschki. bernabé, alberto, and ana isabel jimenez san cristobal. 2007. instructions for the netherworld: the orphic gold tablets. leiden: brill. boudouris, konstantine. 1992. “the pythagorean community: creation, development and downfall”. in pythagorean philosophy, edited by konstantine boudouris. athenai: international center for greek philosophy and culture. bouffartigue, jean, and michel patillon. 1977. “introduction”. in porphyry, de l’abstinence, t. i, edited by jean bouffartigue, xi-lxxxiv. paris: les belles lettres. dierauer, urs. 1977. tier und mensch im denken der antike. studien zur tierpsychologie, anthropologie und ethik. amsterdam: grüner. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/79 letterio mauro 26 relations – 5.1 june 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ haussleiter, johannes. 1935. der vegetarismus in der antike. berlin: topelmann. iamblichus. 1989. on the pythagorean life, translated with notes and introduction by gillian clark. liverpool: liverpool university press. ioannes ab arnim. 1979. stoicorum veterum fragmenta. stuttgart: teubner. plato. 1953. cratylus, edited by harold north fowler. london cambridge, ma: w. heinemann harvard university press. 1967. laws, edited by robert gregg bury. london cambridge, ma: w. heinemann harvard university press. plutarch. 1984a. “whether land or sea animals are cleverer (de sollertia animalium)”. in plutarch’s moralia, with an english translation, vol. xii, edited by harold cherniss and william c. helmbold, 309-486. london cambridge, ma: w. heinemann harvard university press. 1984b. “beasts are rational (bruta animalia ratione uti)”. in plutarch’s moralia, with an english translation, vol. xii, edited by harold cherniss and william c. helmbold, 487-533. london cambridge, ma: w. heinemann harvard university press. 1984c. “on the eating of flesh (de esu carnium)”. in plutarch’s moralia, with an english translation, vol. xii, edited by harold cherniss and william c. helmbold, 535-79. london cambridge, ma: w. heinemann harvard university press. porphyry. 1977. de l’abstinence, tt. i-ii, edited by jean bouffartigue and michel patillon. paris: les belles lettres. 1982. vie de pythagore, lettre à marcella, edited and translated by édouard des places. paris: les belles lettres. 2000. on abstinence from killing animals, edited by gillian clark. london: duckworth. pugliese carratelli, giovanni. 2001. le lamine d’oro orfiche. istruzioni per il viaggio ol tremondano degli iniziati greci. milano: adelphi. sextus empiricus. 1987. against the physicists, edited by robert gregg bury. london  cambridge, ma: w. heinemann harvard university press. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/79 the energy of ethics / the ethics of energy: a dialog with irigaray, varela and jullien 173 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ is sn 2 2 8 0 -9 9 5 3 beyond anthropocentrism 1 • january 2013 inside the emotional lives of non-human animals a minding animals international utrecht 2012 pre-conference event special issue (genoa, italy, 12-13 may, 2012) edited by m. andreozzi, r. bennison, a. massaro, s. tonutti capabilities approach and animal bioethics • michele panzera animals and our emotions. how to approach the study of an interspecific community? • sabrina tonutti advocacy and animal rights • kim stallwood the emotional lives of animals: a christian perspective • alma massaro – gianfranco nicora animalia: ontology and ethics in weak antispeciesism • leonardo caffo the contemporary debate on experimentation • susanna penco – rosagemma ciliberti non-human animals and genetic engineering • arianna ferrari the relationship between humans and other animals in european animal welfare legislation • paola sobbrio human’s best friends? • matteo andreozzi elationsre l a t io n s . b e y o n d a n t h r o p o c e n t r is m 1 • 2 0 1 3 r 6.2 november 2018 energy ethics: emerging perspectives in a time of transition special issue edited by giovanni frigo part ii studies and research contributions energy ethics: a literature review 177 giovanni frigo contesting the radical monopoly: a critical view on the motorized 215 culture from a cyclonaut perspective damien delorme desiring ethics: reflections on veganism from an observational 233 study of transitions in everyday energy use alice dal gobbo ethical risk and energy 251 bertrand andre rossert coal feeds my family: subsistence, energy, and industry in central 269 appalachia m. joseph aloi human energy: philosophical-anthropological presuppositions 287 of anthropogenic energy, movement, and activity and their implications for well-being roman meinhold http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ relations. beyond anthropocentrism 174 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ comments, debates, reports and interviews energy ethics outside the box: carl mitcham in conversation 301 with giovanni frigo carl mitcham giovanni frigo energy equality and the challenges of population growth 313 andrea natan feltrin the energy of ethics / the ethics of energy: a dialog with irigaray, 321 varela and jullien federico battistutta reviews alex epstein, a review of the moral case for fossil fuels (2014) 331 adam briggle author guidelines 335 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 321 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the energy of ethics / the ethics of energy a dialog with irigaray, varela and jullien federico battistutta independent scholar italy doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2018-002-batt info@liberospirito.org 1. one energy one of the recurring topoi in human self-comprehension resides in the claimed existence of a radical dichotomy between nature and culture. such opposition appears as an invariant element, an assumption difficult to overcome as it seems pervasive within diverse, ever-changing human experiences. in light of historical evidence from very different cultural contexts (from the native inhabitants of north america to those of the far-east and africa), this self-perception is, after all, the specific product of western metaphysics. moreover, archeological evidence shows that the notion of a dualist agency acting in the world is present since the paleolithic period – day/night, masculine/feminine, human/animal, life/ death and so forth (anati 1983, 116-8). however, not all cultures have thematized the existence of contrasting and conflicting dualities that both imply and result in necessary hierarchies. for example, for many indigenous people (kopenawa and albert 2013), one is necessarily within nature, as part of a continuous web of relations with other living beings. anthropological and ethnographic researches (descola 2013) as well as archeological evidence (chavaillon 1996) attest that the supposedly untreatable conflict between nature and culture is nothing but a description, the direct result of a peculiar western understanding and its relationship with nature. western cultures have interpreted the relationship between human civilization and its rules on one side, and the complexity of the natural world on the other (which in any case resides and lives within us as much as outside) in conflicting terms. accordingly, the natural world has been considered the potential source of countless harms and dangers as to become conducive http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ http://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2018-002-batt mailto:info@liberospirito.org federico battistutta 322 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ to a regime of strict control over these threatening forces. this idea of establishing control has expanded from human societies and individuals to other animals, the path of rivers, atmospheric phenomena and even ecosystems. but, less visibly, what has gone under control are also the instincts, the dreams and the desires of human nature. looking more closely, what we call culture is nothing but the expression of human nature, the result of specific biological and especially cognitive capacities that have enabled human animals to gather food, build shelters, orient themselves, socialize, ask questions and give life meaning. it is not by accident that the term “culture” derives from the latin verb còlere, namely something simple and practical: the act of “cultivating” with one’s own hands, being able to till the soil. what is needed then, is the development of a discourse and a praxis that puts culture back into nature. to achieve that, it is necessary to question assumptions of human exceptionalism first. it is also paramount to realize that the characteristics we deem as unique and privileged are actually just some of the possible combinations among many that are present in all living beings. in this comment, i argue that one, vast energy runs through and nourish all living beings. for humans, the task is that of understanding how to channel, articulate and relate this energy to the rest of life. to achieve this goal, i propose to follow some insights of contemporary thinkers – luce irigaray, francisco varela and françois jullien – who, from different perspectives, have explored new ways to think about ethics that seem timely and useful. moreover, i will grapple with some ideas derived from the psychoanalitic tradition in order to overcome their hopeless implications and offer instead a more positive outlook. freud believed that the only solution to the incurable distress of modern civilization would consist in the transformation of neurotic misery into collective unhappiness (freud 2012). here, i prefer to suggest a different path. 2. languages of war the radical opposition between nature and culture typical of western sensibility – along with its implicit anthropocentrism and the humanistic metaphysics of the subject – has produced various results, among which profound ethical implications. first, the idea that humans are the only oral subjects and thus the exclusive bearers of rights, which probably derives from the ancient aristotelian argument that ethics is that branch of philosophy that studies human conduct. nature, being considered an entity without any subjectivity cannot benefit from neither moral considhttp://www.ledonline.it/relations/ a dialog with irigaray, varela and jullien 323 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ erability nor rights. in other words, the assumption is that non-human animals and trees, strata of humus and minerals serve human purposes exclusively. second, humans set up an apparatus to control human essence, something dangerously natural and for that very reason potentially untamable. luce irigaray notices that western cultural identity is built on the submission of nature to rules and techniques which are aimed at dominating it and this kind of dichotomy does not favor the production, circulation and transformation of energy (irigaray 2011, 21). on a different note, despite the fact that freud’s psychanalysis began with the goal of unveiling the moralism of european society of his time, it also ended up serving this function of control. a quick glimpse at freudian terminology will help explaining this aspect. it is not by chance that when freud describes intrapsychic life he employs terms such as defense mechanisms, conflictual situations to be managed, assaults on the ego, systems of prohibitions, enslavement of the ego and so forth (laplanche and pontalis 1967, passim). in other terms, freud explains psychic processes such as desire, affection, love and fear in terms of conflict, namely all the psychic energy that fluctuates through the subject. this normative, war-related language (assaults, defenses, prohibitions) echoes the political categories of friend-foe, where the enemy becomes the other within us, that is something that belongs to us and remains nevertheless different. this is, of course, a description that mirrors a millennia-long patriarchal culture that is still pervasive within the western world. it is legitimate to ask whether it would possible, and more beneficial, to experiment with a lexicon alternative to the freudian terminology. a different approach would move us beyond the conflicting vision in which the human subject appears separated within and oppressed by a twofold danger, between a nature that is hard to control and a culture that acts as a controller. 3. ethics and drives however, the freudian narrative is not only that. freud talks also about a driving energy that flows through the subject. more often he uses the term libido, the force with which a certain drive manifests (freud 1969, 282). with jung, then, this notion broadens to describe more generally the psychic energy that is present in everything and manifests itself as a tendency towards something, an appetitus (jung 1976). in any case, freud approached psychic functioning according to three avenues: dynamic, topic and economic. in the first case, psychic phenomena are http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ federico battistutta 324 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ derived from the re-composition of the driving forces. in the second, the psychic apparatus is the result of interconnected systems with different functions. third case is the hypothesis that psychic processes depend on the circulation and distribution of impulsive energy. this latter can be quantified, equalize, it can grow or diminish depending on the psychic charges that call for satisfaction. it is in this sense that some have talked about an “hydraulic principle” following freud’s use of terms related to fluids and flows: tanks, flux, discharge, canalization and so forth. this hydraulic theory considers emotions, desires and sentiments as fluids that circulate in the mind, likewise the blood in the circulatory system. so, the notion of impetus or drive becomes a sort of limit-concept between the psychic and the somatic (freud, 1976, 17). it goes without saying that this idea was already present in descartes who conceptualized the nervous system in a pneumatic fashion, suggesting that the nerves function similarly to tubes that transmit the pressure of “animal spirits” to the brain and then to the muscles (descartes 1994). for irigaray, we shall move from the actualized, dynamic process (energy charge), from the flowing of this energy fluxes that pass through and fuel life. but not to create a technology aimed at controlling these impulses, but rather to better understand them, to foster their flow, within and outside our skin. the problem, irigaray argues, is to find a way to cultivate a natural energy that, in the west, has been known only as instincts, impetus or passions more or less human, more or less pathological and reprehensible (irigaray 2011, 23). moving from this perspective, the central questions of ethics can be fruitfully tackled. but how can we reconciliate such alternative approach with a tradition that considers ethics as a system of norms and rational values? how can we overcome the idea that ethics is meant to judge and sanction what is good or evil? 4. intelligent awareness chilean philosopher and neuroscientist francisco varela has recently suggested that it is possible to develop a non-normative ethics, one that is not based on the primacy of rationality but rather on spontaneity. moving from an original comparison between contemporary cognitive sciences and eastern traditions, varela has proposed that ethics should be understood as a praxis that gathers all the energies available to the subject instead of a theory based on reason (varela 1999). varela has stressed the immediacy of perception-action, that is the primacy assigned to the immediate relation with occurring events rather than the abstract, http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ a dialog with irigaray, varela and jullien 325 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ a posteriori theorization of rules and judgements regarding right or wrong. this change of approach defines a paradigm shift: the cognitive process that leads to an ethical action is not logical, formal and abstract but instead it is contextual, practical, embodied as the human subject participates in it with its totality. knowledge, for varela, depends on the recognition of having a body with all its sensorial capacities and the ability to move, all of which are also part of broader historical, cultural and biological dimensions. this line of reasoning brought varela to consider ethics as closer to a specific type of wisdom based on living experience rather than a rational inquiry. the wise person is moral not because she represents ethics but because she embodies it. in this way varela’s intelligent awareness orients actions without obeying to rules or codified protocols. it faces the concrete situations, becomes action, is the action. the other key dichotomy of western thought – that between subject and object of action – crumbles as well and allows the emergence of a praxis in which immediate deliberation trumps the rational one. this is the energy of ethics. varela clarifies his thinking through some examples. one is the case of a car accident, in which an immediate human reaction would be to help other humans involved in the accident, following an intuition. actions such as this, true ethical events, do not derive from judgements, reasoning or the application of codes. these types of thinking may as well hinder the aid by suggesting avoiding such action. 5. the energy of wisdom besides irigaray and varela, the tension between wisdom and logic has been investigated also by philosopher françois jullien. his research on the bifurcation between western philosophy and eastern wisdom suggests that western philosophy has become a form of speculation whereas eastern thought has conserved a fundamental connection to wisdom (jullien 1998). jullien’s work is not a form of exoticism nor an attempt to stick to a presumed originality at all costs. jullien maintains that the language of wisdom differs from the habitual, mainstream ways of thinking of the western tradition. for instance, truth can be left aside, skepticism is good because it protects thinking from becoming too codified and therefore partial. this discourse has important consequences for ethics, further clarifying varela’s points above. for jullien the truly wise man has no ideas. the sage does not create hierarchies of ideas, privileging some over others. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ federico battistutta 326 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ there is no foundational moment or principle, but everything is always flowing. as a result, since nothing is primary, the potential of all reality is conserved. we can keep all possibilities open because we are capable of holding everything together, in a relationship with the world that does not move from prejudices. if the experience of reality is a changing process in continuous transformation one has to remain open to possibilities rather than adhere to one option. the sage’s perspective is always open, there is no organizer, nothing to be said, nothing to blame or praise. and despite that, this is not irenic passivity or indifference. the subject can still engage with the world but without assuming a fix position in it. in this way the subject participates in reality but remains completely free to follow and answer according to the situation, allowing himself/herself to draw from the energy of ethics. for these reasons, all norms, including those of ethics, are arbitrary. they are at the same time too partial (they come from a specific perspective) and too general (they do not account for the specificity of singular experiences). in this regard, jullien talked in an earlier book about the opportunity to move from the ethics of prescription to the ethics of promotion (jullien 2017). 6. conclusion let me conclude by clarifying in which sense the sage follows the middle way. it is important to underline that here we are far away from aristotle, horatius or the medieval scholastics, all that aurea mediocritas that searches a balanced equilibrium between two extremes and avoids exaggerations on both sides (the ancient in medio stat virtus). the wisdom of the middle way is different from that. far from being prudent, fearful or resigned, the wisdom of the middle way dares. it can be a praxis of the extremes that, because it does not alienate itself in a predetermined position, can move from one pole to the other. the expression of a subject in a specific moment, although always contingent, is not mere obedience to cultural coordinates. by drawing from a multitude of energies, some of which are still unknown or ignored, the subject recognizes the energy of ethics, something ever-alive and ever-throbbing. at the same time, this manifest an ethics of energy, that is a relational behavior that is inscribed in and springs from the bowels of reality, that immense vital depository that makes us all live and die. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ a dialog with irigaray, varela and jullien 327 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ references anati, emmanuel. 1983. gli elementi fondamentali della cultura. milano: jaca book. chavaillon, jean. 1996. l’âge d’or de l’humanité. chroniques du paléolithique. paris: odile jacob. descartes, rené. 1989. the passions of the soul. indianapolis: hackett publishing co. descola, philippe. 2013. beyond nature and culture. chicago: university chicago press. freud, sigmund. 1969. introduzione alla psicoanalisi. prima e seconda serie di lezioni. torino: bollati boringhieri. freud, sigmund. 1976. “metapsicologia”. in opere, vol. viii. torino: bollati boringhieri. freud, sigmund. 2012. il disagio della civiltà e altri saggi. torino: bollati boringhieri. irigaray, luce. 2011. una nuova cultura dell’energia. al di là di oriente e occidente. torino: bollati boringhieri. jullien, françois. 1998. un sage est sans idée. paris: édition du seuil. jullien, françois. 2017. une seconde vie. paris: grasset. jung, carl gustav. 1969. structure & dynamics of the psyche. princeton, nj: princeton university press. kopenawa, davi, and albert bruce. 2013. the falling sky: words of a yanomami shaman. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. laplanche, jean, and jean-bertrand pontalis. 1988. the language of psycho-analysis. london: karnac books. varela, francisco. 1999. ethical know-how: action, wisdom and cognition. stanford, ca: stanford university press. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ a re-examination of epistemological paradigms describing animal behavior in 8 points. "animal consciousness and science matter": a reply a re-examination of epistemological paradigms describing animal behavior in 8 points “animal consciousness and science matter”: a reply roberto marchesini indipendent scholar, director of the siua (school of human-animal interaction) doi: 10.7358/rela-2013-002-marc info@siua.it 1. introduction this is my contribution to the debate on the ability of nonhuman species to think and possess various levels of intentionality, in line with bekoff’s view that exploration of this subject can only deepen our understanding of the ontic of the many species whose behavior is the expression of their nature. my reflections, articulated in 8 points, aim to open up the debate by examining the following scientific points: 1. the use of the macchinomorpho model to describe animal behavior. 2. the use of psycho-energetic and behavioral paradigms to interpret animal behavior. 3. the insubstantiality of the reificatory principle: nonhuman animals as inert objects. 4. evolutionary subjectivity. 5. defining intelligences. 6. animals: proprietors of their own cognitive resources. 7. deconstructing consciousness as intent and restoring its adaptive dimension. 8. disentangling biocentrism from anthropomorphism. likewise, i am convinced that all epistemological ambiguities and misunderstandings must be dealt with in order to develop an elucidatory cognitive model of nonhuman existence. primarily, i consider it reductive to deem all nonhuman cognitive activity merely as a collection of higher functions that manifest only at the moment http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ roberto marchesini 70 relations – 1.2 november 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ in which the animal needs to express flexibility, understanding, creativity or intention. such a mentalistic approach requires the overriding of traditional paradigms based on automatism, such as the impulse and strategicrationale models. clearly, the mind, if present, is expressed in every act by the individual. cognitive models elaborated on the concept of elaborative schema are much more parsimonious than behaviorist or psycho-energetic models, as demonstrated in human psychology. frankly, maintaining an explicative dichotomy between humans and nonhumans is not scientific. in addressing the various issues above, i present the following eight strictly theoretical points, the result of my work over the last twenty years applied to various typologies of animals, published in intelligenze plurime. manuale di scienze cognitive animali (marchesini 2008) and modelli cognitivi e comportamento animale (marchesini 2011). these points can contribute to creating, i believe, a blueprint in the development of discussions and researches founded on a new paradigm, which avoids all forms of epistemological anthropocentrism. 2. point 1. the ‘mechano-morphic’ model as a first point i wish to emphasise that the choice of the macchinomorpho model to describe and explain nonhuman animal behavior does not comply with any logic of scientific rigor, as we would be encouraged to think, but rather to a philosophical preconception, i.e.: the urge to create a distinction between human beings and other animals. the animal machine model cannot be presented as a scientific hypothesis if it does not define what type of machine it is making reference to, because, being itself an abstraction, it cannot be shown to be false, and therefore is reduced to being a hypostatic and tautological structure. we can only put references to a specific machinistic model to the test, but every time a clarification is attempted, a curtain of approximation is drawn across, making it impossible to shine a light on the falsificatory praxis on which this ‘scientific method’ claims to be based. furthermore, the darwinian paradigm suggests that comparisons based on homology and analogies are the basis for taxonomic attribution and an ontological understanding of the species. it is not solely attributable to an anthropomorphic position, for example, to point out that when considering the femur of a horse, it is more correct to use a human femur as a frame of reference for comparison, and not a lamppost. for the very reason that nonhuman animals are not mechanical constructions, the mechanomorphic explanation should be rejected. a re-examination of epistemological paradigms describing animal behavior 71 relations – 1.2 november 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 3. point 2. paradigms adopted to describe animal behavior secondly, it is paradoxical that interpretations of animal behavior adopt two paradigms, which have been largely falsified by observatory-experimental praxis, that is to say the psycho-energetic approach of classic ethnology, and the associative approach of behaviorism. psycho-energetics attempts to explain innate nature via three phases of impulse, starting from an energetic-appetite phase, via behavioral expression to a resting or resolution phase during which it is difficult to elicit the animal’s response. the use psycho-energetics makes of negative biofeedback in explaining behavioral expression (for example physiological needs such as urination or eating), has been debunked both in and by behavioral and neurobiological research. to use the example of a dog which attacks: contrary to what psychoenergetics says, in the instant immediately following the attack, there is a greater rather than lesser likelihood that the dog will repeat the behavior. to use the metaphor of a pressure-cooker, we are not talking about pressure which can be lowered via a valve system, but about a neurobiological pattern, which once set-off increases the likelihood of repeat behaviors. in the same way, the law-of-effects, which from thorndike carries over to behaviorism, maintains that (a) an increase in a particular behavior indicates reinforcement; and (b) after punishment, a given behavior will be statistically less probable. nowadays we understand the sway exerted on the development and evolution of behaviors by such forces as evocation, practice, mimesis and assimilation. but it is striking to what extent there is a failure to appreciate how much of an error the use of punishment is: most unbalanced behaviors such as anxiety, phobias, compulsion, stereotypes, irritability, clinginess, etc., increase following punishment, as is true for all behaviors with an emotional or motivational base. to continue using the synthesis between psycho-energetics (what is innate) and behaviorism (what is learned) is not scientific, but purely ideological. it does not need pointing out, then, that describing a single phenomenon (animal behavior) using three epistemological paradigms (psycho-energetics, associationism, and cognitivism) is not in line with ockham’s razor. roberto marchesini 72 relations – 1.2 november 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 4. point 3. debunking the reification of nonhuman animals as a third point i feel it is urgent to underline how baseless the reificatory process is, which eradicates the distinction between natura naturans and natura naturata, and describes nonhuman animals as though they were an inert, passive material, compellingly regulated and confined by the laws of nature. the reality is that animals are active entities, able to construct their own ontical dimension and to act out modifications in the world. i will attempt to explain this taking into consideration ontogenetic and phylogenetic dimensions. when we speak of ontogeny – the development of the whole entity  – we consider the innate dimension as: (a) functional determinant filtered through phylogenies, according to which a given attribute selected for a given function would be limited to that same function in the subject; and, (b) evolutionary determinant, for which, each a priori attribute would have a predetermined developmental destiny. these two statements are misleading, but they offer themselves to reificatory projections. starting from statement (a), both ernst mayr (1997), when talking of remote and proximal causal duality, and nikolaas tinbergen (1951), in posing his four questions, exhorted us not to conflate evolutionary compatibility, dictated by the fitness of the subject, and elicitative compatibility governed by hedonic-elicitative principles that the individual is subject to. so if it can be proven that the fitness of altruistic behavior responds to the parameters of hamilton’s coefficient of relatedness, then it is equally true that an individual possessing a given trait may express it toward any entity which is capable of eliciting it, for example the expression of maternal instinct by an adult female of one species toward a cub of a different species. the explanation that refers to fitness tells us only whether an attribute is compatible in individuals of a given species, not why an individual would express it. with regard to statement (b) it should be noted that the development of a behavioral profile adopts innate coordinates but in co-optative mode (ontogenetic exaptation), freely and unpredictably giving rise to individual behavioral identities characterized above all by creativity, and more generally by the exercising of subjectivity by the individual. thus, the behavioral structures of the individual animal are not the strings of a puppet, but more precisely attributes available subjectively to the animal. a re-examination of epistemological paradigms describing animal behavior 73 relations – 1.2 november 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 5. point 4. evolutionary subjectivity with this fourth point, i wish to emphasize evolutionary subjectivity, which has been mortified by a version of darwinism that converts the evolutionary process of living beings into a sort of isochronal algorithm, and nullifies any historical or participatory reference to the subject in phylogenies. for this reason i wish to return the individual living being to the center of the evolutionary process, and make a detour from lamarckian constraints regarding acquired characteristics, by conversely highlighting the ways which an individual, through behavioral ingenuity and inspired free choice, is able to modify the urges of natural selection, and accordingly, the destinies of the various characters present within any given population. this hypothesis is directly aligned with current dialectic interpretations of homeobox phenotypical directives and of the evolutionistic vision, which, from the evolutionary tinkering of françois jacob (1970), to the exaptation of stephen gould (2002) and elizabeth vrba (vrba and eldredge 2005), portrays animal populations as active participants in the relationship with their environment. if we can agree with darwin’s ideas on natural selection, it is not acceptable to postulate, in the light of discoveries by modern genetics, that living beings are no more than vessels with replicatory function. the discoveries that organisms make modify selective pressures, which themselves are responsible for the attribution of fitness of a given characteristic. darwin believed that human technology simply diminished the pressure of natural selection, although, in reality, every behavioral device modifies selective predicates: for example the advent of a certain technique or technology selects those individuals who are able to make use of it. 6. point 5. defining intelligences i dedicate point 5 to dissecting the definition of ‘intelligence’ into two distinct senses: one of comprehension and resolve (intus-legere); and one of choice and decision (inter-legere), which are usually conflated as a single concept. i wish to do this simply in order to evaluate the merit of classificatory mechanisms used to distinguish between various species and which assume that the substantive measuring stick for this is, by definition, human-ness. the result of such classification can only be a given: humans are at the vortex of intellect, therefore animals, which most resemble humans (chimpanzees, pygmy chimps and gorillas) are considered those most intellectually endowed. roberto marchesini 74 relations – 1.2 november 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ this brings me back to darwin. darwin, amongst other things, was the father of continuism, which in its time dealt the deathblow to platonic essentialism. his primary contribution, however, was as theorist of specialisation (conceptualising the different-abled-ness of certain species), which overtook the aristotelian scala naturae. just as there is no sense asking ourselves which animal is more capable of perceiving, more equipped with endocrine glands, better at digesting via a gastro enteric tube, more equipped for movement, etc., there is no sense either measuring a single function, in this case intellect, with the measure of +  plus vs. –  minus, because every species has evolved its own specific aptitudes, according to its particular adaptive needs, in being able to comprehend, problem-solve, make choices and decisions. hence, we appreciate that tree-dwelling animals are masters of the detour; underground rodents are virtuosos of labyrinth-mapping; foodstoring birds have extraordinary topognostic memories, just as dogs have a matchless social intelligence. in brief, there is no ultimate proof of intelligence, and above all, there is no basis for man being the unit of measure because every species, humans included, has developed intelligences dedicated to specific cognitive challenges. i am referring to cognitive plurality and retain that it is fundamental to start with adaptive checkmate in profiling the intelligences of every single species, by applying the same research methodologies to intellect as are applied to other functions, and by eschewing the adoption of scales of arbitrary value within which different species vie with each other for ‘superiority’. 7. point 6. animals: proprietors of their own cognitive resources the sixth point should be reserved for qualifying the subjectivity of animals as ‘owners of their own cognitive resources’ and of their sense of the ‘here and now’ with regard to the passage of time. i am mindful that this is a significant forward slide epistemologically, which while not aiming to deny the importance of conscience in all of its diverse levels of intent, underlines that subjectivity is something that oversteps the limits of consciousness. we are accustomed, for cultural and religious reasons, to regard consciousness as the foundation of subjectivity, when, in fact, this is just one manifestation of subjectivity, and not necessarily the one most qualified to carry out the functions of elaboration and of positioning the subject in the world. a re-examination of epistemological paradigms describing animal behavior 75 relations – 1.2 november 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ an animal has an identity, not because it possesses consciousness – and we cannot doubt consciousness exists and is indispensable in carrying out certain intellectual functions, which demonstrates that it is part of the legacy of nonhuman animals – but also because the animal is not driven by its cognitive resources, rather it makes use of them, freely and creatively. the animal is governor of its own consciousness. inborn cognitive resources evolved during ontogenesis symbolize (a) an entanglement of instances, often in conflict, unable to regulate the individual but providing a blueprint which gives rise to arbitrary selections and unpredictable outcomes; (b) a mould or pattern, like a map, from whose structure it is not implicit what any functional outcome should be, any more than a map is responsible for an itinerary; (c) utilities or services which take on a different valence according to the particular point of time in the life of the subject and whether or not it has the ability to project into the future. if it is important to speak of consciousness in nonhumans, it is just as urgent to re-examine the bases of explicative models of behavioral expression, abandoning psycho-hydraulics and conditioning operands because it is within base behavior that we witness subjectivity in animals. 8. point 7. consciousness: intent vs. adaptive dimension point seven deals with the conundrum of consciousness, by deconstructing a reading of this as intent and restoring it to an adaptive dimension. consciousness is a referential function (to be conscious of) and as such ought not to be given a value outside the intellectual context of the species, as though it was a function in itself, as the real function of consciousness is to focalize the operative and positional challenges facing the subject. it is therefore not possible to use the human species as a unit of measure, but merely as a term of comparison with two variables, in particular: functional universals such as eating, reproducing, resting, etc. and adaptive specifics, meaning the specific existential style of a particular species. every animal is required to perform functional universals, but each species does this in a particular manner. in this sense i mean to say that a cat has a much greater awareness of its own body than i do of my own, or than most other humans have of their own bodies; that a gazelle has a far greater responsiveness to certain emotions such as fear/anxiety than any human; and that the way in which a lemur has an awareness of threedimensional space far beyond that of humans. awareness is a sort of zoom function, capable of dragging a fragment of here and now (which by its very nature is constantly mutating) into sharp roberto marchesini 76 relations – 1.2 november 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ focus, from an elaborative and positional perspective. but in order to do this, ‘awareness/consciousness’ must be able to rely upon a certain stability within the nature of the subject, for which there cannot be an ephemeral awareness, if on the other hand there is not an enduring awareness of self. i maintain therefore that every negation of self-awareness/consciousness is an epistemological error before it is a scientific or ethological mistake. gordon gallup’s mirror test was important and a fundamental passage, however we must be clear that recognizing one’s reflection is not a benchmark by which we can deny that other species possess self-awareness. 9. point 8. disentangling biocentrism from anthropomorphism as eighth point, i return to the term ‘biocentrism’, proposed by bekoff, disentangling the concept from anthropomorphism, the last remaining vestige of anthropocentrism. there is no doubt that humans share many cognitive aspects with other species, and this very fact ought to spur us to deepen our understanding of ourselves as a species, in order to divest ourselves of the outworn certainties of anthropocentrism and adopt a transversal, biocentric investigatory focus. familiar as i am with the writings of bekoff, i uphold that his view of anthropomorphism is a first step towards bringing humans down from the disjunctive pedestal that still dominates the ethological and philosophical landscape. i note how much more correct it is to attribute to other species characteristics similar to our own, rather than describe them using a cartesian model, as though they were clockwork mechanisms, because every negationism should be given the chance to be put through its paces. having said that, to suggest as marian dawkins does that every hypothesis regarding animal thought is arbitrary, following the aphorism “what is it like to be a bat?” (nagel 1974), does not respond to true agnosticism, but only to its forerunner, negationism, neither in line with scientific dictates, nor with its closest epistemological registers. if it is true that science runs counter to intuition (wolpert 1992), and turns away from epistemic anthropocentric dominions (bachelard [1932] 2002), it is evident that the death blow to our former imagining of the world has been dealt pre-eminently by amendments brought about by science. science is not agnosticism, but a continuous formulation of hypotheses and counterfeit praxes charged with constructing an imaginary of reality that goes beyond what the legacy of phylogenies would have us see. anthropo-de-centrifying towards biocentrism, starting from functional a re-examination of epistemological paradigms describing animal behavior 77 relations – 1.2 november 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ universals and from the distinct styles of species-specific adaptation, means starting from a particular challenge to a particular species in order understand cognitive function. this is the best way to hone in – as is the duty of every ethologist – on what it means to be a bat. references bachelard, gaston. (1932) 2002. the formation of the scientific mind. manchester: clinamen press. gould, stephen j. 2002. the structure of evolutionary theory. cambridge: belknap press of harvard university press. jacob, françois. 1970. la logique du vivant: un historie de l’hérédité. paris: gallimard. marchesini, roberto. 2008. intelligenze plurime. manuale di scienze cognitive animali. bologna: perdisa. 2011. modelli cognitivi e comportamento animale. isernia: eva edizioni. mayr, ernst. 1997. this is biology: the science of the living world. cambridge: belknap press of harvard university press. nagel, thomas. 1974. “what is it like to be a bat?”. the philosophical review 83 (4): 435-50. doi: 10.2307/2183914. tinbergen, nikolaas. 1951. the study of instinct. london new york: oxford university press. vrba, elisabeth, and niles eldredge, eds. 2005. macroevolution: diversity, disparity, contingency. essays in honor of stephen jay gould. chicago: university of chicago press. wolpert, lewis. 1992. the unnatural nature of science. cambridge london: harvard university press. human relationship with animals: reading the book of tobit in the light of christian tradition human relationship with animals reading the book of tobit in the light of christian tradition gianfranco nicora 1 alma massaro 2 1 independent scholar 2 phd candidate in philosophy at university of genoa, italy doi: 10.7358/rela-2013-002-mass almamassaro@gmail.com gianfranco.nicora@libero.it abstract in this paper we argue that the book of tobit, by presenting a new model of companionship between a human being and a dog, constitutes a vision of a future era, where humans and animals will live as fellows rather than rivals. in so doing we focus on the reading of the holy scriptures placing emphasis on the role of animals, moving from the book of tobit through the book of genesis, to jesus’ new alliance and the promise of new heavens and a new earth. we also show that the book of tobit, even if it is deeply encouched in the anthropocentric view particular to jewish culture, includes insights of non-violence toward animals as well as vegetarianism that are both fundamental and prophetic aspects of the new ethic suggested by isaiah’s prophecies and by the good news announced in the new testament. keywords: animal theology, scripture, book of nature, christocentrism, theocentrism, anthropocentrism, eco-theology, covenant, ethics of respect, animal ethics. 1. introduction according to theology, god manifests herself/himself in nature and scripture. hence theological research turns both to nature – investigated by means of the various kinds of human knowledge – and to the scripture  – which has been transmitted by christian tradition. the rational analysis of nature is an important principle for christianity and it is notable how common it is, in ethical matters, to resort to the so-called ‘natural law’: i.e. the traditional ethics which condemns some behaviour to be ‘against life’. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ gianfranco nicora alma massaro 38 relations – 1.2 november 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ this principle has to undergo a careful critical consideration, because the use of this criterion has sometimes occurred with a high form of absolutism, as if natural laws consisted of an exact handbook of specific and immutable rules, deductible from nature itself. it is instead a complex criterion, which takes into account the whole reality of creation in the variety and complementarity of its structural elements, and, above all, it is a dynamic criterion, as much as the reality of creation is evolutionary and dynamic. this means that nature is not a complete and finite reality (entelecheia) but is subject to fundamental development and evolutionary processes. it does not mean simply that evolution concerns only human knowledge of nature and universe, but the deeper meaning is that nature itself evolves according to a process of loss and recovery of data – data that is (from time to time) gathered, distinguished, and put forward by knowledge and science. is it possible to attribute some permanent meanings to nature within these dynamic processes? undoubtedly it is – and this is also what theological thought is trying to do – but not by thinking about a ‘natural order’ perceived and defended as immutable, but rather by moving from human’s self-understanding of nature hic et nunc and comparing it, as far as possible, with the knowledge of other times and places. this is the only way we can refer to nature and its laws; we have to maintain a critical reliance on the culture in which, hic et nunc, we are immersed, by means of, for example, the results of biological disciplines (sociobiology, physiology, comparative anatomy, neuroscience, ethology). even referring to the word of god, stated in the old testament, is not an immutable criterion. without a doubt the christian idea of mankind is that of human beings as the creatures called to adhere freely to god’s project, through the basic exercise of their freedom, resolute in their destiny. this supreme saving act is the act of faith, which lets the human being liberally abandon her/himself to god. and, as we will try to demonstrate in the following pages, since god is love, to liberally adhere to god and to her/his project means to choose a life inspired not by the ethics of dominion but by the ethics of love. according to the new testament, the human being is the creature called to choose a life of love; this is his greatest responsibility and his high moral dignity before the entirety of living beings, human and nonhuman (jn 15:9-10 rsv). every ethical choice, both in its intentional birth and in its concrete act, is called to be a mediation of love. in the bible the laws about human behavior are frequent and precise, it seems as if we have nothing more to do than accept them and pass them as firm laws to those who wish to listen to the teachings of christian faith. in reality, the problem is more complex. if the human condition – as explained above – certainly follows from the revelation (that is the most human relationship with animals 39 relations – 1.2 november 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ concise word about humankind that god conveyed to us) it is not the same for the various norms proposed in the ancient testament: do they represent a lasting word of god, or rather, are they just a human view borrowed from the cultural debate of the time and thus adaptable? this last choice is not an unusual interpretation. rather it has been proposed and developed by biblical hermeneutic regarding the entire revealed word. it is even more important for its ethical aspects, with regard to which the bible seems more influenced by social and cultural issues than in other respects. but there is, however, a second hermeneutical issue of fundamental relevance, that is the comparison between the bible and those cultures with which the bible is in contact and from which it often takes its origins. it is only on this basis that a deconditioning will be possible. therefore, every theological research has to consider scientific data in order to reach a correct understanding of the bible and of the data of the ‘decoded’ faith, in order to have a meaningful reflection. for this reason in order to achieve a correct animal and creation theology it is important to make full use of the ‘culture’ in which we are immersed – in all its elements and positive contributions – and of our environment. and, as valsecchi suggests: when we speak about ‘culture’, we do not identify it with the real habits of a certain time or of a certain environment, nor do we identify it with a specific ideology. looking at the contemporary socio-anthropological ideas, we consider ‘culture’ to be the dynamic effort, that is never complete, to organize the elements of human co-existence around human fundamental needs as discovered and prioritized by each group. (valsecchi 1973, 26-30) 1 in the light of these considerations it is possible to start a re-reading of holy scriptures paying attention to the role of animals, moving from the book of tobit passing through the book of genesis until jesus’ new alliance and promise. it will be clear that the book of tobit could be considered a vision of the future era of the peaceable kingdom – by presenting a new model of companionship between a man and a dog to the reader – even if it is deeply encouched in the anthropocentric view particular to jewish culture – which defies an understanding of the absolute non-violence toward animals as well as vegetarianism which are both fundamental and prophetic aspects of a new ethic among sentient beings. 1 translation is our. gianfranco nicora alma massaro 40 relations – 1.2 november 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 2. the book of tobit the book of tobit is a huge fresco in which the journey represents life. it is not about history, in fact it is a popular happy-ending tale with a sapientialdidactic goal. the biblical image of tobias who leaves for a long journey with an angel and his dog – “so they both went out and departed, and the young man’s dog was with them” (tb 5:16) – is the parable of our journey on earth, during which animals and angels are our companions. the style is fictional, as it is full of twists, and of supernatural incursions in daily life, which leave the reader waiting the happy ending with bated breath. the central part of the book is about a blind man called tobiel, and his son, tobias, who is sent by his father to collect some money owed to them by a relative. tobias departs, accompanied by his dog and azariah, who offers to protect him during the journey. the young man does not realize that azariah is an angel, disguised as a wayfarer, even if from the very beginning azariah shows a superhuman knowledge, suggesting tobias to keep the gall, the heart and the liver of a fish he had caught in the tigris. furthermore azariah tells tobias about the sad story of his cousin, sarah, who has been condemned by a demon, asmodeus, to be always widowed but he also reveals to him how to defeat the demon by burning the fish’s heart and liver. for this reason when tobias falls in love with sarah and gets married to her, he already knows how to defeat the demon. in the final part of the journey tobias, sarah, azariah, and the dog go back to nineveh where tobias’s father is healed from blindness as soon as the son puts the gall of the fish on his eyes. at this point the father would like to reward azariah, who instead reveals his angelic nature ascending to the heavens leaving the protagonists astonished. in addition to all the traditional characters of the story, there are others which are nonhuman living beings: • the domesticated dog, who is with tobias at the beginning and at the end of his journey (tb 5:16, 11:4). during the vi century b.c. the dog was regarded as an unclean being but here, for the first time in the ancient testament, a dog is presented as a friend and companion, together with the angel and in opposition to the demon asmodeus. • the fish provides the key elements to solve tobia’s problems: with its heart and liver he will drive away the devil and with its gall his father will be healed from blindness (tb 6:1-4). • the sparrows, accused of having provoked tobiel’s blindness: “i slept by the wall of the courtyard, and my face was uncovered. i did not know that there were sparrows on the wall and their fresh droppings fell into my open eyes and white films formed on my eyes” (tb 2:9-10). human relationship with animals 41 relations – 1.2 november 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ • the young goat who enters tobia’s home bleating and represents an element of wealth in tobit’s family (tb 2:12-13). • the angel: his name, raphael, means ‘god who healed’. raphael – who behaved as a personal entity with its own will and not as an jhwh’s alter ego. • the devil: in tobit 3:8 is one of the few demons who is called by its own name, asmodeus. its name comes from persian aeshma deva, which means ‘he who kills’ – in antithesis to raphael, which means ‘god who healed’. in this sacred history all the characters, human and nonhuman, remind us about the well-known book of genesis, where the fresco becomes cosmic and the journey starts from the depth of the millennia, when the whole of creation (sky, earth, water, fire, sun, moon, plants, animals, humans, angels) was born from the breath of the holy spirit. 3. the cosmic journey: the theocentric vision the first account of creation (gn 1:1 2:4) is the first text about eco theology. the main part of the story regards god as an architect who creates the place, the rooms and then settles the inhabitants who all live under the same roof on different floors. the text is poetic and its literary genre is didactic; in a polytheistic cultural context it teaches that: • the universe is the work of god. • every creature (even the green grass) comes from her/his goodness and beauty. • every creature is an image of god, who is reflected in it (gn 1:31 “and god saw everything […] was very good”; in hebrew tov means both good and beauty). • humankind (male and female) (in the hebrew text: ֹאֹתו, otò), created as an image of god, has to take care of creation, in the same way as god acts towards all her/his creatures. the meaning of the verb kavash is not ‘subdue’, but rather ‘take care of the earth’ in a loving and harmonious relationship. regarding the verb usually translated as ‘dominate’, radah, it suggests to rule, to lead, to pasture, as the action of the shepherd who loves his herd (de benedetti 1999, 16-20). in this text the vision is theocentric, since the whole creation reflects god’s beauty and goodness and the relationship between the human race and animals is based on a strong sense of kinship (de benedetti 1999, 29-30). gianfranco nicora alma massaro 42 relations – 1.2 november 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ in the second account (gn 2:4-25) god is represented as a potter. the creator moulds a body out of mud and makes it come alive by blowing her/his vital breath on it. human beings – and then animals – come from the earth and are given life by god’s spirit: “when thou sendest forth thy spirit, they are created” (ps 104:30). the story continues with three pictures, where the only changes are the appearance or the disappearance of a character. first picture. god says: “it is not good that the man should be alone; i will make him a helper fit for him” (gn 2:18) literally ‘one who is in front’ therefore god molds all sorts of animals out of clay. the scene .(ּכְנֶגְּדוֹ עֵזֶר) is suggestive, everything seems perfect, but god starts to think about an empty part of her/his creation. the man, that is “the earthly” (ָהָאָדם, haadam, ‘adam’), who was put “in the garden of eden” by god (2:15) would not be happy if he remained alone, because the male is an incomplete human being. second picture. god tells adam to name all the animals: “[…] and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. the man gave names to all cattle, and to the birds of the air, and to every beast of the field” (gn 2:19-20). in biblical language ‘to name’ means to recognize one’s paternity over the one who receives the name, as it happens in matthew 1:18-21 when joseph is told by the angel to give the name to jesus, who will be therefore considered joseph’s child. however for man there was not anyone like ‘one who is in front’. third picture. god gives adam a female companion taken from adam’s middle (gn 2:21-22). “this at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (2:23). he calls her “she-man” (ּאָּׁשה, ishà; feminine of ּאיׁש, ysh, ‘man’) because she was taken from the man (2:23). now the human being is not simply an “earthly” (ָאָדם, adàm): now he is ּאיׁש (ysh), ‘man’, and she is .’woman‘ ,(ishà) ּאָּׁשה this story too is an example of the didactic genre and in a male chauvinist cultural context – where woman is subordinate to man and considered almost the same as the wheat flour she kneads, as the millstone which crushes the grain of wheat, as the donkey – it teaches us that: • male and female complete each other and have the same dignity. • the same breath of life is given to both humans and other creatures. we find here the same kinship of the first account. the relationship between the human race and other animals is based on the father-child one, as god is human’s father so other living beings are human’s brothers, indeed human’s children, as the young sheep of the second book of samuel who grew up in the poor house “it used to eat of his morsel, and drink from his cup, and lie in his bosom, and it was like a daughter to him” human relationship with animals 43 relations – 1.2 november 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ (2 sm 12:3). we can say that an interspecific and universal fellowship does exist. but it is at this stage of the story and of the journey that adam and eve meet the cunning snake on their path. 3.1. the snake and the flood in the third chapter of genesis, we find the snake instilling doubt in the human mind, by provoking eve to question god’s goodness and sincerity 2. and it is in this temporary losing of faith that human beings also lose innocence and, therefore, commit sin (gn 3:1-5). by simplifying the intricate matter about the meaning of the snake, tradition believes that the snake is satan, the demon. inside the snake – an animal like any other – a special energy is at work. like in the book of tobit, raphael appears in disguise and the demon pretends to be asmodeus, so in genesis, satan – a liar since the beginning – hides itself in the snake and takes advantage of eve and adam’s freedom. the bible shows the snake as a cunning enemy, the cause of humans’ loss of initial innocence – the innocence which enabled them to have a direct and pure relationship with god and, hence, with the whole creation. by sinning, humans cause the fall of other living beings. animals do not sin, but they are unconsciously involved in humans’ sin. the lord god said to the serpent, “because you have done this, cursed are you among all cattle and above all wild animals”; […] to the woman he said, “i will greatly multiply your pangs in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children, yet your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you”. and to the man he said, “[…] cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. in the sweat of your face you shall eat bread til you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return”. (gn 3:14, 16-20) but it is with the flood that the relationship between living beings was completely modified. once again the whole community of life is involved in god’s punishment of human sin. human unfaithfulness causes the first environmental disaster. once again, the harshness of the human heart is what causes harmony to deteriorate. for this reason in the sixth chapter of the book of genesis all living beings are killed among with human beings, except those in the care of noah, the only man who has found favour in 2 interestingly, they are not surprised at snake’s words, because at the beginning interspecies communication was an ordinary event: even god descends to the garden in order to talk and walk with human beings. gianfranco nicora alma massaro 44 relations – 1.2 november 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ god’s eyes. and once the water receded, god established his covenant with noah and all living beings with him: then god said to noah and to his sons with him, “behold, i establish my covenant with you and your descendants after you, and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the cattle, and every beast of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark […]”. and god said, “this is the sign of the covenant which i make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: i have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth […]. when the bow is in the clouds, i will look upon it and remember the everlasting covenant between god and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth”. (gn 9:8-10, 12-13, 16) 3.2. noah and the new covenant in the sign of rainbow: anthropocentrism once again with the flood, the whole of creation is involved in the punishment of human guilt. god makes an ‘everlasting covenant’ with every living creature on the earth, hence the animal and vegetable kingdoms are included. after the flood a new earth is born, a new place inhabited by the people of the ark, a new hope is rekindled but, at the very same time, a new deterioration of the relationship among living beings occurs: humans are now allowed to eat other animals and they, in turn, will fear humans. nevertheless, god, in order to remind humans that life does not belong to them, forbids them to eat the animals’ blood (gn 9:4). blood, in fact, contains life and life belongs only to god. however, very soon the human beings, because of their sinful nature, will consider themselves the owners of the whole of creation, forgetting the alliance with god and, hence, their solidarity with animals. the theocentric vision is now replaced by an anthropocentric one and the fellowship model by the domination one. from this moment the split among those who lived together on the ark starts (gn 9:3), hence animals are subject to humans’ wickedness and dictatorship. animals, which did not claim to be like god as other creatures did – some angels and human beings – started a path of suffering, which is yet to end. the jewish did not forget, however, that these innocent living beings are so similar to them that they could be used in sacrifices. the use of animals in sacrifices is an ancient form of worship linked to the culture of the times, which shows the value of the animals offered to god, which is as important as human life. from that it is possible to understand a little bit further the prohibition to eat animals’ blood because blood is the life of every living being, humans’ kin. human relationship with animals 45 relations – 1.2 november 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ notwithstanding human sinful nature and its predisposition to cruelty, in the bible and in rabbinic tradition compassion comes gradually to be considered the first criterion that has to guide human behavior towards animals. there are many laws trying to limit suffering among animals: animals have the right to sabbath (dt 5:12-14); it is not possible to plough with an ox and an donkey together, in order to avoid the suffering caused by their unequal strength (dt 22:10); it is forbidden to muzzle an ox when it is treading out the grain because everyone has the right to feed on the product of its own work (dt 25:4). thanks to a set of ethical precepts, primeval jewish anthropocentrism gradually became more moderate. 4. christ brings back harmony to the creation: christocentrism as isaiah prophetically says, the heavens and the earth will generate the saviour. “shower, o heavens, from above, and let the skies rain down righteousness; let the earth open, that salvation may sprout forth” (is 45:8). at a certain point of planet history jesus – god’s heavenly son – appeared on the earth. at the moment of jesus’ birth, born in a manger, we find human and other-than human subjects – as also happens in the book of tobit; there was the brightness of the stars, the harmonies of angels, the shepherds, the sheep, the ox and the donkey because they are all included in the process of salvation. during his journey on this earth jesus teaches care and compassion to the whole of creation, as is well summed up in his own sacrifice, and he abolishes every sacrificial rite, by replacing it with bread and wine, products of the earth and work of human hands – the food of a heavenly kingdom banquet. as paolo de benedetti notes, jesus’ resurrection is at the basis of a new ethic towards living beings and even towards vegetables. even more importantly, if everything that had existence from god and lost it with death does not get it back again, we should conclude that death is more powerful than god, since it triumphs over existence. this was a serious danger for god, who chose his own death in order to announce resurrection. if a pebble – and not just a blade of grass – did not retrieve its existence, paul’s question “where, o death, is your victory?” would be false. (de benedetti 2009, 36-7) 3 3 translation is our. gianfranco nicora alma massaro 46 relations – 1.2 november 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ and this is because, as paul says, after christ’s resurrection the rebirth of the whole of creation is in gestation: for the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of god; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the glory of the children of god. we know that the whole creation has been groaning in travail together until now. (rom 8:19-22) it means that creation, without being sinful, has been dragged along to a state of vanity and corruption by humans, from this suffering follows. however this state is not definite, in christ the whole of creation finds its hope. this is paul’s christocentric vision of the whole of creation. in paul’s theological vision the whole of creation was made through christ (col 1:15-17). paul’s prophetic vision gives us the chance to mention the problem of the meaning and of the divine project inside creation. in paul’s vision christ is at the beginning and end of world history. the themes of the final liberation of creation and of its participation to the glory of god’s sons are confirmed in the ‘new heavens’ and ‘new earth’ of the second epistle of peter (3:13) and of the revelation (21:1). the first important news is that this vision is about the liberation of the subject, and not from the matter – as it was in almost every ancient idea of salvation: platonism, gnosticism, docetism, manichaeism, catharcism. and it explains why in the final verse the apostle states this vision of faith with a bold image: the whole of creation is compared to a woman suffering and groaning from birth pangs. in the human experience, this pain is always mixed with joy, and it is really different from the silent crying of the world, expressed in virgil’s aeneid (1.462) sunt lacrimae rerum, there are tears of things. the mention of the labour of creation can be found in paul’s passage about the different acts of the spirit. he finds continuity between creation’s and the believers’ groans. this last one is directly related to the spirit: “and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the spirit, groan inwardly” (rom 8:23). the spirit is the mysterious power, the powerful energy which drives creation to its fulfillment. the spirit – which was hovering at the beginning of creation – is the same for the stars, the sea, the trees, the gazelles, the human beings, and the angels: “for the fate of the sons of man and the fate of beasts is the same; as one dies, so dies the other. they all have the same breath” (eccl 3:19). the theologian vito man cuso calls energy this unique being which is the spirit (mancuso 2007, 55). and, as simon weil says, “the greek word which is translated spirit human relationship with animals 47 relations – 1.2 november 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ literally means fiery breath, breath mingled with fire, and it represented, in antiquity, the notion which science represents today by the word energy” (weil 2003, 251). 5. conclusion from the above it follows that in christ pantocrator the whole of creation resurrects, and we will find the signs of this renewal in the interspecific and infraspecific harmony between human beings and animals: “the wolf shall dwell with the lamb […]. the sucking child shall play over the hole of the asp” (is 11:6-8). but this cannot be understood until human culture has moved away from the ancient anthropocentric hebrew consideration of the world. by presenting a new model of relationship between a human being and an animal, the book of tobit represents a vision of this peaceful future kingdom. but it can in no way fully represent this new era since it is still deeply entrenched in the anthropocentric view particular to jewish culture which does not allow an understanding of the attitude of absolute nonviolence toward animals and vegetarianism which follows from the message of the gospels. however, the reading of this story in the light of jesus’ revelation offers a glimpse of the kin relationship between humans and animals existed at the beginning of the cosmic story and that will be restored with the future era, with jesus’ second advent. references de benedetti, paolo. 1999. e l’asina disse… l’uomo e gli animali secondo la sapienza di israele. magnano (bi): qiqajon. 2009. il filo d’erba. verso una teologia delle creatura a partire da una novella di pirandello. brescia: morcelliana. mancuso, vito. 2007. l’anima e il suo destino. milano: raffaello cortina. valsecchi, ambrogio. 1973. nuove vie dell’etica sessuale. brescia: queriniana. weil, simon. 2003. the need for roots. prelude to a declaration of duties towards mankind. london: routledge classics. theory, activism, and the other ways: an interview with carol j. adams 73 relations – 1.i june 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ theory, activism, and the other ways an interview with carol j. adams adele tiengo phd, student in foreign languages and literature at the university of milan, italy doi: 10.7358/rela-2013-001-tien adele.tiengo@unimi.it carol adams, writer, activist, feminist vegan, is the author of the the sexual politics of meat (1990). in more than 20 years, her most famous and innovative work has reached a wider and wider readership, being translated into many languages (japanese, korean, chinese, german, and portuguese). she authored and edited several books and essays, like animals and women: feminist theoretical exploration (1995) and the feminist care tradition in animal ethics: a reader (2007), both edited with josephine donovan, and living among meat eaters: the vegetarian’s survival handbook (2003). as an activist, she worked particularly – but not exclusively – on domestic violence and racism. while i was doing research on ecofeminism and the interrelation between the exploitation of women and animals, i contacted her with the hope of gaining a deeper understanding of these themes. i was particularly interested in the different roles that images and texts hold in western culture and their influence on meat-eating, in approaches to animal exploitation as diverse as activism and literature, and in the relation between veganism and other kinds of food activism. we had a very warm and friendly voip conversation, in which she helpfully answered to my questions and doubts. i think that her contribution is relevant to the subject of the emotional lives of animals, with a specific focus on human animals. in books like living among meat eaters, carol adams has given great attention to the interactions between vegans and meat-eaters, since this interaction involves emotionally both categories and indirectly concerns the lives of nonhuman animals. in explaining her engagement in feminist-vegan activism, she underlined how issues such as racism, sexism, and speciesism cannot be addressed in a merely rationalized way. more than perfectly consistent philosophical arguments, it is strategic non-verbal language that makes people move from their positions. in a way, it is the exposition of emohttp://www.ledonline.it/relations/ adele tiengo 74 relations – 1.i june 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ tional involvement of human and nonhuman animals (as it is conveyed by, for example, literary works) that leads the way towards a change of heart. at: i would like to start from the beginning. in the preface to the 10th anniversary edition of the sexual politics of meat you write that you had been thinking about it for 15 years. in the preface to the 20th anniversary edition, you reassert the pathway of activism that led you to write your engaged theory. does this mean the time was not ripe for you to write it or for the public to read it? did you need more activist engagement before writing theory? ca: when i first had the idea in 1974, i wrote it as a paper and the following year somebody suggested i turn it into a book. so i started writing it but after writing about 200 pages, it felt very linear and flat. it seemed that all i was saying was “look at this example; now look at this other example: they are connected!” or “look at how men are the ones who fight the wars and look at how men are the ones who slaughter the animals: this is connected”. i knew my argument needed to be stronger and more convincing than simply saying, “there are connections”. i also had to learn how to write this kind of book. at first my thinking was like “oh look, mary shelley makes the monster a vegetarian! isn’t that interesting? and percy shelley wrote a vindication of natural diet, taking the title from the vindication of the rights of women, written by mary shelley’s mother! so, look at all that!”. but still it felt very linear, dualistic. it seemed as though there was a deeper level to get at about the connections. what i realized was that i needed more time to think it through. i sensed that i probably only had one chance to get people to read me and i didn’t want something that i thought was inadequate to represent my ideas. so, i needed to put it aside to figure out “what’s really going on now?”. it’s not enough to say, “look at this, and look at that”, i needed to have a theory that explained why these connections existed. i think the other thing is that i wasn’t ever really interested in going to graduate school per se. i didn’t see myself as a professor; i didn’t see how the kind of work i was doing was something you can do in graduate school. in species matters, an anthology from columbia, i have a chapter called “what came before the sexual politics of meat” and i talk very specifically about my activism in the 1980s. i learned several things from this activism that was crucial to completing the sexual politics of meat. first of all i learned all the skills of activism that you can only learn by being an activist: i learned how to be articulate under pressure, how to take a theory, activism, and the other ways 75 relations – 1.i june 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ stance and how to think through strategy, how to follow through toward a realistic and urgent goal. i also learned how to write – to organize thoughts and develop arguments because as an activist i was writing a challenge to the license of a radio station, i was writing grants for a domestic violence hotline, i was learning how to write fast and accurately. i was also reading a lot. it was a very tense time; there were a lot of personal attacks on my partner and me for our work against racism and for integrated housing. during this time, i was doing the research that was moving me towards my feminist-veg theory. i guess the other thing that activism did was that it allowed me to think about how ideas are experienced by others. those ideas can be threatening, and how do you respond when someone feels threatened? i see that now with the issue of veganism. we think we have to argue with non-vegans, we think we have to be very precise, logocentric, but what i realized through activism is that you can have the best arguments in the world and that’s not going to get a racist to change their beliefs! they are not going to move off their position because they are scared; in settling for argumentation rather than other strategic interventions, many of which are non-verbal, we may contribute to the status quo rather than challenge it. it’s not that i decided i needed to be an activist before writing theory. i had to be an activist because i believed in the importance of activism – of siding with the non-dominant – and then, as a result, activism became the pathway to returning to the writing of the book with deeper levels of understanding about what was going on. by fighting against racism i was seeing all the racist permutations of looking at african-american people as less than human (the process of animalizing people of color) and i realized that it’s not something theoretical, but something you are engaged with at a very activist level. i took my activism and examined it theoretically as a very dynamic thing. again, it’s not that i was going to be an activist so i could write better, but i needed to be an activist. additionally, i didn’t know what to do with all those ideas! but i did know what i wanted to do around domestic violence and around racism and i needed to be doing something there: to be silent in the 1970s around these issues was untenable and in gaining that voice it turned out i could gain the other, the theoretical voice. but if you ask me if this was the plan, it was not a plan! at: the german philosopher max horkheimer writes that the capitalist skyscraper of human exploitation is grounded in animal exploitation, that the basement of this skyscraper is a slaughterhouse. you subtitle your book “a feminist-vegetarian critical theory”: what are the connections, if any, adele tiengo 76 relations – 1.i june 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ between animal rights and the frankfurt school and horkheimer’s critical theory? ca: i wasn’t that familiar with his theory when i wrote the sexual politics of meat. certainly, if you look at exploitation, in the sexual politics of meat i talked about how the word ‘capital’ is related to cattle. i also look at how ford was inspired to create the factory assembly line by watching the slaughterhouse routines in chicago. barbara noske begins her book humans and other animals by talking about animals as examples of alienated labor. animals as alienated laborers are alienated from their own bodies, in the first chapter she explains that they are the producers of their own bodies as the product. she calls this the animal industrial complex, like the military industrial complex. many people have argued that all oppressions are built on the oppression of animals and that the model for women’s oppression is the domestication of farm animals. as noske said, meat is an appropriate food for capitalism; you always need more raw material because you are losing up lots of the raw material in the production of the meat. i think one of my interventions is to say “we have to be looking at what is happening with gender” and how animals are gendered (feminized and sexualized), and how women and other non-dominant people are animalized. i think that the feminist-vegan theory and, for example, the frankfurt school intersect and that there’s much more work that can be done. at: in the sexual politics of meat you developed a theory that owes much to literature. how can literary criticism work in the direction of animal advocacy? ca: fiction opens new worlds for readers. i like to think that fiction helps us encounter the other animals in non-dominant ways. literary criticism, at its best, helps us become involved readers, introduces us to new ways of thinking about literature, and challenges us. for me literary criticism was both a model and provided theoretical insights. through literary criticism, i discovered the literary concept of the absent referent and suddenly realized that this was what the animals are, this is how animals disappear. through literary criticism, i realized i should address the issue of how vegetarianism appears in a novel, not just that it appears. so i identified the operating of the narrative technique of ‘interruption’. interruption occurs in a novel when the narration is interrupted by issues related to vegetarianism; the interruption gives the opportunity to stop and think about the ideas being introduced. theory, activism, and the other ways 77 relations – 1.i june 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ there was no model for what i was doing. as with the idea of “interruption” in novels, sometimes i just had to make it up. i am concerned that as animal studies becomes trendy, we’ll encounter literary criticism that talks about animals but keeps them as absent referents; that is, keeps them safely untouched (and unprotected) by human hands or only touched in the literary sphere without a reflection on real life. i am referring to scholars who write about animals and yet eat dead animals. in their writings have they encountered animals in non-dominant ways if they continue to engage in dominant and oppressive activities against animals in their lives? in academia, animals have suddenly become a whole newly discovered but yet uncovered field: “animals in shakespeare”, “animals in auden”, “animals in jane austen”. i was never looking at what was happening to animals only because it said something about a novel: i wanted to look at what was happening to animals in novels because i thought the novel told us something about what was happening to living and breathing animals. i think literary criticism is always politicized, somebody is eating someone – or not – after they stop reading a novel. and someone is eating someone – or not – after writing literary criticism. the importance to me is getting to ‘not’. at: for example, in the lives of animals john maxwell coetzee displays an opposition between philosophy and literature, and between rationality and sympathetic imagination. what do you think about this opposition? what kind of approach is more appropriate? ca: let’s look at who coetzee creates to represent a point of view about the other animals. he creates a woman who is 62 or 63, he embodies the tensions that he wants to talk about in a woman who is (supposedly) aged and we know that because he is showing this from the perspective of her son. the first thing that the son acknowledges is that she is aging and he is uncomfortable with her aging body. at the center of the novel is not just a woman writer, but a woman writer with a body that is mediated through the eyes of younger man. the uncomfortable conversation with her daughter-in-law (and the way she can’t eat with her grandchildren – most inhospitable!), i think, reveals a very interesting aspect about the issue i call living among meat eaters. in a journal essay, coetzee writes about the time when he was teaching at the university of texas and he was invited to a barbecue, where there was nothing that he could eat. part of the lives of animals raises the issue of relationships between vegetarians/vegans and non-vegans and the difficulties encountered. adele tiengo 78 relations – 1.i june 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ in the feminist care tradition in animal ethics, josephine donovan and i claim coetzee as part of the feminist ethics of care; we argue that coetzee’s work falls into that category. (we boldly claim derrida, too!). in a dialogue with paola cavalieri he says that people have a sort of a revelation about the animals and then they go back and look for a rational justification. but before rationality, there is this revelation of embodiment. when he creates any kind of opposition or tension in the lives of animals, i think, he is pushing us to recognize that how we feel is working at a level that we might not be talking about or acknowledging, but that these feelings may be influencing everything. so, of course, he is creating an opposition between philosophy and literature at the level of the reading, but at the level of the writing he isn’t, because it was the sympathetic imagination that was authoring the tension. it’s the sympathetic imagination that can engage with all of these issues in such an intelligent and fascinating way. at: another literary approach to the industrial exploitation of nonhuman animals comes from novelist ruth ozeki. while writing her novel my year of meats, she discovers that women are not only metaphorically treated like cows, but they were being given the identical drug – diethylstilbestrol (des). what do you think about this dramatic connection? ca: many people said to me she must have read the sexual politics of meat, the issues of the sexual politics of meat appear in many chapters and i think it’s a lovely book, a sad book, but also a very well written book. it’s not just that women, like cows, were given the identical drug. there is so much more: the reproductive technologies created for women were created based on the reproductive manipulation of cows, because cows are in sexual slavery, because cows have to reproduce all the time, and so they need the hormones. i think my year of meats shows many other feminist issues in meat eating, as well. at: skimming through the sexual politics of meat, it seems that while written texts foster both positive and negative ideas about women and animals, all advertising and visual images are disturbing, anti-feminist, and speciesist. is there something right in this impression? is visual language more violent and oppressive than verbal language? does it have something to do with pornography? ca: i think there’s something right about that. john berger’s ways of seeing says that “men look at women and women look at men looking at women”. we are being experienced and being looked at and this reflects theory, activism, and the other ways 79 relations – 1.i june 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ that attitude in western philosophy that held that women are closer to the body and men are closer to the rational. so many responses to animals follow that dualism and, apart from the ads, we have this attitude that is always placing women as separate from men. the sexual politics of meat is about living beings who become consumable, visually consumable women or literally consumable domesticated and hunted animals. yes, i think that visual language is more violent and potentially more oppressive than verbal language. there is a beautiful book, the pornography of representation by susanne kappeler that links the problem of ‘looking’ with subjectification. ‘looking’ in western culture means a subject looking at an object, at the expense of another being who becomes that object. ‘looking’ is something that instantiates dominance for the viewer. so, a hierarchy is automatically instantiated in looking, but not in reading. at: last year, you have criticized a new video released by people for the ethical treatment of animals (peta) – one of the most popular organizations of animal advocacy –, which is meant to oppose the idea that (male) vegans are not sexually healthy and virile. the video shows a girl suffering from the consequences of violent sexual intercourse with her vegan boyfriend and seems to be ironic about sexual and domestic violence. can you explain your point of view on this subject? ca: peta would never criticize the functioning of the sexual politics of meat in society; it needs it. peta uses the sexual politics of meat to make its way into the dominant culture. peta is very clever; they know what gets attention. sex sells. i think peta is misogynist and even women (like some of the people making decisions at peta) can be misogynist. they know that what they sell as an idea or topic or video is not restoring the absent referent, they concede that our culture does not care about animals, and so they are always not so much representing animals as letting something else represent their message. and one way that they have chosen to supposedly represent the concerns of animals is by using women’s bodies. our culture rewards peta for being misogynist by giving it attention when it does misogynistic things. our culture knows how to talk about women as objects, knows how to look at women as objects. the idea that you have to reassure men about their sexuality because they have become vegan is absurd. why would you engage in the discussion at that level? it seems much more 19th century, instead of 21st century. the problem is that peta monopolizes the small amount of attention allowed for animal rights activism by the dominant culture, and their monopoly involves sexualizing that space. one of the effects is that women adele tiengo 80 relations – 1.i june 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ animal activists all around the world trying to get attention for their cause are ignored because they are not presenting it in a sexy or sexualized way. so peta changes the environment for what is being deemed worthy of media attention for all animal activists and i think this is very dangerous and shameful. at: in the sexual politics of meat you explain that the food industry exploits mainly nonhuman adult females and babies. however, hunting and other sports like bullfighting usually involve male animals. how would you comment on this? ca: in chapter 3 of the sexual politics of meat i show that even with hunting there is a tradition of identifying the prey with femaleness. (defeated animals are seen as “lesser powers” and thus female-like). the cows are seen as so cow-like, dumb, and stupid, and this contributes to the fact that we don’t care about eating them. in terms of hunting, it doesn’t always involve male animals (it depends upon who is being hunted), but there’s certainly a sexual politics of meat around hunting: masculinity is gained through the defeated foe who in defeat is described as female. the domesticated food industry works in such a way that, whether the animals being consumed are female or not, they are presented as female. american culture, for example, has an obsession for turkey breast and we grow these poor turkeys with breasts that are so big that they can barely bear their weight. so this has to do with how we feminize domesticated animals: it is not that the food industry does not harm male animals, it does! male chicks are thrown out, because they are not going to become layers. veal calves, who can’t bring more baby calves into the world, are killed too, because what the food industry needs is sexual slavery. what masculine sports need is a regressive reincorporation of manliness and masculinity through harming other animals, so i think that there is a connection. at: the american culture is often seen as a meat culture. the cowboy is a typical national figure and rodeo is the official sport in many states. why are these associations so strong and how does traditional culture influence would-be-vegetarians? ca: because of the sexual politics of meat! because american culture democratizes meat eating and there was already an association of meat with manliness and with imperialism. the idea that men need the strength from dead animals is, to begin with, ironic, since those animals were mainly herbivores, themselves. theory, activism, and the other ways 81 relations – 1.i june 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ masculine-defined activities provide continuous rewards for men, which is also interesting. one’s maleness is constantly being propped up, which suggests that these ways of inscribing gender are shaky to begin with. the dominant culture works also conveying what it sees as a negative association between eating vegan or vegetarian with “sissiness”, or “being effeminate” or other derogatory statements that imply that a man is less manly if he doesn’t eat meat. one way in which traditions influence would-be-vegetarians is that families reproduce traditional culture and it takes a while for them to learn how to do something differently. it seems to these families that vegetarians are going to destroy everything about family traditions. i did a book called living among meat eaters that tries to show that you can help your family to discover that you’re not going to destroy them just because you’re a vegetarian. at: for example, thanksgiving day is widely associated with the image of a great family dinner with the turkey served as the main dish. how does a vegan come to terms with cultural traditions like this, involving familiar bonds and conviviality as well as cruelty? ca: some vegans just keep going to thanksgiving dinners, other vegans figure out different ways and sometimes they are very lucky and their families decide to have vegan thanksgiving. i still believe what i wrote in living among meat eaters, that our presence among meat eaters when they are eating dead animals makes them aware that they are doing something that their own conscience knows is wrong. our role should be to stay out of the way of the fight that’s going on within that person about his own conscience. at: the united states have warmly welcomed the italian-based movement of slow food, which fosters an ethical reflection about food consumption encouraging people to care about the environment, their health, and culinary local traditions, but paying very little attention to animals themselves. what do you think about locavorism and the industry of organic meat? ca: i think locavorism is very dangerous when it fetishizes organic local meat. locavore ‘meat’ cannot possibly meet the consumption desires of the entire usa population. i think the idea of organic meat is an avoidance of the fact that we don’t need to eat animals. rather than explore all of the wonderful, varied, creative ways of preparing vegan meals, the response has been to try to ‘reform’ a bad system, that cannot actually be repaired. adele tiengo 82 relations – 1.i june 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ it also implies that the problem isn’t the killing of animals. i believe the problem is the killing of animals. one of the results of choosing organic meat and organic milk is that when a cow gets ill in an organic farm she is more likely to be killed because they don’t want to use antibiotics. the animals remain means to an end. ‘friendly murder’ is still murder. veganism started as a political movement and, before we could truly articulate our connections with the food justice movement, locavorism erupted as a safer way of thinking about the world because you don’t have to disturb your relationship with other animals and you can still believe that you are being kind. i think that the popularity of locavorism has created a groundswell for dangerous rituals and beliefs. for example, it has also introduced the idea that you can raise hens in your backyard, but people fail to realize that it’s more complicated than they understood: where do people get the eggs for those hens? they are getting them from factory farms! so the whole thing is inconsistent, especially when we know that going vegan one day a week is a more effective way of helping the environment than eating local seven days a week. at: recent ecofeminist trends led to researches in posthumanism and trans-corporeality. what do you think about this approach? do you think that it provides a solid theoretical basis for animal advocacy? ca: what i’ve noticed is that there are posthumanist trends trying to label the kind of ecofeminism that i have been writing as essentialist and i see that as lazy and incorrect scholarship. i think that there has been dishonesty in some writers who find it so much easier to cast this earlier stage of ecofeminist writing as just having retrograde views about gender rather than to really engage with us. there is at least one writer who does it to pave the way to justify organic meat, so i have problems with that. i think there are many interesting dialogues to have about posthumanism. there are many people that are doing very great and exciting work and some others who might find it a safe place to avoid engagement with animals. at: as an activist, which are your objectives and how do you pursue them? ca: right now, i think of myself as a cultural worker, i’m trying to help people critique the dominant culture, see the world differently, see relationships and possibilities differently, so my objectives could be as simple as getting more people educated about vegan food and introducing people to vegan eating. it could be showing the sexual politics of meat slide show theory, activism, and the other ways 83 relations – 1.i june 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ and trying to reach out to a group and educate them and teach others how to bring critical consciousness to the world we live in. i also work to protect women’s reproductive rights, especially in the usa. i’m involved with a group that works with the homeless, and right now, we are also working on a gun buy back. i think my writing is part of my activism at this point, so on different days i’m doing different things to try to write about change. at: what are you working on now? ca: i’m working with lori gruen to edit the papers that were presented at the conference we organized in november 2012 in memory of marti kheel. that conference, finding a niche for all animals, involved both established and emerging ecofeminist writers. it was so exciting and a wonderful weekend, although, we were all sad as we remembered marti and her great work, but also grateful that her life had prompted the conference. human energy: philosophical-anthropological presuppositions of anthropogenic energy, movement, and activity and their implications for well-being 173 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ is sn 2 2 8 0 -9 9 5 3 beyond anthropocentrism 1 • january 2013 inside the emotional lives of non-human animals a minding animals international utrecht 2012 pre-conference event special issue (genoa, italy, 12-13 may, 2012) edited by m. andreozzi, r. bennison, a. massaro, s. tonutti capabilities approach and animal bioethics • michele panzera animals and our emotions. how to approach the study of an interspecific community? • sabrina tonutti advocacy and animal rights • kim stallwood the emotional lives of animals: a christian perspective • alma massaro – gianfranco nicora animalia: ontology and ethics in weak antispeciesism • leonardo caffo the contemporary debate on experimentation • susanna penco – rosagemma ciliberti non-human animals and genetic engineering • arianna ferrari the relationship between humans and other animals in european animal welfare legislation • paola sobbrio human’s best friends? • matteo andreozzi elationsre l a t io n s . b e y o n d a n t h r o p o c e n t r is m 1 • 2 0 1 3 r 6.2 november 2018 energy ethics: emerging perspectives in a time of transition special issue edited by giovanni frigo part ii studies and research contributions energy ethics: a literature review 177 giovanni frigo contesting the radical monopoly: a critical view on the motorized 215 culture from a cyclonaut perspective damien delorme desiring ethics: reflections on veganism from an observational 233 study of transitions in everyday energy use alice dal gobbo ethical risk and energy 251 bertrand andre rossert coal feeds my family: subsistence, energy, and industry in central 269 appalachia m. joseph aloi human energy: philosophical-anthropological presuppositions 287 of anthropogenic energy, movement, and activity and their implications for well-being roman meinhold http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ relations. beyond anthropocentrism 174 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ comments, debates, reports and interviews energy ethics outside the box: carl mitcham in conversation 301 with giovanni frigo carl mitcham giovanni frigo energy equality and the challenges of population growth 313 andrea natan feltrin the energy of ethics / the ethics of energy: a dialog with irigaray, 321 varela and jullien federico battistutta reviews alex epstein, a review of the moral case for fossil fuels (2014) 331 adam briggle author guidelines 335 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 287 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ human energy philosophical-anthropological presuppositions of anthropogenic energy, movement, and activity and their implication for well-being roman meinhold mahidol university international college (muic), mahidol university, bangkok thailand doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2018-002-mein roman.mei@mahidol.edu abstract in this paper i focus on rather neglected considerations regarding human energy, movement, and activity, instead of joining the well-developed discourse on sustainable electricity production and moderate energy consumption. thereby the paper elucidates a more holistic understanding of energy, since it is usually assumed that when considering energy – in most cases – people engaging in this discourse, refer to electricity. the paper grounds the phenomena of human energy production and consumption on the anthropological fact that humans are active and moving – and essentially need to be moving, in one way or another and as long as they are alive – for the sake of their and others’ well-being. such a philosophical anthropology of energy, movement, and activity can, for example, be traced back to philosophic-anthropological claims in the oeuvre of aristotle who regarded different kinds of activities or movement (both understood here in a broader sense) as essential for the well-being of both individuals and society because they foster and actualize human creativity and fulfillment. relating the anthropological centrality of human movement to the current discourse on (alternative) energy production and consumption, the paper develops a more holistic ontology of energy. the objective of this paper is to promote this holistic understanding of energy as activity and movement in order to encourage a more wisely selected and limited substitution of fueland electricity-powered machines with human-driven movement. such a broader understanding of the energy concept will not only save electricity and fossil fuels, but will also potentially increase the well-being of humans, society, and the natural environment. keywords: energy; philosophy of energy; energy ethics; anthropology of energy; energy humanities; sustainability; philosophical anthropology; well-being; aristotle; movement. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ mailto:roman.mei@mahidol.edu roman meinhold 288 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 1. introduction in this paper, i focus on philosophic-anthropological considerations of human energy, movement and activity broadly construed. movement and activity are understood here as social, bodily (physical or corporal), intellectual and spiritual activities. philosophical anthropology is the study of human nature and the human condition in an effort to understand individuals and social entities in their environment and in their role as value creators (including ethical values). the paper will not cover ethical implications of energy understood as mere power or electricity production, distribution, consumption and waste since these considerations are widely covered in the discourse of energy politics, energy studies, and energy sustainability. i claim that the substitution of human activities by electricityor fuelconsuming devices, which implies a reduction of social, bodily (physical or corporal), intellectual and spiritual activities, is not always beneficial for the well-being of humans and often also detrimental to eco-environmental well-being. this is obvious and evident in the case of bicycle riding and walking – instead of using individual engine-powered vehicles for distances and routes that comfortably can be managed by foot or on the bicycle. other examples concerning the restriction of human movement are the almost unlimited and consistent use of social media, escalators, elevators or calculators. on the other hand, meditation or practices such as yoga or tai chi can be activities that activate and enhance human movement in a holistic way. in discourses on energy politics, energy studies, and energy sustainability, energy is usually understood as electricity, or kinetic energy, but in fact the word energy can refer to a multiplicity of forms, such as social (interpersonal), bodily (physical or corporal), intellectual and spiritual dimensions of human and non-human life. the greek word energeia means “activity, action, operation” and is a combination of en “at, in on, into” and ergon “work, action, business” (etymonline 2018). the english word work, the german word werk “opus, product of work”, as well as greek word ergon stem from the proto-indo-european root *werg, meaning “to do” (etymonline 2018). the greek word energeia offers a variety of translations that are broader than the concepts of energy and power we use today following the influence of natural sciences and engineering. such wider understanding of energy is employed, for instance, in a paper by the filipino philosopher agustin martin g. rodriguez (2016). he epitomizes cities not only as places of high energy consumption (especially electricity), but also as powerhouses of energy production, especially in http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ human energy 289 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the sense of creative energy (which, by the way, most often consumes electricity too). similarly, the writing of this paper is not only consuming electricity, for my laptop, internet, and air-conditioning or heating as well as physical human energy, but it is also releasing and channeling creative energy and engaging in thoughtful activity of the author and hopefully the reader, both of which are, in an aristotelian sense, intellectual activities of the soul. rodriguez’ account of energy does not serve to justify the higher electricity consumption by city dwellers, compared to dwellers in rural areas. rather, it broadens our understanding of energy, including the production of culture and technology with the help of human creativity. in a similar way, i propose a more holistic notion of energy that considers all human activities and movements as forms of energy. 2. aristotle’s accounts on movement, activity, and energy aristotle’s theory of movement and activity – probably the first systemic account developed in the western context – permeate his ethics, politics, sociology, psychology, philosophical-anthropology, metaphysics, physics and aesthetics. although one might find references to similar themes in plato, investigating the less systematized accounts on movement, activity, and energy in his dialogues exceeds the purpose of this paper. however, in a few instances references to plato will be given, especially in the case of striking similarities between the two or when it will be worth mentioning a significant platonic concept related to activity, movement or energy. this paper brings together four types of movement already addressed by aristotle: social activity, bodily-kinetic energy, intellectual activity and spiritual engagement. here, i do mean to apply to the energy discourse neither aristotle’s metaphysical concept of the unmoved mover nor that of causality. in fact, aristotle’s theory of causality is not essential for the explanation of the importance of the four categories of movement for holistic well-being. moreover, addressing the implications of aristotelian metaphysics for various energy discourses is worth a separate investigation, one that focuses especially on energeia (being-at-work) and entelecheia (having-a-target-in-itself). it suffices to say that aristotle’s notion of eudaimonia (not perfectly translated in english with “well-being”, or “happiness”) is an activity of the soul in which the realized soul is the entelechia, the actualizing dimension of the human being, meaning that some sort of energy is needed in this process of actualization. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ roman meinhold 290 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the orientation of current energy politics, energy studies and energy sustainability is aimed to find the best possible options to effectively produce the same or more amounts of power (especially in the form of electric energy) from alternative or renewable sources. this should be accomplished with the least possible environmental impact while minimizing consumption or optimizing the efficiency of devices and systems. in the context of these energy discourses, the aspect of human activities and movements that produce and consume energy should not be neglected, especially if the impact on non-human environments, ecosystems, and human health is taken seriously. in fact, energy is produced and consumed in any kind of human practice. for example, the current legislation to ban older diesel cars in highly polluted areas of some german cities such as berlin, munich, and stuttgart could lead to an intensified use of bicycles, especially if the diesel ban would go hand in hand with an optimization of bicycle lane infrastructure. the reduction of engine-produced energy and movement and the corresponding increase of human activity would benefit not only the health and wellbeing of the individuals who are directly riding the bikes, but also that of other city dwellers and the overall environment. four categories or domains of human energy, movement, and activity are of interest for my reasoning: social activity, bodily-physical, movement, intellectual and spiritual. the most evident category is bodily energy, movement, and activity. specific human activities that are not in a similar fashion accomplished, neither by animals nor by machines (yet), are intellectual (e.g. thinking, academic discourse, poetic activity) and spiritual (e.g. contemplating, meditating, praying), both of which consume bodily energy and at the same time create intellectual or spiritual energy. by social energy, movement, or activity i do not mean (in the first place) “social movements” such as feminism or the green movement but inter-individual activities such as friendships, activities shared among individuals with dedication and a certain seriousness (e.g. a band of musicians or a seriously committed group of individuals constituting a start-up). in the following sections, the investigation of human energy, movement, and activity will start from the public sphere where human beings interact – the social realm – and then move the most personal, intimate dimension, or the spiritual realm, via the corporal-physical and the intellectual domain of human activity and movement. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ human energy 291 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 3. energy, movement, and activity in the context of social connectedness the list of philosophers, sociologists, and psychologist who have emphasized the relevance of close and intensive social relationships is long. plato and aristotle dedicated entire books (plato: politeia and nomoi; aristotle: politics and nikomachean ethics) which discussed the ideals, values, and goals of social entities. plato even thought of a limitation of the size of city-states so that the quality of relationships is not hampered by its quantity. in his dialogue nomoi, he limited the state to 5040 households (plato 1997, 738a-b), a number that is mathematically expressed in the term 7 (factorial 7, calculated as 1 × 2 × 3 × 4 × 5 × 6 × 7). empirical research on alzheimer’s disease and depression shows that intensive social relations among individuals, such as friendships, have preventive, alleviating, and possibly even limited healing effects. real world social networks have protective influences on cognitive functions among the elderly (crooks et al. 2008). high-quality social connections with family members and friends are associated with reduced symptoms of depression (werner-seidler et al. 2017)as well as across three age groups: younger adults (16-34  years and can mediate it; cao et al. 2015). moreover, meta-analytic research suggests that social relationships reduce morbidity (holt-lunstad, smith, and layton 2010; plos medicine editors 2010). although the overall activity in virtual or electronic so called “social networks” increases year by year, a simple thought experiment demonstrates that people prefer real live social contexts – at least for some cases. for example, if we asked the participants of an academic conference – that is, individuals who decided to attend a gathering in their own field of interest – if they prefer to meet and conference online or face to face, they will most likely favor the latter for the sake of more genuine and authentic interactions. the aristotelian understanding of movement and activity will be repeatedly revisited and cursorily elucidated here. in his politics, aristotle defined human beings as social by necessity (zoon politikon). that is, human beings are by nature social and therefore political animals (aristotle 2009, 1253a2-3). this is an anthropological datum, part of the human condition. we are – for the most parts of our lives – not solivagi, not lone individuals roaming around the planet, but social beings who are necessarily socially networked. we naturally develop and flourish in the context of social assemblages. energy expenditure in the social realm occurs, for example, for procreation (aristotle 2009, 1252a24-b9), and http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ roman meinhold 292 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ for the composition and management of social entities such as families, communities, and nations (aristotle 2009, 1252b10-27). the creation of such social groups is not only anthropogenic, but biological in an aristotelian sense. it occurs by “nature”, as much as being human animals means – from a modern standpoint – being fundamentally organic and evolutionary. for this growth, development, management and flourishing, energy expenditure is essential. aristotle devoted books viii and ix of his nicomachean ethics to the phenomenon of friendship. before delving into the highest type of friendship, aristotle elaborates on friendship of utility and that of pleasure. however, only friendship of virtue, or excellence, is the only real and best type of friendship. therefore, for aristotle, friendship of virtue is the most important, and rare, form of social relationships: “no one would choose to live without friends, even if he had all the other goods” (aristotle 2018, 1155a). exceptions are hermits, like those still found in the qadisha (kadisha) valley in lebanon (a unesco world heritage site) or literary figures such as joris-karl huysmans’ hero des esseintes in his book against nature (2011). such individuals prefer to live their lives almost without human company 1. however, these cases seem to represent exceptions. for instance, from a radical traditional african social-philosophical perspective, an individual without deeper social relationships could be considered not a “person” in the sense of a fully realized human being (west 2014). consider, then, the majority of so-called facebook “friends” and the reason why they would not fall, generally speaking, into this exclusive category. the requirements become stricter in the virtual environment. we would need to update the aristotelian theory of friendship in order to make sense of facebook friends. we need to open up three additional categories plus hybrid forms, in which facebook friends are also friends in the “real word”. online friendship of utility, pleasure, and virtue are ontologically more remote than real world friendships and require less holistic interaction. as trivial as it may sound, it is impossible to hug an online friend. and yet, this observation is not unimportant to consider how energy may flow in friendly relationships. research that differentiates between real word and online interaction is still at its inception, but some early findings show that in real world interactions the brain is more active than in online interactions (camerer and mobbs 2017). again, in the real world friendships of virtue are rare and require energy in the form of quality time spent together as well as 1 against nature is the “poisonous french novel” that leads to dorian gray’s demise in oscar wilde’s novel “the picture of dorian gray” (wilde 2015). http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ human energy 293 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ familiarity that is established by time spent together and shared activities (aristotle 2018, 1156b). what is important in the context of energy consumption and production is the quality of activity or “movement” that takes place between “virtuous” friends (that is, movement in a broader sense). it is a mutually supportive and constructive relation in which one friend wishes the intellectual and ethical improvement of the other and himself. energy expenditure is taking place for oneself as well as the other. real friendship is a genuine, in-depth, holistic social interaction for the benefit of all friends involved. due to this sincere and integrated nature in which a friend interacts with the other, several mutual benefit arise, and with them increases the energy expenditure. in turn, that has positive implications for well-being and creates a fruitful dynamic among friends, namely a form of energy in a wider sense. 4. human physical energy, movement, and activity in their descriptions of ideal city-states plato and aristotle also pointed out the benefits of physical activity; plato in the politeia (plato 1997, 452a-d, 521e-522d) and nomoi (plato 1997, 660a-d, 832d-833d) and aristotle in the politics (aristotle 2009, 1336a-1339a). from an aristotelian point of view, movement in living beings originates from the soul. for plants movement means growth, for animals it means movement trough space and procreation. the soul is the entity that moves the bodies of plants, animals and humans (aristotle 2016, 407b). bodily movement is just fulfilling one of the strivings of the soul. a body that is moved, motivated or animated by the soul, is alive and usually healthy, as long as it moves. at this point, it is also interesting to point out that aristotle’s school was called peripatos, after a large public building where teachers and students walked around (gr. peripateo) while philosophizing. this took place in the middle of a polis, athens, and not in some secluded or hidden place, unlike philosophizing in the pythagorean or epicurean schools. interestingly the process of thinking and discussing with others, while walking can be traced back to socrates (as described by plato), for whom social, physical, intellectual and spiritual activity as well were essential components of a good human life. since industrialization, the shift from bodily movement to technologically-aided one has significantly intensified. this is the case, for example, in everyday routines that are supported, or have been entirely taken over, by machines, such as electric toothbrushes, escalators, elevators, cars and the like. we consume electric energy and different kinds http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ roman meinhold 294 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ of fuel in order to save time and physical human energy. paradoxically, the lack of movement in everyday life due to motorized transportation is often compensated by workout schedules, for example in gyms, where energy from human body workout is so far (in almost all gyms) not recovered. conversely it could be imagined, that at least part of the electricity needed by a gym could be produced by energy resulting from human workout routine within the gym itself. so far, gyms, which are potential power plants, consume electricity rather than producing it. finally, medical research suggests that every additional minute of moderate activity such as walking, cycling or swimming successively increases long term health benefits and lifespan (musich et al. 2017; warburton and bredin 2017). interestingly, such health benefits are not only physical, but also psychological. for example, studies demonstrate that physical activity contributes to the decrease of symptoms of depression (korczak, madigan, and colasanto 2017). 5. “movement” as intellectual energy creating activity the notions of movement, activity and energy are often used together with the word “intellectual”. “intellectual movement” refers to a broader scope in thinking, such as the intellectual strive for critical thinking during the enlightenment period. the german proto-romantic poetic movement sturm und drang – promoted among others by friedrich schiller and johann wolfgang von goethe – has in its title terms that connote movement, energy, and activity: “sturm”: storm and “drang”: stress, urge, drive, or thrust. the term “intellectual activity” is selfexplanatory and widely used like in the sentence “playing chess is an intellectual activity”. intellectual energy describes potentials or virtues of persons or groups. for example, a think tank is assumed to have a high potential of innovative and intellectual energy. bio-physically, metabolically, and ecotrophologically this activity of the brain consumes energy. in german culinary tradition a special mixture of different nuts and raisins, which is high in carbohydrates, fruit-sugar, poly-saturated and unsaturated fatty acids, used to be called studentenfutter, translated “student food”, since it is assumed that nuts and raisins provide a balanced mixture of nutritional substances needed for studying involving an intense energy consuming activity of the brain. there exists empirical evidence that intellectual activity mitigates alzheimer’s symptoms (park et al. 2013) and it may even have some http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ human energy 295 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ limited preventive benefits. one could at times get the impression that the movement (activity) of the mind drags along the body. in the intellectual milieu, elderly persons can be observed having difficulties moving their bodies, but their minds often are still sparklingly active. examples of intellectually active centenarians were the german philosopher hansgeorg gadamer (aged 102) and the artist, photographer, and filmmaker leni riefenstahl (aged 101). many forms of learning something new or additional have health benefits (narushima 2008; merriam and kee 2014). in plato’s dialogues and aristotle’s writings we find numerous accounts of the importance of intellectual activity, especially philosophical activity understood as essential for a virtuous human person. while physical movement in many instances means life (an exception aristotle mentions is thales’ claim that magnetic stones move and thus must be alive), meaning the life of plants, animals and humans, intellectual movement or activity is signifying human life in particular, so aristotle in peri psyches (404a-410a). the human being’s signifying part – according to aristotle – is the intellectual ability, and a lifestyle according to this specific human ability is the best possible form of life (1177a20-35). 6. spiritual “activity”, “movement” or contemplation spiritual energy may sound quite “esoteric”. however, praying, contemplating, or meditating consume human energy due to bodily or brain activity (grossman et al. 2004; ross and thomas 2010). conversely, spiritual activity can be seen as a form of energy production. the allusion to electric energy is quite obvious in activities such as meditation and guided imagery practice which are deemed useful to “recharge” a person’s “battery”. today, spirituality is understood in a relatively inclusive sense and therefore does not apply to religious spirituality exclusively (spohn 1995, 112). intensive contemplation of artworks, meditation, or the contemplation of nature are examples that fall within a wider set of experiences and thus not necessarily religious spirituality. william c. spohn distinguishes between “lived” and “reflective” spirituality. lived spirituality refers to a state of mind or experience of inner well-being and/or positive transformation in relation to “reality’s deepest meanings” (spohn 1995, 112). reflective spirituality is a second-order analysis, interpretation, and academic discourse of lived spirituality. reflective spirituality “stands for the second-order interpretation and communication of this dimension of experience as experience. it employs theological, historical-contextual, http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ roman meinhold 296 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ artistic, anthropological, and hermeneutical methods to analyze the lived experience” (spohn 1995, 112). reflective spirituality thus is an intellectual activity. aristotle’s understanding of the contemplative life as the highest form of eudaimonia in the nikomachean ethics could be interpreted as both these kinds of spirituality combined (lived and reflective). according to aristotle’s peri psyches – it is the nous, the intellectual “part” of the soul, that becomes active. then, in nicomachean ethics, he writes: “contemplation is the highest form of activity, since the intellect is the highest entity in us, and the objects that it apprehends are the highest things that can be known” (1177a20-35). although this activity can be practiced in solitude by a self-sufficient person, “it is better with the help of fellow-workers” (1177a30-b). we find here the combination of two kinds of “movement” or activities as a sort of requirement, that is the involvement of two or more virtuous persons (friends) in contemplation. aristotle also opined that the highest form of eudaimonia is based on a lower form of eudaimonia that can be practiced by everyone who lives a virtuous life as a zoon politikon, in a social virtuous context. admittedly, even being simply a virtuous person requires energy expenditure. 7. conclusion the intention of this paper was to challenge the notion of energy as power/electricity and open up the concept through an investigation that elucidates how human movements and activities relate to a fulfilling life. human movements and activities which consume, but also generate, energy in a broader sense can manifest in four anthropological dimensions. in the inter-individual realm or the social sphere, physically, which is the most evident form of human energy, but also intellectually and spiritually, which is prima facie not that obvious. the paper grounds its philosophic-anthropological account in some parts on the aristotelian oeuvre, but an investigation in socratic and platonic understanding of energy, movement, and activity should be pursued elsewhere. the objective of this paper was to promote a holistic understanding of energy as activity and movement in order to encourage a more wisely selected and limited substitution of fueland electricity-powered machines with human-driven movement. this broader and more holistic understanding of the energy concept is going to save electricity and fossil fuels and it will potentially foster the well-being of individuals, societies and the natural environment. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ human energy 297 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ references aristotle. 2009. politics, reissue edn., edited by r.f. stalley, translated by ernest barker. oxford new york: oxford university press. aristotle. 2016. on the soul: aristotle, translated by j.a. smith. createspace independent publishing platform. aristotle. 2018. nicomachean ethics. the internet classics archive. http://classics. mit.edu/aristotle/nicomachaen.1.i.html. camerer, colin, and dean mobbs. 2017. “differences in behavior and brain activity during hypothetical and real choices”. trends in cognitive sciences 21 (1): 46-56. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2016.11.001. cao, weiming, lu li, xudong zhou, and chi zhou. 2015. “social capital and depression: evidence from urban elderly in china”. aging & mental health 19 (5): 418-29. https://doi.org/10.1080/13607863.2014.948805. crooks, valerie c., james lubben, diana b. petitti, deborah little, and vicki chiu. 2008. “social network, cognitive function, and dementia incidence among elderly women”. american journal of public health 98 (7): 1221-7. https://doi.org/10.2105/ajph.2007.115923. etymonline. 2018. “energy | origin and meaning of energy”. in online etymology dictionary. https://www.etymonline.com/word/energy. grossman, paul, ludger niemann, stefan schmidt, and harald walach. 2004. “mindfulness-based stress reduction and health benefits: a metaanalysis”. journal of psychosomatic research 57 (1): 35-43. https://doi. org/10.1016/s0022-3999(03)00573-7. holt-lunstad, julianne, timothy b. smith, and j. bradley layton. 2010. “social relationships and mortality risk: a meta-analytic review”. plos medicine 7 (7): e1000316. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1000316. huysmans, j.k. 2011. against nature. scb distributors. korczak, daphne j., sheri madigan, and marlena colasanto. 2017. “children’s physical activity and depression: a meta-analysis”. pediatrics 139 (4): 1-14. https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2016-2266. merriam, sharan b., and youngwha kee. 2014. “promoting community wellbeing: the case for lifelong learning for older adults”. adult education quarterly 64 (2): 128-44. https://doi.org/10.1177/0741713613513633. musich, shirley, shaohung s. wang, kevin hawkins, and chris greame. 2017. “the frequency and health benefits of physical activity for older adults”. population health management 20 (3): 199-207. https://doi.org/10.1089/ pop.2016.0071. narushima, miya. 2008. “more than nickels and dimes: the health benefits of a community-based lifelong learning programme for older adults”. international journal of lifelong education 27 (6): 673-92. https://doi. org/10.1080/02601370802408332. park, denise c., jennifer lodi-smith, linda drew, sara haber, andrew hebrank, gérard n. bischof, and whitley aamodt. 2013. “the impact http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ roman meinhold 298 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ of sustained engagement on cognitive function in older adults: the synapse project”. psychological science (november). https://doi.org/ 10. 1177/ 0956797613499592. plato. 1997. plato: complete works, edited by john m. cooper and d.s. hutchinson. indianapolis: hackett publishing co. plos medicine editors. 2010. “social relationships are key to health, and to health policy”. plos medicine 7 (8). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1000334. rodriguez, agustin martin g. 2016. “the city as parasite and generator of energy”. in energy ethics: intergenerational perspectives in and for the asean region, 37-50. bangkok: guna chakra research center, assumption university. ross, alyson, and sue thomas. 2010. “the health benefits of yoga and exercise: a review of comparison studies”. the journal of alternative and complementary medicine 16 (1): 3-12. https://doi.org/10.1089/acm.2009.0044. spohn, william c. 1995. what are they saying about scripture and ethics? new york: paulist press. warburton, darren e.r., and shannon s.d. bredin. 2017. “health benefits of physical activity: a systematic review of current systematic reviews”. current opinion in cardiology 32 (5): 541-56. https://doi.org/10.1097/ hco.0000000000000437. werner-seidler, aliza, mohammad afzali, cath chapman, matthew sunderland, tim slade, and mohammad h. afzali. 2017. “the relationship between social support networks and depression in the 2007 national survey of mental health and well-being”. social psychiatry & psychiatric epidemiology 52 (12): 1463-73. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00127-017-1440-7. west, andrew. 2014. “ubuntu and business ethics: problems, perspectives and prospects”. journal of business ethics 121 (1): 47-61. https://doi.org/10.1007/ s10551-013-1669-3. wilde, oscar. 2015. the picture of dorian gray and other writings. new york: simon and schuster. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ reviews. les animaux amoureux. directed by laurent charbonnier. edited by jean-pierre bailly, 2007 (dvd) 87 relations – 1.i june 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ eleonora adorni independent scholar, member of the siua (school of human-animal interaction) eleonora.adorni@gmail.com les animaux amoureux. 2007. directed by laurent charbonnier. edited by jean-pierre bailly. dvd, 81 min. les animaux amoureux (animals in love) is a full-length documentary by laurent charbonnier, who is an experienced and skilful french filmmaker already known to have realized several animal documentaries allowing him to sharpen sophisticated techniques by shooting animals at a close distance without disturbing them. the film represents an interesting overview of a topic not often tackled by scientists, that is, as the title suggests, the emotional sphere of nonhuman animals. since ancient times, love has represented a mysterious bond capable to combine for unknown reasons two individuals: why do we choose one particular partner instead of another? contrary to those who want to reduce this emotion only to a reproductive goal, like the blind and selfish transmission of genes, nowadays it seems clear that the question is much more complicated than that both for human and nonhuman animals. in this perspective, the documentary – which took two years to shoot  – offers a unique reportage tacking the viewer across fifteen countries to discover how eighty animal species conveyed the art of love with its colorful rituals, cruel fights and disarming fondness. the great variety of animal species considered – from the rare new guineas parotia and the australian fiddler crab to the european brown frog – shot in their natural environments, constitutes an encyclopedic effort to group together different declinations of being animals and of ‘falling in love’. therefore courtships, pregnancies and eggs to brood experienced by mammals, birds, marine animals and reptiles show us – as the voice-over says during the first scenes – that the ‘molecules of love’ are the same, both in human and nonhuman animals. in fact, since life has appeared on the evolution stage, it has created ‘ecstasies of love’ that have made gestures, body and desire languages, customs and attitudes possible, and have embraced a thousand seduction expedients, constantly perpetuated throughout the centuries. the documentary – where no human presence appears except for the narrator’s voice at the beginning and at the end – is divided in parts that recall, in their succession, the cycle of life. the cycle starts with nonhuman eleonora adorni 88 relations – 1.i june 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ animal males caught while preparing and cleaning their plumage or their coats in prospect of the imminent encounter with females. often, before this happens, they have to face cruel fights amongst themselves in order to decide which individual can claim to mate. the struggle of sage grouses of ohio grasslands, australian kangaroos, atlantic bottlenose dolphins and african giraffes, in this sense, demonstrates that the pathway towards females is painful and uncertain. it, at the same time, deconstructs the simplistic imaginaries that consider love only an idyllic and positive feeling. the director seems to suggest that love is also boredom, silence and waiting, as shown by the two african bush lions shot during an exhausting courtship beneath the hot sun. impressive images also present animals during pregnancy and after the birth of their cubs, like the female deer that shelters herself and her baby deer, just born, from predators hiding in the undergrowth. after the birth, the mother licks her baby and, with some small muzzle strokes – or leg strokes like the elephant mother does in another scene – invites the new life to stand up, to attain balance and to move the first steps across the world. so, the cycle regenerates and restarts, like it has always been. it is interesting to underline the remarkable attention given to the animal aesthetic in this documentary. nonhuman animals manage to offer us an incredible collection of different shapes, colors, melodies and graceful body movements, but it is even more interesting to point out another aspect of the animal kingdom. charles darwin would have suggested that the vivid tints or the melodic cries frequently answer an evolutionary process that has awarded those specimens with more probability to recognize each other as a potential good partner. for the human gaze, though, these features have also become marvelous exhibitions of animal beauty that inspire anthropopoietic processes inside human cultures. as a matter of fact, the cultural debts contracted by humans towards the animal appeal are several: masai’s dances are inspired by the courtship dances of the african crowed crane and human cosmetic practices are often referred to the multicolor animal plumages and coats. in the documentary we can see the bright feathers of male peacocks or the scarlet throat of galapagos great frigate birds that serve the purpose of displaying a bigger size in front of females and delighting us as an animal expression of beauty. the hypnotic dance of the parotia bird – very rare to see in nature and masterfully caught by charbonnier’s camera and emphasized, almost in a metonymic way, by the astonishing soundtrack by philip glass – which moves its silver chest feathers and so creating a play of light and reflection in order to enthrall the female, represents an incredible example of courtship carried out with grace, beauty and harmony. “les animaux amoureux”. dir. by l. charbonnier, ed. by j.-p. bailly 89 relations – 1.i june 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ however, in a documentary titled animals in love, we have to highlight the problematic nature of an idea such as ‘to be in love’ applied to the emotional life of all living beings. firstly, we should find a common agreement about the meaning of that concept, but being ourselves ‘victims’ of our own emotions, it is very hard to reach a shared definition about it. how can we be sure that the kind of feeling (and all the practical declinations involved) we observe between two lovers (both nonhuman and human animals) is exactly the same emotion that can be called ‘falling in love’? and if we use this term for nonhuman animals, do we not risk to cover them with our anthropomorphic projections? as we initially said, the questions are very complicated when we tackle the animal emotional sphere and, up until now, no agreement has been reached within the scientific community. in this perspective, one of the results of a documentary like animals in love is to understand that the art of loving between nonhuman animals could help us to remove the anthropocentric lens that we naturally wear while looking at the outside world. and it could lead us to discover, for example, that the idea of ‘romantic love’ – a feeling separated from the mere sexual dimension – does not exist only in the human world but also among nonhuman animals. the tenderness of macaque parents towards their baby or the pleasure – characteristic of many animal species like penguins – of staying together forming a stable couple for a long time after the weaning of their offspring, attest a deep relationship between individuals that cannot be reduced to simplistic visions according to which species obey only to their genes. furthermore, these examples, taken from the documentary, underline how the deep nonhuman animal emotional sphere characterizes individuals throughout their whole life cycle passing through different parental and social bonds. in order to understand the intense emotional life of other species, the first step is to know them better through careful observation: for this reason, animals in love is a precious mark that tries to portray a great variety of living beings shot in their natural environment and with the least possible human intrusion. a second step lies in that we should bring into question our cultural references about love and broaden our perspectives towards other animals by recognizing their ability to have rich emotional lives. in conclusion, while watching animals in love and its touching images, it seems clear that the perpetuation of the species is not the reason why love exists, but, if anything, the aim that it accomplishes. love appears so as an inseparable mixture of science and emotions. between advocacy and academy: a report on the mai2 conference, ethics institute and faculty of veterinary science, utrecht university, utrecht, the netherlands, july 3rd-6th, 2012 between advocacy and academy a report on the mai2 conference, ethics institute and faculty of veterinary science, utrecht university, utrecht, the netherlands, july 3rd-6th, 2012 paola fossati 1 alma massaro 2 1 researcher in the department of veterinary clinical sciences at the faculty of veterinary medicine at the university of milan, italy 2 phd candidate in philosophy at university of genoa, italy doi: 10.7358/rela-2013-002-foss paola.fossati@unimi.it almamassaro@gmail.com three years since the first conference, held in newcastle in 2009, minding animals international has organized the second international meeting in the civic centre in utrecht, in the netherlands, where john coetzee’s public lecture opened up the talks on the evening of tuesday july 3rd, 2012. on the same afternoon two other important events were also taking place in the city centre, namely the icas satellite symposium and the interfaith service. it was apparent that the people from all over the world who came to listen intended to make the most of this valuable opportunity to work together on animal studies. the conference continued over the following days in the modern building of the university of utrecht, not far from the city centre and ended on july 6th evening with marc bekoff’s public lecture, held in the dom church. during the first public lecture coetzee delighted the public by reading his inedited work, the old woman and the cats where the main characters were an old lady called elizabeth costello, her child – a middle-aged american professor – and the ‘embodied souls’ – nonhuman and human – who lived with her. the evocative atmosphere of the dom tower delighted the audience while coetzee’s words provided food for thought with the soul seeking questions posed by main characters: the professor attempted to understand why his mother had chosen to live in a remote village in spain, sharing her home with a feline colony and with a bizarre man called http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ paola fossati alma massaro 80 relations – 1.2 november 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ pablo, all of whom she took care of. however, his questions, which embodied western rational and functional mentality, were not entirely satisfied by costello’s wise answer, as in the case of the question of controlling the reproductive life of the cats – and thus of each living being. this issue is addressed by elizabeth when taking into consideration the right every soul has to incarnate in a body and enjoy life: “there will never be too many children” she stated. in our view there could not have been a more appropriate opening for a conference brimming with ideas about our relationship with nonhuman animals. over the following days there were several important lectures, presented by scholars from all over the world. though all remarkable, it is not possible to comment on them all here. however, will kymlicka’s and sue donaldson’s lecture is very much worth mentioning. they posed the question “do we need a political theory of animal rights?”. the speakers suggested: as agents, animals act upon their subjective experience of the world, and we can gain insight into this subjective experience – this inner life – by entering into intersubjective relationships with them. what kinds of relationships do humans have with animals? what kinds of communities do they form? what kinds of relationships do animals desire? and this is where political theory kicks in. it provides conceptual tools for thinking about the various ways that agents both human and animal can be related to political communities. the issues of membership status require the conceptual tools of the social sciences and of political theory, as a supplement to the long-standing concepts of both ethology and moral philosophy. between the keynote lectures which took place there were parallel sessions, simultaneously held in different rooms of the university building. each session dealt with a specific subject and some of them, dealing with the wider aspects, were developed throughout the whole day and over the following days. the main topics covered were: animals and law, political philosophy and the representation of animals in politics, public perception of animals, animals in art, animal ethics, the human-animal relationship, animal welfare and the environment, animals in popular media, the human-animal relationship: various cultural expressions, the influence of animals on the physical and mental health of humans, animal welfare: the veterinarian role, and animals and religion. in the meantime, for the whole of the three day period a protecting the animals seminar series was taking place, opened by jill robinson’s lecture. furthermore, during the lunch break of the conference it was possible to see movies, take part in the study circle discussions, and view the poster presentations. it was quite a challenge to keep up with all the meetings but not an impossible one. between advocacy and academy 81 relations – 1.2 november 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ looking more closely at the parallel sessions again, though all remarkable, it is not possible to comment on them all, however it is worth mentioning the animals and law and the political philosophy and the representation of animals in politics panels where one of the most significant points at issue was the way of representing animal interests in political systems. they involved animal advocacy, political philosophy, veterinary practices and deeply investigated the matter of animal rights and whether they should be implemented into current laws. in particular the topic animals and law was interesting as an analysis of the current way of protecting animals by the law, in accordance with the new perceptions that advocate the necessity to make a substantial change in how society treats animals. as a matter of fact, in the modern era, the liberal representation of society is consistent with a regulatory policy that allows an alliance between law and current moral code. ethics and politics are intimately linked. in the eu, ethics is even an essential component of the idea of the same european citizenship. the presenting authors focused their papers on the animal rights debate. they noted that public attitudes toward animals are changing rapidly and they tried to explain that if the change would take a political dimension, it could lead to a more real protection of animals. from this perspective, the question of whether animal rights could be a means of protecting animals was shown as particularly pertinent in view of the difficulties of current animal protection laws to address the regulation of the human-animal relationship in line with the changing public attitudes to animals. these two parallel sessions aimed to present a discussion about the theories concerning animals from a legal and theoretical point of view, with regard to the significant approaches that could consent to construct a legitimate position on the intention of including animals in our political communities. much reflection was stimulated as far as animal rights were concerned and whether they are duly reflected by the law. indeed it is clearly evident that some discrepancy exists between the theory of animal rights and the way animals are considered by the law. furthermore, the bias of some laws towards animal exploitation still renders the protection afforded to animals largely dependent on the animals’ designated uses. animal welfare science and related disciplines have conclusively demonstrated that animals are sentient beings: they experience themselves, their world and the surrounding world in ways that are ‘meaningful’ to them. this remark deals with the fact that all living entities have interest to be protected, even by the legal system. the european community treaty recpaola fossati alma massaro 82 relations – 1.2 november 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ognizes that animals are sentient (i.e. that it acknowledges they can suffer and have interests that are relevant to them) and mandates that member states pay full regard to the welfare of animals when formulating policy. this, however, does not mean that animal rights have been established. in addition, europe is a pluralist society where individuals have varying beliefs about how animals ought to be treated. even the laws which seem relatively progressive regarding animal protection do not always have notable consequences. too often animal ethics is irrelevant as far as the law and practical purposes are concerned; there is little effort being made to change circumstances in order to reduce and remove the perceived need to cause animals harm. also when the law acknowledges the interests of animals besides the benefits to humans, the critical prohibition on beating and killing animals is often reduced to ‘unnecessarily’ and ‘needlessly’. additionally, the way of striking a clear balance of interests may not be that easy each time; sometimes human interest overcomes that of the animals, and pain and suffering might lawfully occur. in addition, the resources available can hinder governments and the legal system from providing a useful solution. but taking seriously the moral demand arising from the fundamental connection that humans have to animals, that is empathy – understood as the manner in which we access the foreign consciousness of another psychic being, regardless of its species – a sort of ‘hybrid’ ethical-political system should be set up. it could grant the development and preservation of ethical relationships with animals that are rooted in our recognition of them as beings with interests, needs, and emotional lives of their own. consequently such an ethical-political system would need to be maintained and protected legally, to avoid failure. prospective regulatory options should be appraised and evaluated using impact assessments on animals. in fact, if the interests of a party are not explicitly considered during appraisal of options, these interests are more likely to be undervalued or even ignored. however, there is no formal, explicit method to assess impact on animals’ interests in the policy cycle (nor in the consequent laws). a sentient animal’s principal interest is its own welfare. still, we know that the concept of animal welfare encompasses a broader spectrum beyond mere ‘wellbeing’. animal welfare is a complex concept, involving physical (health/ function), mental (feelings) and nature-based (naturalness) determinants. besides, in some policy areas, the interests of animals might not be aligned with the interests of human society. however, it is only when the interests of animals are considered in the policy process that the intent of the protection of animals as sentient beings will be achieved. between advocacy and academy 83 relations – 1.2 november 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ in conclusion, it emerged how the importance of animal welfare has led to an improvement in animal welfare legislation, which has been ameliorated and adopted by an increasing number of countries. however, in order to fulfill the aim of directly protecting entities other than human beings, a delicate balance between the protection of these entities, on the one hand, and the protection of human interests, namely social and economic considerations, on the other, is still required. to converge public attitudes regarding animal protection with the degree of animal protection afforded in relevant policy processes, to identify reforms that might promote social justice for animals it is important to consider: 1. the need of an appropriated institutionalized legal and political status for animals. 2. the need of a government institution focused on advancing animal protection. 3. the risks arising from the omission of animal interests from fundamental policy instruments such as impact assessments. 4. the consequences of the lack of policy strategies to advance animal welfare. 5. the need for human beings to extend their ethical concern to nonhuman beings. looking back at the structure of the conference, on thursday evening a podium discussion was held on the future of animal politics, chaired by frans brom. marcus düwell, andrea gavinelli, ludo hellebrekers, will kymlicka, frauke ohl, peter singer joined in the discussion. as written on the presentation material: animal politics faces new challenges. the place of animals in our social, moral, legal and political discourses is undergoing serious changes. it is difficult to foresee how these discourses will develop. what topics will be on the agenda of animal politics and what topics should there be? how will regulatory frameworks, both in different countries and on a global level, develop? what importance will animal politics have in the context of globalization, a changing economic world order, and the challenges of climate change? how can sustainable animal stewardship be achieved? this discussion aims at an investigation of different perspectives on the future of animal politics. the conference closed on friday evening with marc bekoff’s public lecture, minding animals redux: who lives, who dies, and why?. stemming from his studies on the rich nature of the emotional lives of animals, professor bekoff examined the emotional and moral intelligence of animals; in this sense he looks at the social behavior of animals, as play. in fact, as the professor said: paola fossati alma massaro 84 relations – 1.2 november 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ when animals play they carefully signal their intentions to cooperate and to play, they trust that playmates will obey the rules of fair play, and they forgive one another and apologize to one another so that play can continue as play and not escalate to aggression. there are negative consequences of not playing fairly. humans are a big-brained, big-footed, arrogant, and invasive species. we constantly make decisions about who lives and who dies using flawed speciesist criteria. an emerging field called ‘compassionate conservation’ could lead the way to a more harmonious and peaceful world in which there is more social justice. by minding animals we can expand our compassion footprint and make the world a better place for all beings. as the conference came to an end, people started to go home. it had been a really demanding few days, starting each day at 9 and ending at 10  pm but i imagine most of the participants are looking forward to join the next minding animals conference, which will be hold in india in january 2015. we cannot but express our gratitude to the conference organizers: tatjana visak, rod bennison, and kim stallwood. ethics, nafthism, and the fossil subject 33 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ethics, nafthism, and the fossil subject tere vadén 1 antti salminen 2 1 university of tampere / university of lapland finland 2 independent researcher finland doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2018-001-vade tereensio@gmail.com anttiee@gmail.com abstract several socio-economic and technological conditions shaped the faces of modernity, but without massive energy surplus modernity as we know it would not be possible at all. fossil fuels are not created by humans. consequently, part of the credit for modernity that is assigned to the other (human) conditions, belongs to (non-human) fossil fuels. the misplaced assignment of credit also points to modernity’s characteristic blindness to its material conditions. by and large, modernity has been described as a human victory over nature. this is supremely ironic, as the supposed human independence relies on a particular natural phenomenon. unfortunately, this forgetfulness extends into ethics. typical modern views on ethics rely on a subject with an autonomous capacity to act and deliberate. there is a structural parallel between the way in which the modern subject detaches itself from its material and social surroundings and the way in which a fossil fuel economy detaches production from consumption, products from waste, actions from consequences. if ethics is blind to the way in which the detachment is dependent on a particular energy regime, it is unlikely to result in a robust de-fossilization. in this article, we argue that the notions of modernity and (modern) subjectivication are made possible by non-human energy, namely fossil fuels. thus, energy ethics for the postfossil era will be ultimately based on a-subjective and non-modern premises. keywords: fossil fuels; oil; subject; nafthology; nafthism; ethics; modernity; work; energy; capitalism. 1. introduction: the unique importance of fossil fuels the historically unique economic growth of the past two centuries has a varied set of preconditions and elective affinities that further co-develop with modernity as a complex phenomenon. in terms of social circumstances, what is needed are, among other things, bureaucracies of various kinds, legislation, division of labour, planning and zoning, education and so on. phenomena described by classics of sociology such as weber, tönhttp://www.ledonline.it/relations/ http://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2018-001-vade mailto:tereensio@gmail.com mailto:anttiee@gmail.com tere vadén antti salminen 34 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ nies and durkheim in terms of collectivity, subjectivity and social norms describe the emerging mass society. in terms of technology, modernity needs the constant developments of steam engines, internal combustion engines, electricity and so on, and the enrichment of the connected natural scientific body of knowledge. and one should not overlook what could be called spiritual or cultural preconditions: not all human groups think that economic growth, modern lifestyles or the use of fossil energy are desirable or even acceptable as parts of human existence. another crucial point is the material and physical conditions of modernity. with all the other conditions in place, but with nothing to power the machines, the modern experience would not have been possible. consequently, the existence of fossil fuels – coal, oil, natural gas – in large quantities and sufficiently pure concentrations in the earth’s crust is a necessary material precondition of modernity. while it is, in principle, conceivable that comparable amounts of work could have been produced by other means (say, nuclear power), it is also clear that such alternative means would have resulted in a very different modern experience and subjectivity. in his collection after the future (2011), franco “bifo” berardi has helpfully condensed features of the twentieth century, from the initial consciously iconoclastic cries for futurism in its aesthetico-social (italy) and politico-economic (russia / soviet union) forms, up until the corresponding provocation expressed in the punk slogan “no future” in the late ’70s. in berardi’s words, the past 150 years were the time in human history that trusted the future: the idea of the future is central in the ideology and energy of the twentieth century, and in many ways it is mixed with the idea of utopia. […] in the second part of the nineteenth century, and in the first part of the twentieth, the myth of future reached its peak, becoming something more than an implicit belief; it was a true faith, based on the concept of “progress”, the ideological translation of the reality of economic growth. (berardi 2011, 17-8) there was reason to trust, as “progress” did, indeed, deliver many of the goods it promised. investment and interest both presume more work being done in the future; and more work was delivered by ever increasing loads of fossil fuels. the psychological energy that berardi talks about, and the energy doing physical work, were mixed in an intoxicating orgy of increase: progress as the ideological translation of economic growth, and a particular oil-induced blindness as the phenomenologico-experiential translation of progress. the material specificity of fossil fuels is evidenced, for instance, already in the differences between modern societies running on coal and those running on oil. it is only after world war ii, when a large part of the sohttp://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ethics, nafthism, and the fossil subject 35 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ called developed world transitions from coal to oil, that the hockey-stick diagrams depicting economic growth, population growth and the growth of environmental destruction (including co2 emissions) gain their characteristic almost exponential upward tick. the superior qualities of oil – energy content per unit, transportability, storability, possibility of turning into a myriad different chemical products – eclipse even those of coal (and, to a large extent, natural gas). the material precondition, and its particular features, have gone with surprisingly little comment, especially compared to the veritable seas of analytical and critical literature on the other conditions, including various analyses of technology, mass society, ownership of the means of production, division of labour, urbanization, modern statecraft and so on. however, if industrial labour, mass culture, easy travel, communications technology, the automobile and so on have an effect on the experience of modernity (on how people experience themselves and their lives under modern conditions), then it follows that the material basis, the existence of fossil fuels, has comparable experiential effects, as well – maybe even more so, as it is embedded in virtually all the other phenomena (running the machines in the factory, powering the automobile, etc.). this is our thesis: there is a largely unexplored phenomenology of fossil fuels, as the study of the experiential effects of modern reliance on burning hydrocarbons. more particularly, an economic and cultural system existentially reliant on the work performed by, and materials produced out of oil (gr. naphtha) invites a study in terms of nafthology, the study of experiential effects of oil. as metaphysical – that is, as a structure structuring other structures – the experience of oil determines contemporary existence. furthermore, our wager is that if these phenomena go unexamined, we are ill-equipped for conceiving and building post-fossil futures: we will go looking for wrong kinds of answers from wrong directions simply because we are conditioned by a fossil modernity. this suspicion concerns especially the notion of the subject, and various ethico-political solutions pinned on the notion. 2. modernity, as fossil fossil fuels in general, and oil, in particular, are embedded in modern life as work. the amount of work (as a physical quantity, w = fs) performed during the past two centuries eclipses any other comparable period of time in human history; in fact, the amount of work performed globally since http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ tere vadén antti salminen 36 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the 1980’s is bigger than the amount of work performed in several previous centuries combined. most of this work is carried out by burning fossil fuels, and, more particularly, by burning oil. many of the phenomena of modernity – growth, acceleration, specialization, urbanization – are dependent on the fact that, decade by decade, industrial economies have been able to perform more work by consuming more fossil fuels. if the amount of fossils burned had consistently declined, growth would have stopped or gone into reverse (as it did during the oil crisis in the early 70’s). over time, in less than two centuries, the increase in the amount of work has become an expectation and a habit. economic growth, which in human history is an aberration, has become a new normal. the phenomena of this new normal are the feedlot for modern subjectivity as it exists today. consequently, there is a clear morphological and structural connection between the phenomena of oil and that of modern subjectivity. in terms of elective affinity, it is important to notice the way in which capitalism, as a political and economic system, benefits from fossil fuels: they fit together like hand and glove. students of political economy, such as elmar altvater (2007), have called the current system “fossil capitalism” (fossilismus). in altvater’s analysis, the death of locality is caused by the organization of production made possible by fossil fuels. when cheap energy for transportation and for powering industrial machines is readily available, production can be abstracted from any given local circumstances. likewise, artificial lighting gives production freedom over day. when the location of production does not matter or can be changed at will, the workers also lose most of their bargaining power. even more darkly, fossil capitalism can be analyzed as a form of raubwirtschaft or plunder economy, where the decisive moment of economic activity is the capture of resources in place a and their overuse in place b. the production – drilling, refining, mining – of oil, gas, and coal happens in one place, and their use in another place, and the simultaneous distance and dependence between these two is the essential characteristic of fossil fuel economies. in fossil capital (2016) anders malm argues in detail that the transition from water power to coal in english and scottish textile industries in the 19th century did not happen – as usually presented – because of the cheaper price or easier availability of coal. long into the 19th century water power was cheaper and available in abundance, the technology was well understood and improving all the time, providing possibilities for increasing capacity. as malm (2016, 91) puts it: “the transition to steam in the british cotton industry occurred in spite of the persistently superior cheapness of water”. the advantage that coal and steam had over water were in the first place capitalistic. by using coal, a textile mill could be situated http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ethics, nafthism, and the fossil subject 37 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ in a city, where cheap labour was always available, and a strike could not threaten production. in contrast, a factory tied to a remote location due to water power was easier to be shut down by the workers – if laborers could be convinced to move there, in the first place. steam could be turned on at will, independent of season or time of day. moreover, constructing more water power demanded coordination between several industrialists and land-owners, something that stood in the way of the entrepreneurial spirit. a capitalist running a steam-powered plant could decide on production essentially alone. as a source of power, steam power de-collectivizes, individualizes, both the capitalist and the worker. and this was something that the capitalists wanted, because they stood to benefit. in malm’s analysis, fossil capitalism consists of two main parts, an economical order (continuous growth) and an energy system. the drive towards continuous growth is born before the large scale utilization of fossil fuels, when water powered textile industry develops a model where rising productivity, relatively large profit margins and the investing of profits into new production further increase production and capital accumulation. with the new energy system provided by coal, this continual growth gets a physical basis where, decade by decade, more non-human and human labour is fed into the production. this is the fateful elective affinity between fossil labor and capitalism: continuous growth of the amount of work performed by burning fossil fuels (and laborers) and continuous economic growth. the intertwinement of the material possibility of feeding more hydrocarbons into the system and the social and economic conditions that support economic and population growth forms the “syntax” of fossil capitalism. its “semantics” is the experience of (fossil) modernity. this fossil syntax, like any other civilizational metabolism, contains its bottlenecks. in the era of coal, miners, railway and dock workers become a new force that can gain concessions from capital, simply by being able to cut the energy flow, as timothy mitchell shows in carbon democracy (2011). not surprisingly, as mitchell argues, the transition from coal to oil is made in a way that sidesteps the power of trade unions. the fossil syntax evolves by destroying traditional bindings, be they social, political, or spiritual. 2.1. con-distancing the distance between production and consumption also means the breaking up of vital feedback loops. for a modern consumer, the origin of fossil energy is irrelevant, as are the conditions of its extraction. even more, the http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ tere vadén antti salminen 38 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ networked systems of production with their long routes of transport for raw materials, parts and finished products make it virtually impossible to know where the utilized fossil materials originated. take a look around you; with any luck you are able to identify several, possibly tens or hundreds of objects containing oil around you (eye-glasses, paint, computers, book-coating, clothes, phones, jars, etc.) now, do you know the origin of the hydrocarbon from which they were formed? from which field was the oil pumped? what would be the method of obtaining that information? a similar structural non-knowledge characterizes the future of oilbased products. a huge number of all the plastics ever produced is still in the form of plastics, fragmenting into ever smaller pieces of micro-plastics that fill up oceans and litter lands. again, do you know where the fibers from your clothes have ended up and will end up? what about that piece of plastic trash you discarded in the bin? what would be the method of obtaining that knowledge? together these two phenomena, separating production and consumption (via cheap transport and the capitalistic profit motive) and nonknowledge concerning the past and future of fossil products create a characteristic experiential structure of nafthology: oil brings things together in the mode of keeping them apart. via a fossil-based capitalist economy, we are materially connected to both distant (and socially and environmentally destructive) oil fields and to distant deposits of undecomposed trash. the elective affinity between capitalism and fossil fuels is seen in this structure of creating connections in the mode of keeping apart – what can in nafthological terms be called con-distancing (salminen and vadén 2016, 24-8). in experiential terms, this connection-as-separation is felt as alienation, atomization, individualization, and deskilling. one of the most obvious phenomena of the oil age is the destruction of locality – which, from another perspective, is experienced as the diminution of distances and, eventually, the formation of a “global village”. but ultimately oil binds by breaking. with its unique provision of surplus energy, oil breaks up localities and enforces totalization. it is always ready to double any hierarchy, always able to increase the forces directed at one point and the levels of specialization added on top of each other. oil condistances horizontally. a highly developed division of labor is possible only under circumstances of productive surplus, and high eroei (energy return on energy investment, calculated by dividing the energy gained by the energy used) fossil fuels enable division of labor on a global scale while at the same time supporting hierarchies in which commercial companies govern millions of square kilometers and financial derivatives grow orders of magnitude bigger than the global gdp. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ethics, nafthism, and the fossil subject 39 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the breaks produced by binding can be illustrated by ideas from simone weil’s thought. weil identifies by the name force a basic principle that obtains both in the spiritual life of humans and in their social interaction. like the schopenhauerian wille, force compels us to stay alive, to eat, to manipulate, to behave violently, to utilize, and govern; it enslaves and makes inhuman. in her famous study the iliad, or the poem of force (1965) weil describes the way in which force turns both the nobleman and the commoner into objects, overturning the kantian maxim according to which humans should always be treated as goals in themselves. force makes people appear as instruments, resources to each other and to themselves. the low, the vanquished, is in the eyes of the victor a lump of matter, and the best military leader is the one who gets his or her soldiers to see the enemy as objects or, even better, as something to be destroyed. the victor does not, in effect, choose to see the vanquished as an object; the master does not choose to see the slave as non-human. they do so because they are themselves utilized by force; they are performing their psychological and social roles. to work, for instance in factories, is to be objectified by force. forced by hunger and under the threat of physical violence people enslave at repetitive and meaningless tasks so that both their spiritual and physical humanity is crushed. the struggle for survival in conditions like this is, also according to weil’s own experience, so constrained and wearying that even the desire to think and to be free becomes alien. but the upper strata of rulers is not free from the web of force, either. its members have to struggle both in order to stay in their class and ahead of their competitors, and also in order to keep the lower classes oppressed. according to weil, even a rudimentary division of labor reveals the de-humanizing force. if one person decides what is to be done and another carries out the doing, the decision maker almost by necessity thinks of the doer instrumentally. due to this asymmetry, the lower classes usually have a better grasp of the truth. because they experience hunger, pain and cold, they feel the negative side of force in their flesh unlike the members of the upper classes. the wealthy can at least temporarily imagine themselves in control of their destinies, even though at every moment their existence is carried by the toil of the lower classes – plus the modern energy slaves of fossil fuels. if even the most minute division of labor means bending into the in-humanizing will of force, if this happens even while picking berries or gathering hay, it is easy to imagine what occurs when division of labor is connected to the power of millions of tons of fossil fuels. tasks can be divided and subdivided, the interchangeability and standardization of http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ tere vadén antti salminen 40 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ human laborers taken further. chaplin’s modern times (1936) is too merciful in depicting this reality. at the same time a precise taylorist and fordist division of labor enables an increase in hierarchy, piling decision makers on top of decision makers. in this way hierarchization, pyramidization, and the centralization of power are not the opposites of the breaks, uprootings, and displacements caused by oil. they are its other face. a clear indication of this janus-faced atomized centralization is the fact that there is often scant communication, affection, or sympathy between the different levels of the hierarchy. oil builds sky-scraping pyramids, where the dwellers of different floors and blocks rarely meet each other. out of the different fossil fuels, oil is the most prone to hierarchy. it can be easily transported and stored, and highly energy dense. by governing the production, transport, storage, and use of oil, massive energy surpluses may be gathered in order to build automatons, entertainment industries, and armies that past empires could only dream of. there have been, to be sure, some attempts at enlarging the number of people benefiting from oil revenues, like the oil funds in alaska, the redistribution schemes in venezuela and libya, and the massive oil funds based on extraction in the north sea. however, most of the time oil finances oligarchies, timocracies, and various forms of mafia capitalism, where big owners, sheiks, and industry lobbyists live in lavish splendor while at the same time on the other side of town virtual or literal slavery is the order of the day. simply, oil holds up unprecedented horizontal structures. at the same time, it breaks up communities, skills, tasks, experiences into ever smaller and more standardized units in order to pile them into byzantine hierarchies. whole populations, not to speak of individuals, are isolated in their towers and cellars without any knowledge of the outside world. everything works as if on rails – but without its black motor the auto-movement is only an illusion. plato (in laws 5.744e-745a) suggested that it would be proper if the richest citizen would own at most four to five times more than the poorest. currently, tenif not hundred-fold wealth inequalities have been normalized in western societies, not to speak of global imbalances. of course, the gap between the king and the pauper has been near infinite before. the uniqueness of oil-based social infrastructure is that wealth gaps of several orders of magnitude become normal parts of the global division of labor. a typical western person enjoys the services of tens of energy slaves as if by birth right, while absolute poverty is as grim as before. as weil begun to observe, floating on the work of energy slaves and the work of human laborers, a typical western person imagines him/herself as a master of his/her life, forgetting its material conditions of existence. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ethics, nafthism, and the fossil subject 41 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 2.2. nafthism as a necessary condition of modernity, energy inputs are in a different category than the other conditions – social, cognitive, economic, spiritual, technological, scientific, etc. this difference has three aspects. first, given the other conditions, but without surplus energy, neither the world economy nor population would have grown the way they have. secondly, unlike the other conditions, fossil fuels are not created by humans. these two together mean that the credit (or blame) for growth that is assigned to the other (human) conditions, belongs, in part, to (non-human) fossil fuels. third, fossil fuels are non-renewable. consequently, some of the characteristics believed to be systematically and irreversibly modern, are likely to be one-shot occurrences. more specifically, some of the social, technological and spiritual conditions that have co-evolved with modernity will prove to be reversible. the fact that as a precondition and sustenance of modernity, fossil fuels and oil are ontologically (as human-independent) in a different category than the other (human-dependent) conditions, has crucial consequences. related to the first and second points, one characteristic of modernity is the blindness to its material conditions. by and large, modernity sees in itself a victory over nature, if not an independence from it. this is supremely ironic, as the supposed independence has been made possible by a particular natural phenomenon, the existence of large amounts of high-quality hydrocarbons in the earth’s crust. we call this specific form of forgetfulness nafthism: to be under the illusion that something is independent of nature when the very illusion of independence itself has been made possible by a specific material fact, i.e., the existence of oil. as an example, one can mention the communist manifesto (1848) by marx and engels that insists that in capitalism “all that is solid melts into air”. as such, this is correct, as a description of life under capitalism – all traditions of the feudal societies are torn down. but while the authors think they are describing capitalism per se, they are talking about a capitalism that can increase its energy inputs year by year, and that kind of capitalism has only ever been fossil capitalism. consequently, the classic marxist view that is at the same time horrified at the human price capitalism is incurring and fascinated with the productive powers it is unleashing, is nafthist in thinking that capitalism is a self-propelling economic phenomenon, while in fact, it is empirically dependent on a particular natural endowment. (needless to say, this nafthist forgetfulness was embedded deep into the ideologies of 20th century state socialism). http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ tere vadén antti salminen 42 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ likewise, when martin heidegger (1954) insists that modern technological understanding of being encounters everything as raw material, as standing reserve (bestand) for use, he is correct. for calculative or technological reason, everything appears as something to be utilized. but at the same time heidegger fails to observe that without energy technology does not engage with matter. matter is raw, both conceptually and in practice, only in the eyes of work. so even heidegger’s deep ontology of modern understanding of being is nafthist in that it forgets the role of fossil fuel energy in giving calculative reason its semblance of inevitability and technology its frightening capacity to function, to work, without failure. but the most paradigmatic example of nafthism is the orthodox economical axiom according to which the market will find a replacement for any commodity through the mechanism of supply and demand. even a rudimentary material intelligence will indicate that the doctrine is possible only under circumstances of considerable surplus work. energy is not just a commodity on the market, but a precondition for the existence of markets in the first place. not surprisingly, then, the price of energy does not follow the laws of supply and demand, and energy markets have never really been (free) markets, at all: at the moment, approximately 75% of oil is produced and sold by national oil companies. timothy mitchell (2011) has noted how the forgetting of oil has made the science of economics possible. because ever greater amounts of oil were available, effortlessly, one did not have to worry about the availability of energy. according to mitchell, economics as an independent science is not born in the nineteenth century, but only during the early decades of the twentieth, when it becomes possible to concentrate on the supposedly independent flows of money without the irritating and supposedly irrelevant connections to physical facts, such as the necessary non-renewable resources. hence economics as science is born through con-distancing, when money is separated from the physical world and work. by the same token, economics gets separated from politics. the connector and separator is yet again oil. the work performed by oil creates the distance between economics and nature; the same work conducts the industrial destruction of nature even though the two, industry and nature, were supposed to be separate. nafthism reveals itself in this aporias of the supposedly objective and neutral scientific knowledge of the modern subject. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ethics, nafthism, and the fossil subject 43 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 3. the fossil subject marx and the marxists have, quite correctly, celebrated the power of monetary economy in giving individuals the possibility of leaving feudalistic, patriarchal and otherwise oppressive social settings. it is clear, that whatever a modern subject is, it is something that can, out of its free will, leave whatever group it chooses to – whether religious, political, regional or kinship-based. the modern subject does not experience itself as fundamentally dependent or ultimately responsible for these groups. the classic of environmental ecology, arne naess (1995), has coined the term “ecological self”, as a correction to the narrow egoistic self that naess among others sees as a root cause to current ecological problems. in naess’ definition the ecological self contains also the natural environment in which one is embedded so that the destruction of the environment is also a destruction of the self. following these insights, we may define the modern subject as the subject that is far-enough distanced from both its natural and social environment so that it can, at will, declare its independence from them and situate itself in new circumstances. this definition makes clear that the modern subject is a phenomenon dependent on considerable surplus energy that it can command at will. the modern subject is structured by con-distancing and nafthism, and supervenes on energy slaves. a similar conclusion follows from an analysis of how the tasks of the subject are described in typical modern philosophical accounts. the subject is presented as separated from the object, and from the (individually and socially) pre-subjective or a-subjective experiential field from which it arises. in terms of the philosophy of mind, the subject is a structure that upholds its self-identical perseverance. this task includes the separation between the subject and the object (the outside world), as well as domesticating or purifying elements that threaten the subjects control – such as the subconscious, emotions, anxiety, physical destruction and so on. the subject relies only on its own internal capacities (of reason, discernment, choice, etc.) in evaluating its relations to the outside world, and its main task is to continue to exist. already from this kind of thumbnail sketch it is clear that upholding a selfidentical subject is an energy intensive task. lapses of energy and vigilance (such as dreaming, intense boredom or joy) as well as altered states of consciousness (being drunk or under the influence of psychoactive drugs, meditation) and physical alteration (such as brain diseases or hormonal abnormalities) easily disrupt the subject as a persistent self-identical structure. while it goes without saying that the cartesian subject, kant’s copernican revolution, and other philosophical concepts relating to the modern http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ tere vadén antti salminen 44 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ subject were developed before fossil modernism, without fossil input these notions would have remained mere speculation on the human condition, not an aspirational goal for billions of people. being a modern subject, as a master of one’s of own house that owes nothing to one’s natural or social environment, is possible only under a relatively stable context of energy surplus that can be controlled with something akin to a fossil syntax. without high-eroei hydrocarbons, western industrial civilization would not have been able to export its model of modern subjectivity globally. fossil energy is a necessary condition for the dream of universal subjectivity. the drastic subject-object division of the western models of subjectivity could not have spread and extinguish other lived interpretations of human existence without massive amounts of surplus energy. the empirical evidence for this is almost painfully simple. in circumstances of no or minimal surplus energy, or of low eroei yields, the subject-object distinction of modern subjectivity dissolves fast (even for once modern subjects), and the self is re-connected or dissolved into the wider social and environmental whole on which it is, in truth, dependent. there is something distinctly un-dead about this image: if it is the case that the modern self-conscious identity was based on an enormous volume of ancient metabolic waste from (marine) organisms, the western man modernized the world using energy generated from the countless deaths of non-human beings. ultimately, behind this image too lies the sun’s gaping madness, the source of all the earth’s energy (excluding tide, geothermal energy, and fission). a culture based on subjective individuality is structurally dependent on vast amounts of energy, which it consumes entirely subconsciously, in volumes that a human being, left to his own devices, could never hope to match. in other words: the modern subject cannot be sustained through manual labor alone. quite the contrary: sustained manual labour is experientially one of the best antidotes to the con-distancing and nafthism of modern subjectivity. the subject’s very existence and ongoing survival is contingent upon energy borrowed from oil, a light distilled from death. in order to have the energy to be a subject, to be modern, we humans must sift through layers of ancient, non-human death. the modern man, in his current individualized incarnation, is, quite literally, a fossil brought to life by the death of non-human ecosystems. in its stance of independence from the social and natural environment, the modern subject is born out and guilty of nafthism. its supposedly non-negotiable independence is possible only under quite specific circumstances of high energy surplus provided by a one-time gift of nature. this nafthist twist of the subject explains many otherwise puzzling phenomena http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ethics, nafthism, and the fossil subject 45 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ or aporias. according to its own self-understanding, the modern subject has the clearest objective and rational account of nature and itself. it also receives a huge energy surplus, a historically unique possibility for work. it is not obvious that the result from these two – a clear understanding of nature, and massive amounts of work – should bring about environmental destruction and collapse threatening the very existence of complex civilizations and multicellular life on the planet. because of its nafthist twist, the modern subject is structurally blind to its own conditions of existence, its need for energy slaves, and more slaves each decade. this blindness produces the “necessary surprises” that the modern subject encounters in terms of co2 emissions and garbage patches. even a rudimentary material intelligence is enough to predict both – and indeed, svante arrhenius used calculative rationality to warn of global warming due to burning fossil fuels already in 1896. yet, the reality of these phenomena still has a hard time in penetrating into the supposedly rational and self-interested minds of modern subjects. the fact that energy as a condition of modernity has been in a blind spot throughout the decades of economic growth is another consequence of this nafthist twist. there is a delicious irony in the fact that now when nafthist modernity is waking up to the necessary surprises produced by its activity, the term that is used to describe these global material traces is the anthropocene, “the age on man”. the proposal of the name for a new geological era is based on the fact that now traces of human activity can be seen in the geological strata all over the globe. the first level of irony is that, again, man is taking the credit for the work of burning fossil fuels – which in itself is not something very sophisticated (the use of fire was widespread even before the genesis of the species homo sapiens). however, the deeper irony is that these geological traces are the unintended consequences of the actions of modern subjectivity. our geological footprint happens as “collateral damage”, unintended and unplanned. this kind of blindness is only possible because of the structural nafthism of modern subjectivity. 4. conclusion: energy ethics beyond the fossil subject unfortunately, the nafthist forgetfulness extends into ethics. any proposed course of action with regard to climate change and environmental sustainability that relies on a change willed and effected by modern subjects is, at best, twisted and, at worst, blinded by its nafthist structure. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ tere vadén antti salminen 46 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the most obvious case are the proposed plans for geoengineering. they are ripe with all kinds of unintended consequences and uncalculated effects. as paolo virilio has quipped, “when you invent the ship, you also invent the shipwreck” (2001, 32). there is little reason to believe that geoengineering or dreams of moving to mars and beyond would not be tainted by nafthism. additionally, as energy intensive and massive technological projects, plans of geoengineering lack a material basis, if the use of fossil fuels needs to be wound down. similarly blinded are various agenda of consumer activism, where the change is supposed to happen as subjects become more rational and out of a need for self-preservation choose to become less consuming and more environmentally sustainable. the problem here is double. first, the upholding of these activist and rational consumers is itself an endeavor that needs a high level of energy surplus. second, at least as heirs of fossil modernism, such subjects carry a nafthist heritage, which will inevitably pervert their supposedly environmentally sound choices. from this perspective, it is easy to see that the cure for nafthism happens only by deconstructing the illusion of independence from the environment and the social milieu inbuilt in the modern subject. the needed change is cultural and social, not individualistic or subjective (in the sense of happening in/through subjects). a supporting empirical observation can be made by taking into account the actually existing ways of life that are environmentally sustainable. none of these ways of life are modern (even though, of course, no corner of the globe is currently free from the influence of modern civilizations), and the people living them do not see themselves as modern subjects, essentially separate from their socio-cultural and natural environments. they do not conceptualize their relationships with nature in terms of “environmental sustainability”. as all weaning, our disengagement from the fossil system is simultaneously a positive, constructive process, a kind of rebuilding. by penetrating into the proximity of habit, we must recognize not only the presumptions of fossil sense, but also its objects, such as climate change, garbage patches floating on seas, light pollution, etc. these objects and networks of objects for their part form a material basis for all existence after the economy of growth. at the same time, we need to feed the new sensibility which is being born; we need to observe its objects, practices, habits, and gestures: not only in order to de-fossilize our subjectivities but ultimately criticize fossilized subject-object relations as such. one good rule-of-thumb for recognizing de-fossilized subjectivity is that, in contrast to modern subjects, de-fossilized subjects do not see themselves independent from larger natuhttp://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ethics, nafthism, and the fossil subject 47 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ral and social wholes, up to the point that the term “subject” may not apply to them, at least from a modern perspective. there are two ways in which these nafthological observations on the modern subject can be brought to bear on energy ethics. first, one may cling to a definition of ethics according to which a prerequisite of ethics is the existence of a free and rational subject, able to deliberate on his/ her actions. under this definition, energy ethics may study the different (deontological, utilitarian, etc.) frameworks which subjects (as consumers, citizens, activists and so on) use in conducting their actions. however, by definition the way in which the modern subject itself is conditioned by energy surplus and remains a structure of nafthism is outside of the scope of this type of inquiry. consequently, this mode of energy ethics is “shallow” in the sense of not engaging with the de-fossilization of the experience of modern subjectivity. the second possibility is to widen the narrow definition of ethics to include also the study of the non-individual spheres of action, volition, cognition and so on, out of which the subject under specific circumstances arises. here, the subject, its constitution and its actions would be one of the phenomena under study, and deliberate subject-initiated action would be one of the foci of ethical inquiry, but by no means the only or the most important one. many ethical traditions, in this wider sense of the term, have seen the self-conscious ethical activity of the subject as the tip of a much larger, non-individual and possibly even non-human iceberg. this kind of “deep” energy ethics would then concern itself with the larger ecosystemic or metabolic ways of life (gr. ethos), in which the “goods” and “bads” internal to the ways of life are distributed much wider than the limits of the responsibility of an individual subject. the observation that it is possible for groups of homo sapiens to live in a way that does not (quickly and for all practical purposes irreversibly) destroy the natural environments on which the group is dependent points out that living with energy and work is possible in non-modern ways. to limit the use of the term energy ethics only to the context of modern rational subjects is parochial. references altvater, elmar. 2007. “the social and natural environment of fossil capitalism”. socialist register 43 (1): 37-59. berardi, franco. 2011. after the future. edinburg: ak press. bundeswehr. 2012. peak oil. sicherheitspolitische implikationen knapper ressourcen. strausberg: zentrum für transformation des bundeswehr. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ tere vadén antti salminen 48 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ heidegger, martin. (1954) 1977. “the question concerning technology”. in the question concerning technology and other essays, translated by william lovitt, 3-35. new york: harper & row. malm, anders. 2016. fossil capital: the rise of steam power and the roots of global warming. london: verso. mitchell, timothy. 2011. carbon democracy. london: verso. naess, arne. (1987) 1995. “self-realization: an ecological approach to being in the world”. in the deep ecology movement: an introductory anthology, edited by alan drengson and yuichi inoue, 13-30. berkeley, ca: north atlantic books. plato. 1967. laws: plato in twelve volumes, vol. x, translated by robert gregg bury. london: william heinemann. salminen, antti, and tere vadén. 2015. energy and experience: an essay in nafthology. chicago: mcm’. simone weil. 1965. “the iliad, or the poem of force”. chicago review 18 (2): 5-30. smil, vaclav. 2008. global catastrophes and trends. cambridge, ma: mit press. virilio, paul. 2011. virilio live: selected interviews. london: sage. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ a new bet for scientists? implementing the responsible research and innovation (rri) approach in the research practices 157 relations – 5.2 november 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ a new bet for scientists? implementing the responsible research and innovation (rri) approach in the research practices alba l’astorina 1 monica di fiore 2 1 cnr-irea, milan 2 cnr-rsi, rome doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2017-002-last lastorina.a@irea.cnr.it monica.difiore@cnr.it abstract in last years, the european commission has promoted an approach that seeks to anticipate and assess potential implications and societal expectations with regard to research and innovation, with the aim to foster the “design of inclusive and sustainable research and innovation”. the approach, called responsible research and innovation (rri), has become a crosscutting theme of horizon 2020, the most important european research funding system. rri has its roots in a longstanding debate on the sense of techno-scientific innovation and its power to produce both benefits and harm, producing risks, arising ethical dilemmas and controversial questions. it proposes a framework for governing the innovation process asking all actors to become mutually responsible and responsive in order to reach “socially desirable” and “acceptable” innovation goals. years after its emergence as a policy concept, studies and reports have evaluated the efforts to mainstream rri in the national policies, revealing that questions still remain open to discussion. in this paper we will give a brief overview of rri approach, what it is, why and how it emerged and developed within the policy discourse in the european context. we will then review some key lessons concerning opportunities and challenges embedded in this approach, focusing on the role of science. keywords: responsible research and innovation, horizon 2020, science and society, governance, innovation, responsibility, ethics, science and technology studies, postnormal science. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ http://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2017-002-last mailto:lastorina.a@irea.cnr.it mailto:monica.difiore@cnr.it alba l’astorina monica di fiore 158 relations – 5.2 november 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 1. introducion we wrote this paper as a contribution to the summer school “food: shared life” 1, designed to review and discuss, in a critical perspective, the sociocultural aspects underlying the system of food in contemporary society, the potential of new technologies and the constraints they induce, impacts and possible conflicts of perspective they generate. in particular, the school aims to bridge the “knowledge gap between production and consumption as a key moment in the construction of a new and deeper understanding of the relationships of dependence and power that tie, so mutual though not equal, human beings to other living beings”. reducing the distance between “our food” (consumption) and “its origin” (production) is here proposed as a way to develop responsible processes, to anticipate the “possible conflicts of perspectives” and to avoid the “break between the human environment and the rest of the natural world that the modern system can generate”. this process can so facilitate “the transition from moral private concerns about the world we live in towards a dimension of social concern”. questions concerning responsibility, not only in the modern food system, are at the center of a longstanding debate on the sense of technoscientific innovation in our contemporary societies and its power to produce both benefits and harm, producing risks, arising ethical dilemmas and controversial questions. taking cue from the premises and objectives of the school, we will describe here a recent approach promoted by the european commission in order to anticipate and assess potential implications and societal expectations with regard to research and innovation in different areas. the approach, called responsible research and innovation (rri) suggests a framework for governing the innovation process asking all actors to become mutually responsible and responsive in order to reach socially desirable and acceptable innovation goals. in this paper we will give a brief overview of rri, what it is, why and how it emerged and developed within the policy discourse in the european context. we will then review some key lessons from empirical and academic studies, showing a multiplicity of views concerning opportunities and challenges embedded in this approach. our perspective is that of social researchers interested in understanding rri as part of wider debates on the relations between science, society and governance and the role that science communication can play towards 1 https://users.unimi.it/lavitacondivisa/index.html. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ https://users.unimi.it/lavitacondivisa/index.html a new bet for scientists? 159 relations – 5.2 november 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ a deeper awareness of all actors. reducing the distance between those who “make” science, and those who “reflect” on it, is here proposed as a way to develop responsible processes, to anticipate the “possible conflicts of perspectives” and to avoid the “break between the human environment and the rest of the natural world” that the modern system of innovation can generate. 2. the rri as a way to reframing the relations between science and society in last years, the european commission (ec) has promoted an approach that seeks to anticipate and assess potential implications and societal expectations with regard to research and innovation, with the aim to foster the design of inclusive and sustainable research and innovation (von schonberg 2013). the approach, called responsible research and innovation (with its acronym rri), has become a crosscutting theme of horizon 2020 (sis.net 2016), the biggest european research and innovation program, that funds “sustainable solutions to the challenges of the 21st century, such as global warming, energy, water and food, ageing societies, public health, pandemics and security” (svedin 2009). rri emerged from a wide debate – still ongoing – addressing the social, ethical and epistemological nature of techno-science, its implications for society and the role of governance in this framework. the discussion involved scholars, particularly active in science and technology studies and humanities, and experts at the science and society domain at the european level. the context in which the discussion developed is one facing with the “limitations of extant policy approaches to managing ethical-problematical areas of science and innovation” (owen, macnaghten, and stilgoe 2012) pervading society, such as genetically modified organisms (grove-white, macnaghten, and wynne 2000), synthetic biology (bhattachary, calitz, and hunter 2009), geoengineering (royal society 2009) and ict (von schonberg 2011). dilemmas on the difficulty to control uncertainty, unpredictable emergent technologies in the complexity (funtowicz and ravetz 1985) were also accompanied by a crisis of trust in britain (house of lords 2000) and elsewhere concerning the relations between science, politics, economy and society, that called for a radically different approach. the bse scandal in http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ alba l’astorina monica di fiore 160 relations – 5.2 november 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the mid 1980s to mid 1990s 2 is often reported as a watershed in the change of direction of this relations, setting the scene for a “civic dislocation” 3 (jasanoff 1997) and opening up to a long season of experimentation models of publics’ involvement in science, varying from deficit to dialogue, upstream public engagement, knowledge co-production, civic epistemologies (jasanoff 2004, 2005, 2006; pereira 2009), which is still ongoing. the debate is strongly intertwined with the longstanding discussion about responsibility in science, integrity and autonomy of research, arisen as topics of interest alongside the period of enlightenment in the 18th and 19th centuries, with the emergence of a bourgeois society in france, where citizens would have rights and duties. the development of a “language of responsibility” was necessary in order to discuss the evolving social order, where also the relations between (emergent) science and society were changing (rip 2014). some aspects related to responsibility also have roots in previous historical periods, if we consider the process of institutionalization and professionalization of science started with the emergence of modern science in the 17th century. the mechanistic “cartesian dream” (pereira and funtowicz 2015), with its view of a dualistic separation of facts and values, of “men as masters and possessors of nature”, and the illusion of a quantitative understanding, prediction and control of the world, was associated with an ideal of progress as unlimited growth 4. during the 20th century, the debate had an acceleration due to the transformation of the system of knowledge production, especially in relation to the transition from “little” to “big science” and its impact on society and governance. in 1960 alvin m. weinberg had warned of the risks of such a transition (weinberg 1961), which would lead scientists to persuade 2 the bse scandal refers to the behavior of uk government ministers who promoted a campaign (asking support from the scientific committee of advisers) to reassure the public that the bovine spongiform encephalopathy (bse) disease could not be transmitted to humans through the consumption of beef from infected animals. days after it became clear that there was indeed a risk and that people were dying of bse. 3 jasanoff calls “civic dislocation” the unprecedented breakdown of communication that citizens and their public institutions experienced during the bse crisis: a mismatch between what governmental institutions were supposed to do for the public, and what they actually did. due to a fall down of trust in government, people looked elsewhere for information and advice demonstrating that, in uncertain times, the distance between citizens and experts decreases and the lay public is almost as well positioned as the experts to make sensible decisions about how to avoid risks such as the bse. 4 for a critical journey of the “cartesian dream” through the evolution of different disciplines (such as biomedicine, geoengineering, ict), and its impact on the way technoscientific innovation is narrated today see pererira and funtowicz 2015. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ a new bet for scientists? 161 relations – 5.2 november 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ political and public opinion of the need for big money for research. weinberg had also predicted that, with fewer financial constraints, scientists would be under less pressure to reduce the complexity of the problems and have less reasons to reflect on purposes and effects of their research. some years later de solla price identified the dangers of saturation and senility attendant on the exponential growth of science (de solla price 1963), while in the 1970s jerome ravetz described science as a social process with all the failing and imperfections of human endeavours, highlighting the moral and ethical impact of the industrialized science (ravetz 1971). the “myth of science” and its privileged role in contemporary society addressed by scholars (feyerabend 1975) and a certain narrative of scientists as a self-organizing community devoted to the pure pursuit of knowledge (polanyi 1962), of science as separated from other domains of human activity, not subject to society’s rules in the name of its internal ethics (tal lachini 2009), inaugurated a process that would, in following years, exacerbate the perception of a separation between science and society. questions concerning the integrity of research and the ability of techno-science to adequately respond to the challenges of modernity, have to face now with a complex context, characterized by uncertainty (funtowicz and ravetz 1985), where innovations hardly have a single author who can be held responsible for its use or misuse and consequences are often neither foreseeable nor intentional (owen 2011). environmental disasters such as seveso, chernobyl, fukushima, bhopal address the unsustainability of a development system that requires growing consumption in a finite world of limited resources and an increasingly saturated market. in this scenario some scholars address the limits of consequential approaches, such as the quantitative risk assessment and management, and propose to recognize the contribution and the role of all relevant stakeholders (“extended peer community”) in the search for democratic solutions to modern challenges (funtowicz and ravetz 1994) 5. 5 the authors argue that, in all situations with a high level of uncertainty and where the evidence itself is contested due the diverging norms and values of the actors, the right to access and to create knowledge, to formulate research questions and to take decisions cannot be the prerogative of a few members of the scientific community recognized as experts on a given subject. this right should rather be extended to all stakeholders: including holders of minority perspectives, scientists and experts from other relevant sectors, and citizens with informal knowledge not recognized by normal science, who can moreover contribute with socio-political options. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ alba l’astorina monica di fiore 162 relations – 5.2 november 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 2.1. the emergence of rri in the european context: principles and milestones despite the longstanding debate on responsibility, the emergence of the concept of rri in the eu policy discourse is considered a recent phenomenon, dating, for some authors, 2011. in this year a selected group of experts both from policy and academia were involved in a series of debates aimed at developing a shared understanding of rri and formulating policy recommendations to support the development and implementation of a policy inspired by the concept of rri across the european research area (era). the attempt was “to address the growing tension between ‘innovation’ as the driver of jobs and economic growth, and ‘innovation’ as finding socially and environmentally responsible ways to provide for europe’s basic needs” (de saille 2015). in the same year the concept of rri as a form of participatory engagement was incorporated into the key proposal establishing the legal framework for horizon 2020 6. the approach of rri emerged in this framework considers as central the necessity to anticipate and gain knowledge of possible consequences and building a collective capacity to respond to them (van den hoven, lokhorst, and van de poel 2012). in order to reach this goal, theory and practice of rri recommend all societal actors – researchers, citizens, policy makers, business, third sector organizations, etc. – to work together during the whole research and innovation process in order to “better align both the process and its outcomes with the values, needs and expectations of society” 7, in the prospective of a reciprocal responsibility. even if a single definition is not univocal, many scholars agree with following formulation of rri as: a transparent, interactive process by which societal actors and innovators become mutually responsive to each other with a view to the (ethical) acceptability, sustainability and societal desirability of the innovation process and its marketable products (in order to allow a proper embedding of scientific and technological advances in our society). (von schonberg 2011) in a short informational leaflet (european commission 2012), a further articulation of rri in practice is said to comprise six key dimensions: inclu 6 for a review of the processes through which rri has been incorporated into horizon 2020 as a policy framework for the era which promises that technological innovation would be shaped towards social goods, see de saille 2015 and stilgoe, owen, and macnaghten 2013. 7 https://ec.europa.eu/programmes/horizon2020/en/h2020-section/science-andsociety. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ https://ec.europa.eu/programmes/horizon2020/en/h2020-section/science-and-society https://ec.europa.eu/programmes/horizon2020/en/h2020-section/science-and-society a new bet for scientists? 163 relations – 5.2 november 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ sive public engagement; a commitment to gender equality; more science education; ethics, defined as shared values reflecting fundamental rights; open access to data, and developing new models of governance. many of these keys are not new as governance concerns in the eu policy discourse. their origins go as far back as the 5th, 6th and 7th eu framework programs (archibugi et al. 2014) as a result of the collaboration among scientific disciplines in addressing the wider dimensions and implications of science and innovation in society. in a recent paper for the oecd, aimed at monitoring the evolution and benefits of rri trough a set of indicators, the keys have been reframed extending their meaning (meijer et al. 2016). public engagement refers to the activities aimed at fostering the collaboration among all societal actors during the whole research and innovation process in order to “align its outcomes to the values, needs and expectations of european society”. science education aims at enhancing the current education process to better equip citizens with the necessary knowledge and skills that allow them participate in the debate on research and innovation, and to motivate students towards scientific careers. open access aims at making research results freely available to anyone who wants to access and re-use them. the topic, maybe the most sensitive for researchers, has become a public concern due to the copyright rules imposed by the academic publishing market that hinders free access to publicly funded research results and knowledge transfer. in the framework of rri, openness should apply to all components of the research process, and not be restricted to the outcomes only. more recently, the ec is moving from oa to open science, including also topics such as infrastructure, intellectual property rights, content-mining and alternative metrics, inter-institutional, inter-disciplinary and international collaboration among all actors in research and innovation. also the topic of gender balance in science and research is present since time, having changed its focus intensively during the years. initially, underrepresentation of women and policies against inequalities were treated as a question of social justice; more recently they were justified on the basis of economic reasons, in order to make europe able “to achieve a competitive knowledge-based society, requiring an increase in the number of researchers” (european commission 2003). in 2007, the ec changed its policy approach from “fixing the women” to “fixing the institutions” in line with the process related approach of gender mainstreaming (lipinsky 2014). this includes both the provision of specific career support for women as well as institutional measures. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ alba l’astorina monica di fiore 164 relations – 5.2 november 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ethics in rri focuses on research integrity: the prevention of unacceptable research and research practices, and on the ethical acceptability of scientific and technological developments in the society. governance, more than a key dimension of rri, is considered as a “horizontal dimension” affecting all the other ones as it is concerned with how knowledge is produced and how it is disseminated (2015). in the rome declaration of 2014 (european commission 2014), rri approach is linked to “the principles on which the eu is founded: i.e. respect of human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and the respect of human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities”. the declaration stresses “the need for early and continuous engagement with all stakeholders as science should not only be regarded in terms of conducting ground-breaking research, but should also encompass principles of openness, responsibility and co-production of knowledge”. an “ideal” rri process should “help scientists and innovators to identify four dimensions in their activities: anticipation, reflexivity, inclusion and responsiveness” (stilgoe, owen, and macnaghten 2013). this means that they should be able to understand (anticipate) how the current processes will effect and define future needs; examine and reflect on actions and consequent effects concerning all aspects of research and innovation: from daily routines, planning assumptions and personal interactions, all the way up to institutional values and strategies. a wide range of stakeholders should be involved in an inclusive way throughout the whole research process, in order to generate diverse perspectives and expertise. finally, activities should be flexible and open to adapt existing organizational structures in response to evolving environments, values and insights. the definition of these dimensions originate from questions emerged within public debates about new areas of innovation, considered as “the kind of questions that public typically ask scientists, or would like to see scientists ask of themselves”, such as: which values should lead innovation in europe? what are the right impacts that innovation should be directed towards and how should these be arrived at? and, more: why doing innovation? for what purpose? are their goals desirable? who could benefit and how? who remains excluded? (stilgoe, owen, and macnaghten 2013). their inclusion as aspects of societal concern and interest in rri are intended to “embedding deliberation on these questions within the innovation process”. in this formulation, rri would go beyond balancing risks and benefits and become a “departure point” to answer in an inclusive, democratic way, the question what sort of future do we collectively want? in order to reach socially desirable and acceptable innovation goals (owen 2011). http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ a new bet for scientists? 165 relations – 5.2 november 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 2.2. some examples of promoting rri in europe since its first formulation in the european context, many attempts have been made to make formal policy commitment to rri. the approach is increasingly present in funding calls, both explicitly and implicitly, to foster the ethical acceptability, sustainability, and social desirability of research and innovation outcomes. it is a growing presence within the eu’s horizon 2020 framework programme (sis.net 2016), as well as in some national schemes both of public and private funders of research and innovation (angelaki 2016). it is particularly diffused in some north european countries, such as in the uk, where the engineering and physical sciences research council (epsrc) 8 have created a framework for rri used to select projects and monitor their progress. the dutch research council nwo 9 also has a dedicated funding program mvi (societally responsible innovating), now often referred to as rri, which started earlier than the emergence of the concept at the european level. in norway the elsa norway network 10 project, financed by the research council, aims at coordinating a research network having ethical, legal and social aspects of science and technology as its research topic. in denmark, even if the term rri is not widely used, the danish board of technology is famous for developing dialogue based methods at local level for discussion public concern in science and technology and for finding sustainable and interdisciplinary solutions engaging all actors. italy contributed to the eu discussion on rri with the rome declaration 2014 (european commission 2014), even if a national rri strategy does not exist. in 2015, the italian association for industrial research (airi) and the national research council (cnr) signed an agreement to develop policy recommendations to promote rri in italy (airi 2015) while private funders supporting innovation, among them cariplo 11 and bassetti foundations 12, explicitly require scientists to follow the rri approach in their research proposals. recently cnr has promoted an initiative aimed at bringing the debate on responsibility in research in the scientific arena starting from the rri platform. while writing this article, a book on the event is on preparation, but first results reveal challenges and opportunities of rri perceived by scientists that will be partially discussed here. 8 https://www.epsrc.ac.uk. 9 https://www.nwo.nl/en/research-and-results/programmes/responsible+innovation. 10 http://www.forskningsradet.no/en/strategy_plans/1185261825593. 11 http://www.fondazionecariplo.it/it/index.html. 12 http://www.fondazionebassetti.org/tags/rri. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ http://www.nwo.nl/en/research-and-results/programmes/responsible+innovation https://www.epsrc.ac.uk https://www.nwo.nl/en/research-and-results/programmes/responsible+innovation http://www.forskningsradet.no/en/strategy_plans/1185261825593 http://www.fondazionecariplo.it/it/index.html http://www.fondazionebassetti.org/tags/rri alba l’astorina monica di fiore 166 relations – 5.2 november 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ rri is not only on the agenda of the eu. even if the us does not have a rri programme, various legal, ethical and social implications have been raised in various programmes, named elsi (ethical, legal and social implications). for example, implications that would fall under the term rri have been included in the human genome initiative and the national nanotechnology initiative (guston 2014). rr similar approaches are also being taken under different labels, such as the us nsf broader impacts 13 and the australian research council’s responsible conduct 14, or under the values expressed in the daejeon declaration on science, technology, and innovation policies for the global and digital age 15. more resources on rri practices in the different european countries can be found on the website of the rri tools project 16. 2.3. rri: opportunities and challenges the role of ec in the diffusion of rri concept in the scientific domain has been crucial. introducing it as a crosscutting theme of horizon 2020, policy officers have “pushed” research teams to plan a rri strategy in their funding proposal and to carefully consider the peculiarity of each key action of responsibility. today, every researcher who wants to apply for a european funding program must demonstrate that her/his way of producing knowledge is compliant with rri requirements. however, questions still remain open to discussion and debate, among these, how to implement rri in the practices of the scientific procedure considering the current system of knowledge production. it is beyond the scope of this paper to exhaustively report the richness of the debate on rri which is still ongoing. we will only report some key lessons from empirical 17 and academic studies in the field, showing a multiplicity of views. for leo coutellec, “rri does not require the introduction of new departments within existing scientific institutions”, whereas values present in rri, such as impartiality, fecundity and diversity are “intrinsic part of science itself”. however, scientific knowledge and concrete innovations participate in “a greater ecosystem of causes and effects” which goes 13 https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2007/nsf07046/nsf07046.jsp. 14 https://www.arc.gov.au/policies-strategy. 15 http://www.oecd.org/sti/daejeon-declaration-2015.htm. 16 https://www.rri-tools.eu/homepage. 17 https://www.rri-tools.eu. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2007/nsf07046/nsf07046.jsp https://www.arc.gov.au/policies-strategy http://www.oecd.org/sti/daejeon-declaration-2015.htm https://www.rri-tools.eu/homepage https://www.rri-tools.eu a new bet for scientists? 167 relations – 5.2 november 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ beyond the scientific field into the social one. all actors have to be aware not only of potential risks of techno-science application, but also of the implications of such interactions (coutellec 2016). according to ulrike felt, while the ideals underlying rri seem selfevident, integrating social actors, their values and ways of knowing is more complex. felt identifies implicit and explicit tensions and resistances from the world of research, such as pressures on scientists to produce excellence research, and the lack of a “shared understanding of the research process” among actors. also, a “tacit hierarchy between science and society”, bearing the idea that “certain kinds of knowledge are better than others” makes on par relationship still difficult. last but not least, the research agenda is mainly dictated by scientists and a participation in the framing also of the questions to be addressed is still a chimera. all this can limit the potential for change of rri and calls for a cultural shift where “research cultures and practices have to be reconsidered” (felt 2016). arie rip argues that “rri has all the trappings of a fashion”, developing “a secondary industry of rri conferences and workshops, building on the funding available through horizon 2020”. in some areas, actors like to refer to rri as a “legitimation to their activities”, strengthening their “social license to operate”. however, even as a passing fashion and a “dynamic open-ended concept” (rip 2014; 2016a; 2016b), rri has created spaces where the division of moral labour among scientists and citizens can be discussed and negotiated. in this sense he considers rri “a promising field of a science policy for the 21st century”. one of rri main weak points seems to be the implementation process, challenged by the multilevel dimension of the governance. while scientists traditionally manage how knowledge is produced, certified, made credible and communicated, rri governance of innovation goes beyond concerns about technology and its regulation and requires a shared management among science, society and governance. this principle collides with the fact that scientists, citizens, industry, at various level, hold their own interests, expectations, values, strategy and motivations, often conflicting each other. the multilevel governance aspect of rri (randles et al. 2016) and scholars’ reflections call for inter and trans-disciplinarity, where aspects concerning “how the different role and responsibilities of various actors are attributed and how these operate” (rip 2016b), and their “social, political and cultural visions” can be negotiated. empirical studies (macnaghent et al. 2016) show that social and cultural factors affect the whole innovation process. analysing them from a cross-cultural perspective beyond europe, scholars identify these factors as barriers. religious beliefs, for example, could be impending factors for the http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ alba l’astorina monica di fiore 168 relations – 5.2 november 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ gender balance and for ethics issues as they are not fully grasped by rri european political regulatory framework (macnaghent et al. 2016). rri approach in the making could also question the automatism whereby goals of innovation process are mainly “growth and jobs” (european commission 2013), and innovation and technology innovation coincide. it is necessary to reflect on their socially shared visions: “[…] such reflexivity requires acknowledging that stakeholders may adhere to paradigms in which innovation and possibly also the problem at hand are conceptualised differently” (de hoop, pols, and romijn 2016). co-production of knowledge will make explicit other possible framings of issues, coherent with a specific context. political, technological and economic development, cultural and social economic issues “can obstruct, divert or hijack alternative options and different innovation trajectories” (macnaghten et al. 2016). rri definition “is firmly anchored in european policy processes and values” (meijer et al. 2016). being focused mainly on responsible innovation (ri), some scholars emphasize that it is a “northern political artefact […] in terms of culture, politics, economy, demographics, governance and power structures, institutional arrangements, science and society relationships” (macnaghent et al. 2016). this poses challenges in terms of its diffusion in the rest of europe and beyond european borders. how were they addressed so far? with the aim to promote a political change, european commission financed a study for monitoring evolution and benefit on rri and in order to mainstream rri concept, as it diffusion is “so far, quite modest” (meijer et al. 2016). the project developed a set of rri indicators that allows comparison in time, simplifying a complex concept into 6 indicators for each of the rri keys, even being aware of the bias connected to the use of indicators. however, attempts to monitoring and evaluating the state of art, such as this project does, risk to privilege the ec concerns to “accountability and evaluation of public spending on higher education and research” (meijer et al. 2016) and to overlook other sides of this multifaceted process, more sensitive to an actual social change. 3. rri: the role of scientists studies show that shifting to rri framework entails a legacy effect between the previous knowledge production model and the new one under the umbrella of rri frame. this implies a transition process, during which social, political and scientific changes need to be aligned: it requires scihttp://www.ledonline.it/relations/ a new bet for scientists? 169 relations – 5.2 november 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ entist to recognize a new category of peer, citizens to bring their social claims into the world vision framing process, industry to negotiate its role into society as innovation carrier and, finally, policy makers to facilitate the institutional change expected by rri helping all actors share its framework. however the transition process towards knowledge co-production means that each of these actors have to make a cultural change, bridging the gap of a “shared understanding of the research process” among all of them (felt 2016). reinforcing informal science communication at all levels can be a way of “reducing the distance”. while the social and political implications of change have been widely faced with in many projects, the conditions for the engagement of one of the main actors of rri frame, that is the scientists, are still debated. efforts to “mainstream” rri across the european research area have been modestly successful (meijer et al. 2016) and studies indicate significant obstacles at both organizational and individual levels. in the modern system of knowledge production researchers’ strategy, interests and expectations are strongly affected by research and innovation policies. while high impact publications are considered “a core academic activity clearly carrying merit”, engaging in public outreach or stakeholder dialogues “might easily be considered peripheral activities without straightforward value for the individual scientists” (meijer et al. 2016). this different behaviour can be considered as a trade-offs among policies: if rri science and research innovation policies do not share the same vision, they trigger that a competing effect among them transform the whole process rri into a matter of protocol, a new bureaucratic fulfilment among others. furthermore, asking scientists to be compliant with rri framework, means shifting from curiosity driven research to compliancy driven research and this requires scientists also to break a taboo at individual level. are scientists, producing “truth and facts”, disposed to open their work to public scrutiny? do they confer legitimacy to “extended peer community”? recognizing that the call for mutual responsibility also has roots in a certain crisis of science (benessia et al. 2016) and in the “participatory turn” of modern societies (jasanoff 2003), can allow understanding the rri keys as opportunities rather than only constraints. discussing the possibility to develop alternatives to the centrality of risk discourse (not only in rri), scholars suggest a revision of the concept of responsibility, “decoupling it from the desire for control over nature and the future and re-coupling it to its relational dimension: that of how humans ask an respond to each other and more fundamentally live together” (funtowicz and strand 2011). paraphrasing the authors, if experiments with rri keys within research projects “are not the result of a deep self-conscious analysis”, they might http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ alba l’astorina monica di fiore 170 relations – 5.2 november 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ actually become “a way to reinforce existing technocratic structures”. if we take “ethics” (but also open access, public engagement or science education) away from the democratic political process that generated it, we risk to “normalize” it as another objectified expert discipline (funtowicz and strand 2011) or, as we would add, another bureaucratic duty to fulfill with. assuming this viewpoint, for example, a researcher who is required in a proposal to “keep a balanced gender gap” can stop considering it as a question of “social justice” and allow it as a chance to introduce alternative perspectives in facing societal challenges; behaving according to “ethical” norms, can transform from just applying moral norms and codes to put in place a different conversation, or more equitable relations, with other beings and our planet as a whole. 4. conclusions we wrote this paper within the context of the summer school “food: shared life”, designed to review and discuss, in a critical view, the sociocultural aspects underlying the system of food in contemporary society, impacts and possible conflicts of perspective they generate. our intent was to bring in this context some aspects of the ongoing debate, both in the academia and in the european institutions, on responsibility in modern complex societies, describing a recent approach promoted by the european commission, called responsible research and innovation (rri). we have started by encompassing rri as part of wider discussions on the sense of techno-scientific innovation and its power to produce both benefits and harm; we have briefly outlined the history of rri and its milestones in europe and beyond. we have, finally, reviewed some key lessons from empirical and academic studies, showing a multiplicity of views concerning opportunities and challenges embedded in this approach, focusing on the role of science in this framework. we want now conclude with a general consideration on rri as a “departure point” to reach a socially desirable and acceptable innovation, and a way to answer, in an inclusive and democratic way, the question what sort of future do we collectively want? if rri is a “open-ended” concept, whose meaning and practice have to be co-constructed in an interactive and iterative way among all actors, then these questions call for an open discussion of possible alternative narhttp://www.ledonline.it/relations/ a new bet for scientists? 171 relations – 5.2 november 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ratives of responsibility, in which the political, ethical and social dimensions of innovative processes are accorded as much importance as the scientific and technological ones. this implies to rethink the dominant positivistic narrative, that presents techno-scientific innovation – supposed to extend indefinitely the boundaries of human existence and agency through the creative manipulation of matter, energy and life – as the only solution to the systemic crises that we face (benessia and funtowicz 2016). more “conversations” (waltner-toews 2015) – among the species, among sciences and humanities, among cultures, among different ways of knowledge production – seems to be the formula to think of future as an inclusive project affecting all dimensions of being. references airi. 2015. “responsible-industry: a framework for implementing responsible research and innovation”. nanotec. accessed july 10, 2017. http://www. nanotec.it/public/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/responsible_industry-rri_ framework.pdf. angelaki, marina. 2016. “an introduction to 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https://www.vr.se/download/18.29b9c5ae1268d01cd5c8000631/new_worlds_new_solutions_report.pdf animalismo e non violenza. l’incidenza della lezione gandhiana sul pensiero di tom regan 5 is sn 2 2 8 0 -9 9 5 3 beyond anthropocentrism 1 • january 2013 inside the emotional lives of non-human animals a minding animals international utrecht 2012 pre-conference event special issue (genoa, italy, 12-13 may, 2012) edited by m. andreozzi, r. bennison, a. massaro, s. tonutti capabilities approach and animal bioethics • michele panzera animals and our emotions. how to approach the study of an interspecific community? • sabrina tonutti advocacy and animal rights • kim stallwood the emotional lives of animals: a christian perspective • alma massaro – gianfranco nicora animalia: ontology and ethics in weak antispeciesism • leonardo caffo the contemporary debate on experimentation • susanna penco – rosagemma ciliberti non-human animals and genetic engineering • arianna ferrari the relationship between humans and other animals in european animal welfare legislation • paola sobbrio human’s best friends? • matteo andreozzi elationsre l a t io n s . b e y o n d a n t h r o p o c e n t r is m 1 • 2 0 1 3 r 7.1-2 november 2019 the respect extended to animals: studies in honor and in memory of tom regan conference event special issue (florence, italy, february 20, 2018) edited by francesco allegri editorial exploring non-anthropocentric paradigms 7 francesco allegri introduction the importance of tom regan for animal ethics 13 francesco allegri studies and research contributions verso i diritti degli animali. riflessioni e dibattiti nella storia 19 del pensiero vilma baricalla respect, inherent value, subjects-of-a-life: some reflections 41 on the key concepts of tom regan’s animal ethics francesco allegri animalismo e non violenza. l’incidenza della lezione gandhiana 61 sul pensiero di tom regan luisella battaglia almost like waging war: tom regan and the conditions 77 for using violence for the sake of animals federico zuolo relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ relations. beyond anthropocentrism 6 comments, debates, reports and interviews ricordo di tom regan. intervista con luigi lombardi vallauri 95 francesco allegri author guidelines 99 relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 61 animalismo e non violenza l’incidenza della lezione gandhiana sul pensiero di tom regan luisella battaglia università degli studi di genova doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2019-0102-batt luisella.battaglia@unige.it abstract in opposition to the anthropocentric model of domination, in gandhi as in regan there is the full recovery of an ethical-philosophical tradition based on the model of kinship or fraternity and that insists on the possibility of extending the rules of justice to all living beings. the result of this perspective is the duty of vegetarianism and the radical opposition to any practice that treats animals as means at the service of human interests. but gandhi’s lesson is particularly useful both to address the properly political issues arising from animal ethics, that are at the heart of regan’s philosophy (starting with the debate on the nature and justification of animal rights theories and their possible inclusion in the political community), and to define the most appropriate non-violent fighting strategies for the achievement of the aims of animal rights defenders. keywords: animal bioethics; animal rights; animals; fraternity; gandhi; interspecific justice; non-violence; subjects-of-a-life; tom regan; vegetarianism. “è stata la guerra in vietnam a spingermi al rifiuto della violenza e, soprattutto, la lettura di gandhi a farmi scoprire l’importanza di un’etica del rispetto per tutti i viventi”. sono parole di tom regan, pronunciate durante un incontro sul tema diritti animali, responsabilità umane organizzato dall’istituto italiano di bioetica a genova il 7 novembre 2001. un incontro di grande interesse, di cui resta testimonianza in un’intervista da me curata per il secolo xix, a cui farò riferimento per la ricchezza degli spunti e degli argomenti trattati, a partire innanzitutto dal riconoscimento sia dell’importanza della lezione gandhiana per la filosofia di regan, sia del profondo legame tra nonviolenza e animalismo (battaglia e regan relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2019-0102-batt mailto:luisella.battaglia@unige.it https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ luisella battaglia 62 2001). due temi su cui val la pena di richiamare ancora oggi l’attenzione. perché è importante la filosofia della nonviolenza per l’etica animalista? per rispondere dovremmo preliminarmente riflettere sul significato di nonviolenza per intenderlo correttamente, al di là di fraintendimenti e stereotipi che ne hanno oscurato il senso autentico. si tratta di accostarsi il più possibile al significato del termine gandhiano ahimsa, da intendersi in senso eminentemente attivo e positivo, come impegno d’amore per i sofferenti, i minimi, gli ultimi, un amore che include l’intero mondo vivente e non solo il genere umano. 1. la nonviolenza del forte nonostante l’affermazione esplicita di gandhi per cui “la nonviolenza è la più grande e la più attiva forza del mondo”, essa è stata sovente definita come un’accettazione paziente della sofferenza, una resistenza passiva esemplata dal precetto evangelico del porgere l’altra guancia, laddove essa è impegno strenuo, azione coraggiosa intesa a far valere i diritti conculcati, strategia che mira all’efficacia nella ricerca della giustizia. è questo chiaramente il significato a cui regan fa riferimento. un’etica – e una politica – esigente, che ha al suo centro l’indignazione per lo scandalo della sofferenza da cui muove l’impegno ad assumersi le proprie responsabilità, a non accettare la realtà così com’è ora e che non merita di durare. gli “altri” cui si riferisce gandhi includono anche gli animali, il cui dolore è muto e incolpevole. il dovere di rispettarne la vita si fonda sulla nostra capacità di immaginazione identificativa con loro: è ciò che ci permette di interessarci ai loro bisogni e al loro destino, facendo nascere un sentimento di comunanza e solidarietà simile a quello che nutriamo per gli umani. fondamentale, a questo riguardo, è la distinzione enunciata da gandhi tra nonviolenza del forte, del debole e del codardo (gandhi 1996). la prima poggia sul rifiuto morale della violenza e richiede la presenza al massimo grado di tutte quelle virtù – coraggio, abnegazione, disciplina – che sono proprie del guerriero. la seconda è la cosiddetta resistenza passiva: una scelta tattica adottata da chi non si sente abbastanza forte per impugnare le armi o ritiene, per ragioni politiche, che l’impiego della violenza non sia funzionale ai suoi obiettivi. la terza, infine, è l’atteggiamento di chi si astiene dalla violenza per pura vigliaccheria o per motivi egoistici: è quest’ultima la posizione che gandhi condanna più aspramente, arrivando addirittura a scrivere di preferire la violenza alla codarda sottomissione. corollario necessario della nonviolenza del forte è il relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ animalismo e non violenza 63 metodo satyagraha (forza della verità) che mira a persuadere l’avversario, a combattere le sue idee, non la sua persona. etica, dunque, dell’impegno, ispirata ad alcune regole auree: “ama il prossimo tuo come te stesso”; “non fare agli altri quello che non vorresti fosse fatto a te”, da cui derivano un riconoscimento del concetto di fraternità e un allargamento della nozione di prossimo estesi oltre i confini della specie. in tal modo gandhi delinea le categorie fondative di un nuovo rapporto col mondo non umano, al cui centro è l’idea dell’estensione della regola di giustizia a tutti i viventi, e da cui discende la doverosità del vegetarianesimo come espressione di una filosofia della non violenza integrale. ma alla stessa conclusione si perviene se si accetta la tesi centrale della teoria dei diritti, per cui non è possibile usare gli animali come risorse. ecco, infatti, la conferma di regan nell’intervista: come non ammetteremmo mai una pratica che comporti il massacro abituale di esseri umani allo scopo di procurarci una certa quantità di piacere, analogamente dovremmo concludere che non abbiamo giustificazione nell’uccidere uno o più animali solo per il benessere che la loro morte ci può procurare. (battaglia e regan 2001) potremmo aggiungere che il dovere di rispettare la vita dei non umani si accompagna anche alla capacità di identificazione immaginativa con loro: è ciò che ci permette di interessarci ai loro bisogni e al loro destino, facendo nascere un sentimento di comunanza e di solidarietà simile a quello che nutriamo per gli umani. “quand’ero studente – ricorda regan – non si dibattevano problemi di etica animale, v’era anzi per questi argomenti un’assoluta indifferenza. io stesso ho fatto il macellaio per pagarmi gli studi e, come tutti gli studenti, ho eseguito esperimenti di vivisezione”. una confessione di estremo interesse. a ben riflettere, noi vediamo della realtà solo ciò che siamo disposti a vedere, mentre non vediamo spesso anche ciò che è palese. è la cultura a dare un rilievo maggiore o minore al dolore, talvolta a renderlo addirittura invisibile e indicibile, a rimuoverlo o a negarlo. esiste una singolare selettività delle nostre capacità percettive. gli esempi storici non mancano: basti pensare a come, per secoli, la condizione spaventosa degli schiavi o dei bambini sfruttati nelle fabbriche, all’epoca della rivoluzione industriale, fosse sotto gli occhi di tutti, ma ben pochi, potremmo dire, “avevano occhi” per vederla. è forse un caso che il primo teorico dei diritti degli animali, il filosofo henry salt, amico di gandhi e fondatore della humanitarian society, sia stato anche il difensore dei diritti degli schiavi, delle donne, dei bimbi, di tutti gli oppressi, al di là delle differenze di razza, di sesso, di specie? relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ luisella battaglia 64 comune e condivisa è l’esperienza del dolore: solo se riconosciuto nei suoi diversi “volti”, potrà essere combattuto. ecco dunque il motivo dell’insistenza sull’importanza di ogni individuo, dei singoli tu, i quali sono visti tutti come soggetti e non come oggetti. l’individualità di ogni singola esistenza è dunque ciò che deve essere salvaguardata. ogni animale è “soggetto-di-una-vita”. regan dichiara nell’intervista: nella mia visione gli animali sono individui che hanno un valore indipendente dalla loro utilità per altri: pertanto non possono essere trattati come mere risorse. i danni inflitti intenzionalmente a un soggetto non possono essere in alcun modo giustificati dai benefici che ne traggono altri. non si può violare il diritto di un individuo umano o non umano per il bene della collettività. (battaglia e regan 2001) 2. nonviolenza e vegetarianesimo su questo sfondo deve collocarsi la scelta vegetariana che, se è l’esito conseguente della filosofia della nonviolenza, testimonia anche una precisa motivazione politica. in gandhi, come in regan, troviamo una dottrina filosofica articolata e complessa del vegetarianesimo fondata su una chiara distinzione tra vegetarianesimo positivo – da intendersi come concezione etica – e negativo – da assumersi come semplice pratica dietetica. innanzitutto, il rifiuto dell’alimentazione carnea corrisponde al rifiuto globale della violenza, è un “dir di no” a un moltiplicarsi di atti violenti, è riconoscimento del valore dell’esistenza di ogni essere. il mattatoio è assunto come luogo emblematico dove si consuma quotidianamente e professionalmente violenza e dove è in atto un processo di brutalizzazione dell’uomo (assuefazione alla violenza, caduta delle inibizioni, progressiva insensibilità alle sofferenze altrui) correlativo ad un processo di riduzione dell’animale a cosa, a oggetto di cui poter disporre a piacimento. nel vegetarianesimo sembra pertanto possibile identificare 3 elementi essenziali – una concezione etica, una teoria della natura umana e una visione del sociale – che costituiscono, nel loro complesso, una visione filosofica assai articolata. la concezione etica che sottostà a tale visione potrebbe definirsi come una “morale aperta” in senso bergsoniano, una dottrina che si propone di estendere i confini della comunità fino ai limiti del senziente, in grado quindi di superare ogni egoismo di specie. il vegetarianesimo rappresenta, in tal senso, l’applicazione più radicale della regola aurea relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ animalismo e non violenza 65 perché implica l’allargamento decisivo della nozione di prossimo con l’inclusione in tale concetto degli animali non umani, in quanto esseri viventi capaci di provare il dolore della violenza. il rifiuto dell’alimentazione carnea, basato sul riconoscimento di una fraternità di tutti i viventi, ci aiuta a comprendere il valore dei nostri atti: mentre, infatti, abitualmente si pensa che il cibarsi possa avere solo un valore utilitario, il vegetarianesimo ci mostra che esso non è più strettamente tale. questo gesto viene dunque elevato dal piano della semplice utilità a un piano che potremmo definire spirituale e simbolico ispirato al criterio etico dell’assoluto rispetto per ogni essere vivente. d’altra parte, la norma di rispettare la vita animale porta con sé una maggiore attenzione alla vita umana e fa sì che siano a maggior ragione difficili l’indifferenza e la crudeltà verso gli uomini. in questa prospettiva, il vegetarianesimo è un dire no a un moltiplicarsi di atti violenti, è un dare inizio a un’educazione che promuove il rispetto dei diritti di ogni individuo, contro ogni discriminazione. la teoria della natura umana sottesa all’etica vegetariana sottolinea gli aspetti di “continuità” e di somiglianza tra umani e non umani, per definire i rapporti tra le specie in termini di collaborazione e non di antagonismo. il pieno superamento della prospettiva antropocentrica favorisce l’emergere di un’immagine dell’uomo non più signore della natura ma membro di una comunità mista, in stabile e armoniosa relazione con la biosfera. in gandhi, come in regan, si ha quindi il pieno recupero di una tradizione etico-filosofica che si riconosce nel modello della parentela o della “fraternità”, in opposizione a quello antropocentrico del “dominio” e che insiste sulla possibilità di una comunicazione tra le specie 1. se la visione meccanicistica dell’animale (cartesio, malebranche etc.) viene risolutamente confutata – la sofferenza degli animali è reale e infliggerla o consentirla rappresenta una precisa colpa morale – la stessa divisione kantiana tra persone (appartenenti al regno dei fini) e animali (appartenenti al regno dei mezzi) è decisamente respinta nel quadro di una visione evolutiva – il progresso morale e sociale consiste proprio nell’ampliare la sfera delle persone, includendovi coloro che un tempo venivano considerati “mezzi” (gli schiavi, le donne) e ora gli animali. quanto alla visione del sociale, il vegetarianesimo viene inteso in senso politico come estensione della solidarietà oltre le barriere della specie e 1 per una definizione dei due modelli rinvio a battaglia 2002. un’accurata ricostruzione storica della controversia filosofica sullo status morale degli animali è in allegri 2015. relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ luisella battaglia 66 posto in rapporto con la scelta del metodo di azione politica e sociale. da qui l’idea di una società giusta non solo per l’uomo ma per tutti i viventi. occorre sottolineare che la nonviolenza gandhiana si presenta con le caratteristiche di una contestazione permanente. gandhi, come ha ben mostrato giuliano pontara (1996) 2, non solo non teme i conflitti ma li considera importanti e risolutivi nella ricerca della verità, all’interno di una concezione dinamica della giustizia. il satyagraha è, in effetti, una vera e propria filosofia dei conflitti da gestirsi in modo non violento. nella sfera politica si può pertanto essere efficaci senza rinunciare ai principi etici: le varie tecniche di lotta teorizzate da gandhi – dallo sciopero al sabotaggio – consentono appunto di saldare politica e morale. certo, le stesse condizioni del satyagraha (astensione dall’uso e dalla minaccia della violenza, impegno costante di attenersi alla verità, esigenza di imparzialità, ovvero sforzo di porsi dal punto di vista dell’avversario, formulazione di obiettivi precisi e quindi rifiuto della clandestinità etc.) rappresentano nella loro paradossalità un sovvertimento radicale delle regole tradizionali del gioco politico. un sovvertimento, occorre tuttavia sottolineare, che oltre a testimoniare una straordinaria tensione etica, esige anche – come ha evidenziato erikson nel suo studio su gandhi – una profonda sapienza in fatto di psicologia sociale che fa di lui un innovatore rivoluzionario (erikson 1972). esse mirano infatti a controllare e a ridurre la violenza dell’oppositore: la menzogna, la distorsione, la clandestinità sono tutti elementi che ingenerano sospetto e paura, rendendo quindi più probabile il suo ricorso violenza. in tal senso la nonviolenza si inscrive in un gioco di forze e. in quanto alternativa costruttiva all’estinzione reciproca, può rappresentare una forma efficace di ritualizzazione dei conflitti sociali e politici. ma la lezione gandhiana è anche all’origine – regan lo ricorda esplicitamente nell’intervista – della sua adesione ad un’etica del rispetto per tutti i viventi che rivendica l’estensione ai non umani della qualifica di persone, titolari di diritti fondamentali. è degno di nota, a tale riguardo, che regan non intenda dimostrare in senso forte l’esistenza di diritti, né degli umani, né degli animali, ma solo avviare un ragionamento per analogia, sostenendo che se tali diritti vengono postulati per gli umani non v’è ragione plausibile per non postularli anche per gli animali, dal momento che “tutti gli argomenti utilizzabili a sostegno dell’affermazione per cui tutti gli esseri umani possiedono un diritto naturale alla vita possono essere utilizzati per dimostrare che anche gli animali lo possiedono” (regan 1985, 189). 2 pontara sottolinea il carattere deliberatamente conflittualista della visione gandhiana e ne evidenzia la capacità di mobilitazione spirituale e politica delle masse. relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ animalismo e non violenza 67 significativa è l’anticipazione di tale argomento nel già citato henry salt secondo il quale gli animali, come gli uomini, in quanto possessori (sebbene in misura minore) di una distinta individualità, hanno titolo a godere di alcuni fondamentali diritti. si legge in animals’rights: “se i diritti esistono – e sentimenti e costumi indubbiamente provano che esistono – non possono coerentemente essere riconosciuti a un uomo e negati agli animali, giacché lo stesso senso di giustizia si applica in entrambi i casi” (salt 1980, 14). ancora una volta, per salt come per regan, si tratta di una richiesta di giustizia. si ribadisce infatti che occorre coltivare un ampio senso di giustizia (non di pietà) per tutti gli esseri viventi. regan, in particolare, conformemente alla sua concezione dell’animale come “soggetto-di-una vita”, dotato di valore inerente e, in quanto tale, titolare di diritti, non può non respingere, secondo giustizia, ogni sua strumentalizzazione a fini umani. gli animali hanno un genere di valore che è distinto e irriducibile alla loro utilità relativa agli interessi degli altri e devono essere trattati sempre in modi che mostrino rispetto per il loro valore inerente. la concezione etica che sottostà a tale visione potrebbe essere definita come un’etica cosmica, pienamente conforme alla visione gandhiana del rispetto integrale di ogni essere vivente. un rispetto, potremmo aggiungere, che riguarda anche gli enti naturali. regan definisce infatti come “admiring respect” l’atteggiamento di chi guarda a questi enti come dotati di un valore inerente, il che significa che essi valgono per sé stessi, indipendentemente dal valore strumentale, economico, ricreativo, scientifico che possiedono per l’uomo (regan 1981). è forse superfluo sottolineare come tale prospettiva rappresenti un decisivo superamento della visione antropocentrica che vede l’uomo come esclusivo centro di valorazione dell’universo. da tale attitudine discende un imperativo morale, il principio di preservazione, che sostiene non solo l’astensione da ogni intervento molesto (la non ingerenza) nell’ambito della natura ma evidenzia la necessità di una cultura del rispetto fondata sul riconoscimento di un diritto dell’ambiente. nella visione reganiana l’antropocentrismo viene respinto come approccio globale che subordina gli interessi animali a quelli umani o ravvisa in questi ultimi l’unico criterio di valutazione. il concetto di valore inerente attribuito agli animali e l’affermazione di loro fondamentali diritti dovrebbe fondare un egualitarismo interspecifico. ciò richiede una vera e propria rivoluzione assiologica, una sorta di “trasvalutazione dei valori” che dovrebbe tradursi in fondamentali cambiamenti sia nei nostri relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ luisella battaglia 68 stili di vita, sia nelle nostre istituzioni sociali, giuridiche e politiche. ne discende, nella radicale scelta abolizionista di regan, sia il rifiuto dell’alimentazione carnea sia l’opposizione alla sperimentazione animale. anche qui ritroviamo un elemento comune con la visione gandhiana. 3. nonviolenza e sperimentazione animale contro l’idea del progresso ad ogni costo e ad ogni prezzo, gandhi propone la visione di una scienza non finalizzata al dominio ma attenta a ritrovare l’armonia tra uomo e natura: “non sono contrario al progresso della scienza come tale. al contrario, lo spirito scientifico dell’occidente si impone alla mia ammirazione e, se questa ammirazione è limitata, è perché lo scienziato occidentale non presta attenzione al regno animale creato da dio” (gandhi 1991, 254). nelle pagine gandhiane vengono affrontati taluni problemi etici connessi alla conoscenza scientifica, all’interno di un atteggiamento di critica e di discussione dei presupposti stessi su cui si fonda la sperimentazione animale. gli interrogativi riguardano la liceità, per l’uomo, di interferire sul vivente – ove ciò risulti a lui vantaggioso – e soprattutto il suo diritto di disporre della vita e dell’integrità dei non umani. se nella controversia tradizionale sulla sperimentazione animale si è soliti opporre il valore dell’indagine scientifica e quello della vita animale, qui l’assunto, invece, è che il bene umano e quello animale non vadano perseguiti in modo indipendente ma debbano piuttosto essere resi compossibili. al là del tema specifico della sperimentazione, emergono pertanto domande più radicali di etica filosofica che investono la più vasta questione dei nostri rapporti col mondo non umano. gandhi affronta i quesiti che riguardano, da un lato, le ragioni in nome delle quali la scienza occidentale si sente autorizzata a disporre della vita degli animali e, dall’altro, la stessa immagine della scienza come sapere finalizzato sui cui obiettivi, metodi e strategie si impone una riflessione in termini di etica della responsabilità. io aborrisco la vivisezione con tutta l’anima: detesto l’imperdonabile massacro di vite innocenti in nome della scienza e della cosiddetta umanità e considero tutte le scoperte scientifiche macchiate di sangue innocente completamente inutili […]. e vedo chiaramente albeggiare il giorno in cui l’onesto scienziato occidentale, per perseguire la conoscenza, porrà dei limiti ai metodi odierni. (gandhi 1991, 254) non è sufficiente, quindi, parlare di fraternità se si continua a pensare che ogni forma di vita esiste per essere sfruttata dall’uomo per i suoi scopi. relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ animalismo e non violenza 69 la posizione di regan al riguardo è altrettanto netta. dinanzi a una precisa domanda nell’intervista sulla sperimentazione animale ai fini di ricerca, ecco la sua risposta: come ogni altra istituzione volta allo sfruttamento degli animali essa è intrinsecamente immorale perché viola il loro diritto ad essere trattati con rispetto e li riduce allo stato di semplici mezzi. ancora una volta l’ingiustizia di una pratica non può essere compensata da alcun beneficio. si badi, la mia non è una tesi contro la ricerca scientifica: è una tesi a favore dell’attività e dell’impresa scientifica, dei suoi sviluppi e della sua crescita, che non leda i diritti di nessuno, né quelli degli umani né quelli degli animali. (battaglia e regan 2001) in tal modo regan prende nettamente le sue distanze dalla tradizionale visione specista secondo cui un essere superiore qual è l’uomo è giustificato a servirsi degli esseri che gli sono inferiori e perciò a ucciderli o utilizzarli come mezzi per tutti i suoi scopi. per porre in questione la premessa fondamentale su cui si basa la sperimentazione animale – la liceità etica di fare ai non umani ciò che non faremmo mai agli umani – occorre pertanto che agli animali venga riconosciuto uno status morale che esiga da noi la considerazione dei loro interessi o diritti. grazie a teorie come quelle di regan è maturata una crescente cultura del rispetto nei confronti delle altre specie e una diffusa consapevolezza dei problemi etici connessi alla ricerca. da qui il sorgere, all’interno stesso della comunità scientifica, del fenomeno dell’obiezione di coscienza alla sperimentazione animale che ha comportato conseguenze assai importanti. innanzitutto, si è indebolito grandemente uno degli argomenti più classici opposto agli abolizionisti, quello, cioè di collocarsi al di fuori della scienza, di sostenere le ragioni dell’oscurantismo contro quelle del progresso. non si danno infatti, da un lato, le ragioni della scienza e, dall’altro, quelle dell’etica, ma piuttosto siamo di fronte a due modelli specularmente opposti di etica per la scienza. ciò ha comportato la rivendicazione della validità scientifica e della legittimità etica delle metodologie che escludono l’impiego degli animali e, insieme, la richiesta di approntare quegli strumenti (istituti, centri di ricerca, fondazioni) che possano sostenere e incoraggiare tali ricerche. occorre aggiungere che, nel nostro paese, la crescente sensibilità nei confronti della questione animale ha trovato una significativa espressione nella legge del 12 ottobre 1993 n. 413, che ha riconosciuto il diritto ai cittadini che si oppongono alla violenza su tutti gli esseri viventi di “dichiarare la propria obiezione di coscienza ad ogni atto connesso con la sperimentazione animale”. la legge prevede la possibilità per i medici, i ricercatori, il personale sanitario e per gli studenti che si dichiarano relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ luisella battaglia 70 obiettori di “non prendere parte direttamente alle attività e agli interventi specificamente e necessariamente diretti alla sperimentazione animale”. di particolare rilievo l’obbligo che viene richiesto a tutte le strutture pubbliche e private legittimate a svolgere sperimentazione animale di “rendere noto a tutti i lavoratori e gli studenti il loro diritto ad esercitare l’obiezione di coscienza alla sperimentazione animale” e di predisporre un modulo per tale dichiarazione. si tratta, come si vede, di indicazioni imperative che coinvolgono le stesse università e richiedono che vengano attivate “all’interno dei corsi, modalità di insegnamento che non prevedano attività o interventi di sperimentazione animale per il superamento dell’esame”. purtroppo, a distanza di tanti anni, dobbiamo constatare che tale duplice obbligo è stato in larga parte disatteso e che un numero assai limitato di facoltà ha proceduto tardivamente agli adempimenti solo in seguito a formali richieste volte ad assicurare la massima pubblicità alla legge. un’occasione dunque in gran parte mancata, sulle cui ragioni varrebbe forse la pena di interrogarsi nel quadro della nostra riflessione sui rapporti tra animalismo e non violenza. l’obiezione di coscienza è indubbiamente uno degli strumenti a disposizione del militante non violento e che lo differenzia nel modo più netto dal fanatismo intollerante e dall’estremismo di movimenti che vedono nella violenza lo strumento primario di lotta per i diritti degli animali. la legge riconosce la libertà di coscienza della persona come diritto umano inviolabile e, in questo quadro, tutela – come ha ben sottolinea to luigi lombardi vallauri – un bene valore soggettivo ma, insieme, attribuisce un rilievo significativo a un bene valore oggettivo, quello del benessere/vita animale (lombardi vallauri 2001). in questo senso rappresenta un punto di svolta nel nostro ordinamento giuridico per il suo alto significato bioetico. come si legge nel documento del comitato nazionale per la bioetica, metodologie alternative, comitati etici e obiezione di coscienza alla sperimentazione animale, 18 dicembre 2009 – risultato di un gruppo di lavoro da me coordinato  – il rifiuto motivato di infliggere danni e sofferenze agli animali è entrato in qualche modo a fare parte del tessuto etico che sta alla base dello sviluppo dell’identità personale e della promozione della coscienza sociale (artt. 2 e 3 della costituzione). per questo assume un particolare significato la raccomandazione che venga data piena attuazione alla legge e che si vigili costantemente, anche attraverso denunce di comportamenti omissivi, sull’adempimento de suoi obiettivi, a partire dalla promozione e dalla valorizzazione di metodologie alternative. ciò consentirebbe la promozione di una politica della ricerca rispettosa delle scelte etiche e relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ animalismo e non violenza 71 dei valori espressi da una parte cospicua dell’opinione pubblica e della comunità scientifica – purtroppo fino ad oggi non sufficientemente rappresentata – e che tenga conto del carattere evolutivo dell’etica, e cioè di come i comportamenti e le opzioni possano mutare in relazione alle concezioni che gli uomini hanno di sé e della buona vita. 4. nonviolenza e giustizia interspecifica la prospettiva abolizionista espressa da regan non riguarda, ovviamente, solo il vegetarianesimo o l’antivivisezionismo, ma investe problematiche più ampie relative al benessere animale. dinanzi a mia precisa domanda relativa al caso “mucca pazza”, allora al centro dell’attenzione, e alla possibilità che tale vicenda favorisse una consapevolezza delle condizioni crudeli degli animali negli allevamenti, regan evidenzia nella sua risposta la fondamentale ingiustizia a cui sono sottoposti gli animali allevati. è ormai noto a tutti che gli allevamenti industriali trattano gli animali come prigionieri di guerra. poiché i soli ambienti noti a questi animali sono quelli artificiali in cui vivono, a volte si è detto che essi non conoscono altri modi di vivere e quindi non possono soffrire per il fatto di dover rinunciare a un ambiente alternativo di cui non sanno nulla. supponiamo pure che gli animali allevati intensivamente non sappiano quello che perdono: ciò non dimostra che le condizioni in cui vivono non li danneggiano. al contrario, la non conoscenza di altri modi di vivere fa parte del danno loro arrecato dall’allevamento di tipo industriale. (battaglia e regan 2001) la distinzione tra sofferenza e danno è indubbiamente cruciale e costituisce, a mio avviso, uno dei punti di maggiore novità e interesse dell’approccio reganiano. posso infliggere una sofferenza senza arrecare un danno – l’esempio più evidente è quello legato ad un intervento che è finalizzato alla cura di un malato – e posso infliggere un danno che non provochi sofferenza – ad esempio, la privazione di un bene su cui avrei diritto ma di cui ignoro l’esistenza. la nostra attenzione è generalmente diretta alla sofferenza, anche in relazione alla classica domanda benthamiana, “can they suffer?”, e appare meno propensa a valutare il danno. regan ha il merito di averci ricordato che si tratta in entrambi i casi di una violazione di un diritto fondamentale che è nostra responsabilità salvaguardare dal momento che il benessere è un interesse degli individui umani e non umani, anche quando non esiste in essi una dichiarata disposizione a volerlo. di interessi, a suo avviso, si può parlare in due diverse accezioni: nel senso degli interessi-preferenze – ciò che si desidera o si preferisce; e nel senso degli interessi-benessere – ciò che costituisce relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ luisella battaglia 72 oggettivamente un beneficio. ora, se ci concentriamo su quest’ultima nozione, è possibile andare oltre il piano soggettivo delle preferenze e delle questioni ad esse connesse – del tipo se gli animali siano più o meno capaci di avere preferenze – introducendo un concetto di benessere valido in senso intersoggettivo e fondato su parametri scientifici (biologici e etologici). ma altrettanto rilevante è, nell’analisi di regan, la distinzione tra danni positivi e deprivazioni. i primi intaccano direttamente il benessere generale di un individuo (ad esempio, le sofferenze gravi di ordine fisico o mentale) laddove le seconde gli negano la possibilità di fare ciò che gli darebbe soddisfazione o che sarebbe nel suo interesse fare. nel primo caso, si ha un’azione che causa direttamente sofferenza, nel secondo si ha una perdita di quei benefici od opportunità che ampliano le possibili fonti di soddisfazione della vita. in questo quadro così sapientemente delineato la definizione degli animali allevati come “prigionieri di guerra” mi pare particolarmente calzante. in effetti, la domesticazione può considerarsi per molti aspetti il risultato di una guerra col mondo animale in cui gli animali o sono ridotti a macchine o vengono esibiti come prede di un esercito vittorioso – si pensi ai circhi o agli zoo. ma vi è anche un altro caso a cui regan nell’intervista fa riferimento: gli animali da compagnia, i pets. si potrebbero definire come “rifugiati biologici” perché non appartengono più al mondo naturale e non sono membri del mondo umano. sono bambini perenni destinati a non crescere: per questo dobbiamo riflettere attentamente – prima di “adottarli” – se siamo in grado di assumerci la responsabilità della loro vita. (battaglia e regan 2001) viene evidenziato quello che è forse il massimo problema nel nostro rapporto col mondo non umano: la considerazione dell’alterità animale, la difficoltà per noi di riconoscerla e di rispettarla evitando due attitudini perennemente in agguato: la reificazione e l’antropomorfizzazione. il diverso va difeso non rendendolo simile a noi ma assumendolo precisamente nella sua diversità. ed è proprio questa diversità – che ci offre straordinarie opportunità di incontro, di crescita, di arricchimento – che andrebbe rivendicata. in ciò potrebbe consistere quell’assunzione di responsabilità di cui parla regan: dare a ciascuno la possibilità di diventare “soggetto-di-una-vita”, dotato di capacità e portatore di interessi, di aspettative e di bisogni meritevoli di considerazione e degni, in ogni caso, di rispetto e di tutela. il valore dell’integrità, centrale nella prospettiva deontologica reganiana, ha trovato un significativo riconoscimento da parte della dichiarelations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ animalismo e non violenza 73 razione di barcellona (1998) che, ponendolo in relazione con altri tre importanti principi della bioetica e del biodiritto – l’autonomia, la dignità, la vulnerabilità – l’ha definito come “la condizione dell’espressione di una vita degna, nella sua dimensione mentale e fisica, non soggetta ad un intervento esterno” (dahl rendtorff and kemp 2000). ciò che è degno di nota è che nella dichiarazione si affermi che l’applicazione dei principi enunciati non dovrebbe limitarsi alla sfera dell’umano ma diventare auspicabilmente una base di riflessione per la regolamentazione concernente gli animali e l’ambiente. in effetti, l’integrità può considerarsi una nozione applicabile a tutti i viventi se si identifica, ad esempio, col rispetto della natura di un essere dotato di un proprio telos, di una sua intrinseca finalità. una posizione, questa, condivisa dal fisiologo e filosofo bernard rollin, secondo il quale gli animali hanno una natura determinata geneticamente, espressa fisicamente e psicologicamente, che determina la loro vita nei loro ambienti (rollin 1995, 171). sarebbe tuttavia più corretto dire “dovrebbe determinare”, dal momento che l’intervento umano è teso deliberatamente a modificare a proprio vantaggio il telos di un animale. secondo la definizione del filosofoetologo michael fox, il telos di un animale è costituito dalla sua natura intrinseca che è sia determinata geneticamente, sia modellata da influenze ambientali che dovrebbero consentirgli di svilupparsi, fare esperienze ed esprimere la pienezza del suo essere (fox 1992). ora, per ritornare a regan, potremmo sostenere che è proprio di un “soggetto-di-una-vita” dotato di un valore inerente – quale è l’animale – avere un telos, e cioè essere fornito di una dotazione di capacità naturali proprie della specie di appartenenza e sue personali, che sarebbe suo diritto realizzare e che noi umani dovremmo riconoscere e salvaguardare. si potrebbe parlare, come ci invita a fare martha nussbaum in le nuove frontiere della giustizia, di ragioni morali forti per promuovere la “fioritura” di un animale attraverso un’estensione dell’approccio delle capacità in direzione interspecifica (nussbaum 2007) 3. mi sembra di grande significato l’idea che esista una “fioritura” peculiare per ogni specie e che essa debba considerarsi degna di rispetto per il suo collegarsi alla dignità propria di ogni essere. ciò consentirebbe di andare oltre il welfarismo, verso l’idea di una “buona vita”, il passaggio cioè da un livello minimo negativo – liberazione dalla fame, dalla sete, dallo stress, dal dolore etc. – ad uno positivo ben più esigente, che 3 per una discussione sul complesso rapporto tra bioetica animale e approccio delle capacità e sulle prospettive da esso aperte, rinvio a battaglia 2009, 306-352. relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ luisella battaglia 74 comporti non solo l’assenza di malattie o di dolore, ma la salute, intesa nella pienezza di un, sia pure ideale, equilibrio psico-fisico. la richiesta di giustizia. ecco il tema fondamentale su cui regan insiste più volte nella sua intervista: ho speso gran parte della mia vita a difendere i diritti umani, specie dei soggetti più deboli, come i bambini, e di coloro che non hanno potere. esigere che vengano trattati giustamente gli animali significa chiedere per loro né più né meno di quel che si chiede per qualsiasi essere umano: che sia trattato con giustizia! (battaglia e regan 2001) in questo contesto emerge in tutta nettezza come la questione animale nella sua complessità stia sempre più diventando un problema di etica pubblica. da qui il commento positivo di regan alla notizia che a genova si sia costituito un comitato bioetico per il benessere animale, composto da veterinari, filosofi, giuristi e associazioni animaliste: stiamo muovendoci verso un’applicazione agli animali di quell’apparato etico-giuridico che ormai è acquisito per noi. la società ha di recente concentrato la sua attenzione su gruppi e individui discriminati in una misura senza precedenti nella storia umana. per tale via la crescita di un interesse generalizzato per la giustizia sta conducendo a una nuova visione sociale del trattamento degli animali. (battaglia e regan 2001) mi sembra che qui venga toccato un punto essenziale della bioetica animale, quello per cui occorre riconoscere nell’animale un’alterità portatrice di una specifica valenza, di una propria dignità, di una soggettività attiva nel rapporto con l’uomo. fondamentale risulta la figura del veterinario, chiamato, secondo regan, a un ruolo centrale nella difesa dei diritti degli animali: spetta a lui, soprattutto, introdurre e divulgare una “nuova filosofia” che sostituisca all’antica visione dell’animale-strumento la ricerca di nuove relazioni basate sul rispetto. è sorta in america l’associazione veterinari per i diritti animali che si sta costituendo anche nel vostro paese. ciò dimostra che si è diventati sempre più consapevoli che il veterinario dev’essere garante del rispetto delle leggi che salvaguardano il benessere animale. ma perché questo avvenga occorre arricchire la sua formazione, attraverso studi di zooantropologia, etologia e bioetica. solo in tal modo potrà valutare l’importanza morale dei diritti animali e avviare un dibattito anche a livello pubblico sulle scelte e gli orientamenti che guidano la nostra condotta nei confronti delle altre specie. (battaglia e regan 2001) di grande interesse è il riconoscimento dell’importanza del confronto interdisciplinare tra bioetica e veterinaria. potremmo dire che se la medicina veterinaria fornisce un corredo indispensabile di conoscenze scientirelations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ animalismo e non violenza 75 fiche, di dati, di informazioni fattuali relative alla vita e al benessere degli animali, la bioetica è chiamata a svolgere un ruolo di stimolo critico, di chiarificazione, di analisi, offrendo un quadro categoriale necessario per porre in una prospettiva teorica e sostanziare di precisi riferimenti filosofici la questione animale. in tal modo sarà possibile approntare un codice etico più conforme ai dati scientifici di recente emersi e più rispettoso della sensibilità nel frattempo maturata. affermare un diritto equivale a segnalare un’ingiustizia spesso non contemplata dalla legge: è dunque all’interno di una visione dinamica della giustizia – secondo la lezione di c. perelman – che il diritto si rivela uno strumento irrinunciabile. non è tuttavia sufficiente limitarsi ad assegnare diritti a soggetti che si trovano per la loro stessa condizione in balia di altri. occorre “prendersi cura” dei diritti dei quei soggetti – come gli animali – che non hanno la possibilità di rivendicarli: questa è ancora oggi la sfida etica e politica posta all’animalismo dalla nonviolenza. riferimenti bibliografici allegri, francesco. 2015. gli animali e l’etica. milano udine: mimesis. battaglia, luisella, e tom regan. 2001. “animali come noi. hanno il diritto morale ad essere trattati con rispetto”. il secolo xix, 17 novembre. battaglia, luisella. 2002. alle origini dell’etica ambientale. uomo, natura, animali in voltaire, michelet, thoreau, gandhi. bari: dedalo. battaglia, luisella. 2009. bioetica senza dogmi. soveria mannelli: rubbettino. dahl rendtorff, jacob, and peter kemp. 2000. basic ethical principles in european bioethics and biolaw, i: autonomy, dignity, integrity and vulnerability. report to the european commission of the biomed-ii, project “basic ethical principles in bioethics and biolaw 1995-98”, center for ethics and law (københavn) instituto boja de bioetica (barcelona). erikson, erik h. 1972. la verità di gandhi. sulle origini della nonviolenza militante. milano: feltrinelli. fox, michael. 1992. superpigs and wondercorn. new york: lyons & burford. gandhi, mohandas k. 1991. la forza della verità. scritti etici e politici. torino: sonda. gandhi, mohandas k. 1996. teoria e pratica della nonviolenza. torino: einaudi. lombardi vallauri, luigi. 2001. “l’obiezione di coscienza legale alla sperimentazione animale, ex-vivisezione (legge 12 ottobre 1993 n. 413)”. in per un codice degli animali, a cura di anna m. mannucci e mariachiara tallacchini, 271-282. milano: giuffrè. nussbaum, martha. 2007. le nuove frontiere della giustizia. disabilità, nazionalità, appartenenza di specie. bologna: il mulino. relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ luisella battaglia 76 pontara, giuliano. 1996. “il pensiero etico-politico di gandhi”. introduzione a mohandas k. gandhi, teoria e pratica della nonviolenza, ix-clxi. torino: einaudi. regan, tom. 1981. “the nature and the possibility of environmental ethics”. environmental ethics 3: 19-34. regan, tom. 1985. “il diritto di vivere”. in i diritti degli animali. prospettive bioetiche e giuridiche, a cura di silvana castignone, 189-218. bologna: il mulino. rollin, bernard e. 1995. the frankenstein syndrome: ethical and social issues of the genetic engineering of animals. cambridge: cambridge university press. salt, henry. 1980. animals’ rights considered in relation to social progress. london: centaur press. relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ distributive justice and animal welfare 5 is sn 2 2 8 0 -9 9 5 3 beyond anthropocentrism 1 • january 2013 inside the emotional lives of non-human animals a minding animals international utrecht 2012 pre-conference event special issue (genoa, italy, 12-13 may, 2012) edited by m. andreozzi, r. bennison, a. massaro, s. tonutti capabilities approach and animal bioethics • michele panzera animals and our emotions. how to approach the study of an interspecific community? • sabrina tonutti advocacy and animal rights • kim stallwood the emotional lives of animals: a christian perspective • alma massaro – gianfranco nicora animalia: ontology and ethics in weak antispeciesism • leonardo caffo the contemporary debate on experimentation • susanna penco – rosagemma ciliberti non-human animals and genetic engineering • arianna ferrari the relationship between humans and other animals in european animal welfare legislation • paola sobbrio human’s best friends? • matteo andreozzi elationsre l a t io n s . b e y o n d a n t h r o p o c e n t r is m 1 • 2 0 1 3 r 9.1-2 november 2021 animals: freedom, justice, welfare, moral status, and conflict cases edited by francesco allegri studies and research contributions pigs vs. boars: the ethics of assisting domesticated 9 and wild animals beka jalagania the chincoteague ponies and what it means to be free 27 alexis flower beyond the fairy tale of the shape of water: reimagining 41 the creature viktorija lankauskaitė max scheler e la possibilità di una nuova forma di antispecismo 59 enrico r.a. calogero giannetto distributive justice and animal welfare 75 paola morreale unitarianism or hierarchical approach for moral status? 91 a very subtle difference francesco allegri relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ relations. beyond anthropocentrism 6 comments, debates, reports and interviews animals and justice: the unfinished journey 111 paola fossati author guidelines 123 relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 75 distributive justice and animal welfare paola morreale università degli studi di siena doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2021-0102-morr paola.morreale@student.unisi.it abstract besides the focus on the various approaches developed until now within animal ethics, perhaps it would be interesting to consider also what ethical theories have ruled out any moral concern for the interests of non-human beings. this article aims to rise some questions about the exclusion of (sentient) animals in the philosophical debates on distributive justice. the introduction briefly provides an overview on the current debate on distributive justice. the author focuses on those theories that adopt welfare as the currency of distribution (so-called “welfare ethics”), underlining how there seem to be a contradiction between the theory of value they rely on and their approach, exclusively focused on humans. the essay analyses the main issues related to the inclusion of animals in welfare ethics, i.e. (a) the alleged incommensurability between human and animal welfare, and (b) the “problematic conclusion”. the paper sketches a hypothesis of research to solve the “inter-species wellbeing comparisons” issue by proposing a model based on species-typical potentialities. then, it tries to address the problem of demandingness by suggesting a sympathy-based foundation of welfare ethics. the last section singles out the moral issue of laboratory animals as an appropriate field of application for a welfarist approach. keywords: animal ethics; animal welfare; distributive justice; egalitarianism; laboratory animals; prioritarianism; problematic conclusion; utilitarianism; value theory; welfare ethics. 1. introduction the academic debate on distributive justice – i.e. on how a good society must manage the distribution of goods of a certain kind among its members – is still open. over time, several different approaches have been developed. in general, theories of distributive justice can be distinguished on the basis of two components: (a) the object (or currency) of distribution, i.e. what kind of good must be distributed. moral and political philosophers have proposed a relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2021-0102-morr mailto:paola.morreale@student.unisi.it https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ paola morreale 76 variety of objects of distribution, such as welfare (harsanyi 1955; temkin 1993; holtug 2010; adler 2012), resources (dworkin 1981), opportunities (nagel 1991; arneson 1999), capabilities (sen 1980), liberties (nozick 1974), and so on. (b) the way of distribution, namely, the principle according to which a certain good ought to be distributed. the distribution may follow the principle of maximization of the sum or average (harsanyi 1955; sidgwick 1962; broome 1991; bentham 2000; mill 2002); the principle of equality (sen 1980; temkin 1993); the principle of maximin/ leximin (rawls 1999); the principle of weighed priority (holtug 2010; adler 2012; lumer 2021a, 2021b); or the principle of sufficiency (frankfurt 1987; crisp 2003). the present paper deals with welfare ethics, i.e. those theories whose primary distributive concern is welfare (or utility 1). such a position may be justified by making the distinction between an intrinsic and an extrinsic (or instrumental) good. in fact, welfare ethicists claim that welfare is what possesses an intrinsic value, whereas the other objects of distribution have only an instrumental value, and might be employed only as “secondary” objects of distribution. therefore, distributive justice must be concerned with what ultimately matters, namely, welfare. according to welfare ethicists, a policymaker ought to distribute e.g. a certain amount of resources on the basis of the ability of individuals to transform such resources into welfare. before dealing with the relation between animal welfare and distributive justice, it may be worth to briefly introduce a further clarification. it is often assumed that debates among welfare ethicists revolve around the elaboration of a criterion of moral value that could allow for the moral evaluation of large-scale political choices. adler, for instance, underlines that it is far from his goal to provide “[…] moral norms that could guide 1 among scholars, there is no general agreement on how “welfare” should be defined. although “welfare” must be used as the abbreviation for “social welfare”, which indicates the aggregation of utilities, some (adler 2010; holtug 2010) use the term “welfare” also as index of personal desirability. however, it would be more appropriate to say “wellbeing” (a general term) or “utility” (a more specifically philosophical term, which nonetheless does not specify what version of utility is adopted). other terms often employed in order refer to what has value itself for the individual are “self-interest” and “personal desirability”. philosophical debates about the nature of wellbeing revolve around three plausible theories of utility: (a) utility as satisfaction of preferences (or fulfilment of desires), (b) utility as mental states of happiness, and (c) utility as objective goods, qualities, and so on. for a more complete overview on theories about personal desirability, see e.g. brandt 1979, 246-265; parfit 1986, 22-23, 581-587; temkin 1993, 258-282; adler 2012, 155-236; 2019, 10-11. relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ distributive justice and animal welfare 77 ordinary individuals in addressing ‘small scale’ choices” (adler 2012, 317). although the present paper drafts a hypothesis of research regarding “large-scale” political choices (in particular, those that affect animal welfare), the reader must bear in mind that welfare ethics may be also applied to “small scale” moral choices 2. 2. person-centred approach in welfare ethics i shall now introduce a third element of the theories of distributive justice, which is always given for granted, namely, the “beneficiary” of the distribution. the theories of social contract, for instance, imply that the beneficiaries of distributive justice are the members of the community. being part of the community means to be able to “sign” the social contract or – in rawlsian terms – to take part in the “original position” (rawls 1999, 15 ff.). since only human beings have the deliberative capacity of “subscribing” the social contract, it follows that they are the sole beneficiaries of the distributive policies. therefore, contractarians do not include non-human animals among their moral considerations (ibid., 448-449). the same applies for welfare ethics. as adler (2012, 2019) underlines, a feature of welfare ethics is the adoption of a person-centred approach. indeed, he points out that morality “is exclusively focused on persons’ interests, as opposed to the wellbeing of non-human animals that are not persons [and] intrinsic environmental goods […]” (2012, 4). he defends such a position by asserting that only humans are subjects of “fairness”. “one can harm an animal” he argues “but one cannot act unfairly toward an animal” (ibid., 318), since animals are not capable of normative deliberations. according to him, animal interests have no moral weight, though he admits they have a certain “normative relevance” (ibid.) – although it is not clear of what kind, and in what degree. however, the position of adler and other welfarists would be considered largely outdated by a great part of ethicists nowadays, and labelled as “anthropocentric” or “speciesist”. animal ethics, as it has spread throughout the western culture from the 1970s-80s onwards, offers an alternative to person-centred ethics 3. 2 e.g. parfit (1997) applies a prioritarian criterion for moral value to a two-person moral decision. some (otsuka and voorhoeve 2009) have applied welfare-based principles even to prudential (i.e. intra-personal) decisions. 3 besides animal ethics, an alternative to the person-centred approach focuses on the environment. this strand of applied ethics aims to expand the moral community relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ paola morreale 78 the existing philosophical literature on animals has re-elaborated scopes and methods of ethics through the adoption of a more inclusive approach. in other words, animal ethics include (at least some) animals among the “beneficiaries” of our moral concern. however, the two cornerstones of animal ethics, namely, singer and regan, confine the debate on animals to the sphere of morality. for instance, singer (2002, 2011), the most famous pioneer of “antispeciesism”, has suggested to extend the moral status to all the sentient animals. he has developed a consequentialist ethical theory whose normative part is based on the principle of equal consideration of the interests of all the moral patients – although he makes a distinction between merely sentient from self-aware animals (2002, 18-19; 2011, 66, 76, 85), holding that the former can be killed if replaced with other individuals (2011, 119). on the other hand, regan (1983) has elaborated a deontological ethical theory based on the principle of respect for the inherent value of all the subjects-of-a-life. he holds that all the subjects-of-a-life, which are humans and animals with complex mental capacities and self-consciousness, possess moral rights (1983, 243 ff.). on the heels of regan’s animal rights view, a novel trend of animal studies has developed, whose purpose is to expand our concern for the interests of animals from the sole moral sphere to politics. donaldson and kymlicka’s zoopolis (2011) represents the most famous work of such a trend. the authors propose the conferral of citizenship to some categories of animals, depending on the kind of relationship they have with human beings – domestic, liminal, and wild. however, some supporters of the approach concerned with the inclusion of animals in human polities have claimed the distinctiveness of animal politics from animal ethics (cochrane 2010; ahlhaus and niesen 2015). until now, welfare ethics and animal ethics seem to be two separate fields. however, the increasing animalist and environmentally sensitive public awareness may require policymakers to take into consideration the interests of non-human beings also. animal ethics may offer some interesting suggestion on how to rethink our approach to the ethical questions raised from the adoption of policies that affect non-human welfare. furthermore, there is a fundamental argument against the view according so far as to include non-sentient beings. among environmental ethics, some adopt a bio-centric approach (i.e. they confer moral status to all living beings), while others are characterized by an eco-centric view of the moral community. this means that even non-living beings such as ecosystems and natural landscapes have intrinsic moral value (taylor 1986; jonas 2009; varner 2011). relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ distributive justice and animal welfare 79 to which welfare ethics are incompatible with moral considerations of non-human animals’ interests. indeed, a person-centred approach seems in contradiction with the theory of moral value welfare ethics rely on, since they are founded on the intrinsic value of utility, either in its hedonistic version, preference-based version, or in a perfectionist variant, which defines “utility” in terms of “objective” qualities (independently from the pleasure or preference the subject may have). therefore, if utility is the currency of distribution, it is not clear why it should not be assigned any moral weight to the welfare of non-human beings. in other words, since scientific evidences suggest that at least sentient animals are able to experience pleasure and pain, and to have a certain kind of preferences 4, human beings turn out to represent only a sub-set of the “welfare-subjects” (adler 2019, 28). it is clear that animals and other non-human entities are excluded from certain kind of distributive policies (e.g. the distribution of certain resources such as income), but what about those policies that do have a negative impact on their wellbeing? although they cannot make moral choices, they can undergo certain consequences of someone else’s decisions. therefore, the claim that animal interests should be included in the moral assessment of governmental policies – if such policies affect in some way their wellbeing – seems to be a forceful argument. one further remark. welfare ethics do not presuppose the obligation to confer legal rights to animals. given that their primary concern is the distribution of welfare, they work without assuming that animals are “political subject” with legal rights. this aspect of consequentialist versions of animal ethics has been criticized by advocates of deontological ethics, but especially by supporters of animalist political theory. indeed, ahlhaus and niesen argue that for singer, as for many utilitarian philosophers, moving from ethics to politics may not amount to anything other than a more complex calculation of expectations, but he leaves open how equal consideration as a political principle should be implemented. second, the interest identified both by bentham and by singer – the absence of pain and suffering – is a moral, but not a characteristically political concern. although animal “liberation” does have a restricted non-metaphorical meaning in his book, for instance in the setting free of laboratory animals, it is freedom from pain and want, not political freedom that plays a decisive role. neither does singer account for the distinction between coercive and non-coercive claims on the part of animals. (2015, 12) 4 on animal suffering see e.g. singer 2002; on animals’ beliefs and preferences see regan 1983. relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ paola morreale 80 however, it can be objected to advocates of animal politics that the computation of gains and losses animals undergo because of certain policies might offer a ground for further developments to those who aim to include animals in human polities, e.g. within a rule-consequentialist framework. however, the debate on political versus moral approach applied to animals cannot be further discussed here. because of its importance and complexity, it would require its own treatise. 3. animal welfare and the problematic conclusion there is currently no available research on the moral assessment of policies that have an impact on animal welfare through the “outcomeranking” procedure, which requires to choose between pairs of outcomes the alternative with higher moral desirability. so far, little attention has been paid to the possibility of including non-human animals in the distribution of welfare. the few who have attempted to apply a principle of distributive justice to inter-species wellbeing comparisons (person 1984; arneson 1999; holtug 2007; vallentyne 2007) have concluded with a negative result. including animals in welfare ethics implies two main issues, which can be summarized in two questions, namely, “who counts?” and “how much?”. according to a hedonistic utility theory, mental states of pleasure (or simply “happiness”) are intrinsically good. classical utilitarians from bentham (2000) to sidgwick (1962) argued for the possibility to measure people’s happiness by assigning it numerical values. a large part of contemporary welfare ethicists (harsanyi 1955; broome 1991), endorses a preferentialist approach, where “personal desirability” is intended in terms of satisfied preferences (or fulfilled desires). they presuppose that it is possible to assign a numerical value to an individual’s personal desirability, considering her level of wellbeing as the sum of personal desirabilities of that individual’s life. then, given n individuals’ personal desirabilities, they assume the interpersonal comparability of their desirabilities. the inclusion of animals in welfare ethics would require a measure for animal welfare that could allow for inter-species wellbeing comparisons. the second issues concerns more specific distributional questions. an “inclusive” welfarism ought to avoid the problematic conclusion, i.e. the moral obligation to transfer of resources from humans to non-human animals. the two issues are strictly related. in fact, it has been pointed relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ distributive justice and animal welfare 81 out that the problem of including animals in “distribution-sensitive” principles, such as egalitarianism or prioritarianism, raises from the fact that “since the well-being level of most animals is presumably a modest fraction of an average human’s […] this would mean choosing to produce small benefit for animals at the expense of substantially larger benefits for humans” (adler 2012, 9). in fact, as arneson (1999) underlines, an impartial policymaker would claim that “the pain of a toothache experienced by a rat that is the same intensity as a similar toothache that is experienced by a human should count the same in social policy calculation”(ibid., 105). in other words, the risk is to develop a normative ethical view that turns out to be too demanding. let us analyse the “animal welfare measure” and “the problematic conclusion” issues in order to find out if there can be any hypothesis of research to figure out such problems. so far, the prevalent idea is that animal and human welfare are incommensurable. those who uphold this position argue that different species have incomparable cognitive and emotional capacities (mcmahan 2002, 195). the philosophical roots of such an argument are already present in mill (2002). in fact, when he claims that it is better to be a dissatisfied man rather than a satisfied pig (ibid., 270), he implies that an animal’s life cannot reach the same level of fulfilment of a human life. indeed, the life of a human is (potentially) superior in quality 5. therefore, it is impossible to compare the wellbeing of a human to the wellbeing of an animal on the same scale. for instance, if we endorse a preference-based theory of personal desirability, it would be problematic to measure animal welfare, for animals have not “extended preferences” 6. indeed, since animals cannot express (through a sentence) their preference for an alternative x over an alternative y, the preference-based account is problematic for animal welfare 7. furthermore, it has been pointed out that humans have 5 according to mill, there is a hierarchy of pleasures. in fact, he holds that “some kinds of pleasure are more desirable and more valuable than others” (2002, 268), arguing for the superiority of the “mental” over the “bodily” pleasures. however, due to their “infirmity of character”, some people often choose the “inferior pleasures” over the higher, even if they are aware that the former are less valuable (ibid., 270). 6 as adler defines it, an extended preference is “a ranking of life-histories. to say that individual k has an extended preference for (x; i) over (y; j) means that k prefers the life-history of i in x to the life-history of j in y” (2012, xv). 7 however, although the preference-based account, first elaborated by harsanyi (1955), defines an individual’s preference for x through the verbal expression of her preference for x, the object of a person’s own preference may be also determined by the observation of an individual’s behaviour. relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ paola morreale 82 different preferences in terms of number, intensity and sophistication (holtug 2007, 11). the hedonistic version of utility is perhaps easier to apply to animal welfare. in fact, the position of mill, according to whom “a being of higher faculties […] is capable probably of more acute suffering […] than one of an inferior type” (2002, 269) has turned out to be imprecise. indeed, if for what concerns pleasure it can be asserted that an animal cannot e.g. enjoy the beauty of nature, the reading of a good novel, and so on, the discourse for pain is different. today it is well known that the capacity for experiencing physical pleasure and pain, as well as fear, terror, etc., is not a distinctive feature of humans. in fact, it has been scientifically demonstrated that “the higher mammalian vertebrates experience pain sensations at least as acute as our own”, for “their nervous systems are almost identical to ours, and their reactions to pain remarkably similar” (singer 2002, 12) 8. a third definition of animal welfare can stem from the perfectionist account for personal desirability, also known as “objective-goods list theory”. one version of such a theory has been elaborated by sen (1980, 1995) and it is focused on the development of a set of relevant functionings and capabilities, such as “being adequately nourished, being in good health, avoiding escapable morbidity and premature mortality […] being happy, having self-respect, taking part in the life of the community, and so on” (sen 1995, 39). nussbaum (2007) has proposed a version of the capability approach applied to animals. she claims that animals should be allowed to live a “dignified existence”, which is characterized by […] adequate opportunities for nutrition and physical activity; freedom from pain, squalor, and cruelty; freedom to act in ways that are characteristic of the species (rather than to be confined and, as here, made to perform silly and degrading stunts); freedom from fear and opportunities for rewarding interactions with other creatures of the same species, and of different species; a chance to enjoy the light and air in tranquillity. (ibid., 326) nussbaum’s proposal seems to be the most easily convertible into a measurement for animal welfare. indeed, since pain and pleasure are mental states, they can only be deducted from animal behaviour, whereas “objective goods”, such as freedom or adequate nutrition, can be empirically observed. however, the theoretical basis for a definition of animal welfare may be offered also by a “mixed” approach, which includes both (painful and pleasant) states and “objective-goods”. 8 singer quotes serjeant (1969, 72). relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ distributive justice and animal welfare 83 following such theoretical frameworks, several systems for assessing the animal welfare have been developed (porter 1992; stafleu et al. 1999; appleby and sandøe 2002; veissier et al. 2011). obviously, an animal welfare measure must be differentiated, depending on some factors such as its species, and the human use (e.g. livestock, laboratory animal, companion animals, and so on). for instance, within the project welfare quality® (wq), four principles have been proposed in order to assess farm animal welfare: good feeding; good housing, good health, and appropriate behaviour, then subdivided into 12 welfare criteria (sandøe et al. 2019, 67). for what concerns laboratory animals, porter (1992) has developed a scoring system in order to assess the moral desirability of an experiment, which is based on pain and other factors, such as quality of the environment, deprivation of social contact, quality of post-operative care, and so on. the difficulties related to inter-species wellbeing comparisons might be solved by proposing a model based on “species-typical potentialities” – an account in some way advanced by vallentyne: suppose, for example, that the maximum well-being for mice is 2, and a particular mouse has well-being of 1. her fortune, on this conception is .5 (= 1/2). suppose that maximum well-being for humans is 200 and that a particular human has well-being of 100. his fortune is also .5 (= 100/200). on this conception of fortune, moderate egalitarianism does not require any shift of resources between the two. more generally, although this will require some shifting of resources from some humans to some mice (and from some mice to some humans), it does not require a massive shift of resources from most humans to most mice. (vallentyne 2007, 217) this suggestion implies that the determination of an individual’s level of welfare must be based on what is “expected” for the members of her species, i.e. on what her species can potentially achieve in terms of quality of life. in this way, giving a scale form e.g. 0 = life not worth living to 10 = completely satisfying life, the numerical value of animal welfare would indicate the wellbeing level of its own life within the potentialities of the species it belongs to. however, vallentyne himself asserts the implausibility of this account for inter-species wellbeing comparisons: “consider a severely cognitively impaired human who has the innate potential (e.g. potential at conception) of a normal mouse. why would morality be more concerned in principle with the human than with the mouse?” (ibid.). the problem can be also formulated as follows: how to justify a moral preference (or a certain degree of priority) for a human being than to an equally badly off non-human animal? more generally, this is the problem of demandingness in ethics. a utilitarian principle of relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ paola morreale 84 distribution would fail in avoid demandingness, since it requires a policymaker to be impartial – or, by using singer’s expression, it is founded on the principle of equal consideration of the interests (singer 2002). furthermore, as pointed out before, utilitarianism’s sole moral obligation is to maximize the sum (or the average, in cases of unfixed populations) of n individuals’ personal desirabilities, without making a distinction between the level of wellbeing and its moral value. so, according to utilitarians a well-off individual has the same entitlement to an improvement of her own condition than a so much worse-off individual. therefore, the utilitarian way of distribution must be dismissed in favour of other more “egalitarian” or “distribution-sensitive” principles. as mentioned before, different ways to correct utilitarianism have been developed. one of them is prioritarianism 9. for prioritarians, benefiting an individual matters more the worse-off this individual is. so, they distinguish between the level of wellbeing and its moral value, assigning more moral value to improvements for individuals who are worse off. how can prioritarians justify a special concern for humans over animals? most prioritarians (parfit 1997, 2012; holtug 2010; adler 2012, 2019) have defended prioritarianism on the basis of their moral intuitions. they often point out how a certain case leads to “counterintuitive implications”, or how a certain example has “intuitive force”. furthermore, they use any sort of counterexamples in order to hit the reader’s own moral intuition. however, the intuitionist method cannot properly be defined as a “justification”, for it lacks some formal requirement. the most relevant – and challenging for supporters of intuitionism – is perhaps the motivational impact. such condition requires that a justification ought to provide a motivation to the moral agent. in other words, for a justification having a motivational impact means that a person who is rational and informed (prudent) should accept that normative ethics, and act accordingly to it. the problem of intuitionism in this respect is that it is incapable of connecting the moral intuitions to the action through a motivation, so it is not clear how it might be able to justify a moral preference for human beings over non-human animals. a way to solve such problems might be offered by a form of prioritarianism based on an internalist justification, which provides moral motivations to the moral agent. an internalist justification to prioritarianism, which has been proposed first by lumer (2008, 2021a, 2021b), relies on the humean assumption that the moral agent feels a sentiment 9 for a defence of prioritarianism, see e.g. parfit 1997, 2012; lumer 2008, 2021a, 2021b; holtug 2010; adler 2012, 2019. relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ distributive justice and animal welfare 85 of compassion. empirical hypothesis suggest that compassion is stronger the worse off individuals are. therefore, from the compassion-based function it can be derived a prioritarian moral weighing function, which assigns more moral value to improvements of the condition of the those who are badly off. by justifying the prioritarian axiology through motivational internalism, we can assume that humans feel stronger sympathy towards the members of their own species than towards other species. so, a lower moral value may be assigned to improvements of nonhumans’ conditions. the stronger feeling of compassion towards humans due to “species-membership” may justify a special weight to changes for humans. a further issue involves the temporal unity of distributive concern. in fact, it has been argued that since human life is averagely longer, this makes the comparison even more difficult (holtug 2007, 19-20). in order to address the issue of the temporal unit of distributive concern, different version of prioritarianism (“whole-life” and “time-slices” prioritarianism) deserve to be examined. let us consider “whole-life” prioritarianism first. if, from the perspective of justice, “whole-lives” are what should be considered in welfare distribution, an animal would be almost certainly much worse-off than a human being. for instance, let us assume a particular case in which dog’s life is 15 years long, whereas a human life is 75 years long. if the human’s extra years are considered in the computation of gains and losses as having value, the dog would be very worse-off compared to the human. therefore, the dog would be assigned moral priority over the human. let us now consider “time-slices” prioritarianism, i.e. the view according to which only “segments” of a life are what matters in welfaredistribution. according to “time-slices” prioritarianism, “the lower an individual’s welfare at some point in time t, the higher the value of a further benefit to this individual at t” (holtug 2007, 19). consider the following distributions: x t1 t2 t3 t4 total human 10 10 10 10 40 dog 10 – – – 10 y t1 t2 t3 t4 total human 6.25 6.25 6.25 6.25 25 dog 25 – – – 25 relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ paola morreale 86 slice-time prioritarians would bring about y, since it has the greatest sum of weighed utility. however, as holtug (2007) points out, slice-times prioritarianism implies some complication, such as in case of inter-temporal compensations – i.e. when an individual is much worse-off than another individual in one life-segment but better off in all the others. an alternative to the “whole-life” and “time-slices” approaches may be a combination of the two (mckerlie 2007). however, the topic of the temporal unit is complex and would deserve to be further investigated. 4. fields of application: the case of laboratory animals if the theoretical model turns out to be successful, it has to be applied to specific policies that involve animal welfare. the range of human use of animals is wide: they are exploited for food production, kept as pets, used as touristic attractions, and so on. if to some practises (e.g. the case of captivity for wild animals) an “animal rights” approach would be more appropriate, a consequentialist approach may be useful to assess other moral issues. for instance, a few would be willing to ban animal testing if this could save thousands of human lives (olsson et al. 2011). it is well known that laboratory animals are employed for different purposes. three are the main uses of animals for research: (a) animals for biomedical research, which represent more than 60% of the total (b) quality control, toxicological and safety testing (c) teaching (regan 2005; olsson et al. 2011). this remark is important because laboratory animals undergo different damages in intensity and frequency. welfare ethics assume that the moral desirability of a state of affairs can be determined by calculating the amount and the distribution of welfare among individuals. therefore, whether the use of animals for research can be acceptable depends on the moral desirability of the available alternatives. it would be useful to investigate to what extent it is morally desirable to inflict losses in utility to animals, and whether and in what degree our gains outweigh their losses. three aspects determine the moral preference for a state of affairs x over an alternative y, namely, (a) the distribution itself (how welfare is distributed among well-off and badly-off individuals), (b) the size of the benefit and (c) the number of individuals who are benefited. however, a study of such magnitude would require many years of research, because the results may be observable only in a long-term prosrelations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ distributive justice and animal welfare 87 pect. in fact, given a series of experiments s on the same research topic, it would be necessary to calculate: 1. the expected number of people who would benefit from s; 2. the number of animals employed in s 10; 3. the size of the benefit for n people and the size of the harm for n animals if s is brought about; 4. the size of the losses for n people and the size of the gains for n animals if s is not brought about. at the end, there will be two outcomes x and y, with the former indicating the state of affairs if s is brought about, while the latter indicates the state of affairs if s is not brought about. each outcome is represented by a vector of n utilities, i.e. the personal utility of each individual in that outcome. then, given x and y, a social welfare function ranks outcomes according to the prioritarian rule, which prescribes to choose the alternative with the highest sum of priority-weighed utility. i have provided only a sketched description of how the methodology employed in welfare ethics (the “outcome-ranking”) might be applied to assess cases of welfare-distribution that involve laboratory animals. however, the same procedure might be applied to other cases of policies that affect animal welfare. 5. conclusion i have discussed the main issues related to the inclusion of animal interests in welfare ethics. i have claimed that, in general, at least some species of animals are entitled to be considered in questions about welfare-distribution. i have showed the principal theoretical proposals for a definition of animal welfare, namely, welfare as measure of pain and pleasure, preference-based welfare, and welfare as achievement of some “objective goods” such as capabilities, opportunities, qualities, and so on. then, i have proposed to endorse a “species-typical potentialities” approach to solve the issue of inter-species wellbeing comparisons. i have introduced the problem of demandingness or the “problematic conclusion”, i.e. the moral requirement to transfer of resources from humans to non-human animals due to the adoption of a “distribution 10 a further ethical issue whether the moral assessment should focus on harmful experiments or all kinds of experiments – given that freedom and opportunities for rewarding interactions with other creatures may be included among the welfare indicators (nussbaum 2007, 326). relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ paola morreale 88 sensitive” criterion of welfare-distribution. the paper tries to address the problem of demandingness by suggesting a 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environmental ethics. princeton: princeton university press. temkin, larry s. 1993. inequality. new york oxford: oxford university press. vallentyne, peter. 2007. “of mice and men, equality and animals”. in new essays on the nature and value of equality, edited by nils holtug and kasper lippert-rasmussen, 211-237. oxford: clarendon press. varner, gary. 2011. “biocentric individualism”. in environmental ethics: what really matters, what really works, 2nd ed., edited by david schmidtz and elizabeth willott, 90-101. new york: oxford university press. veissier, i., k.k. jensen, r. botreau, and p. sandøe. 2011. “highlighting ethical decisions underlying the scoring of animal welfare in the welfare quality® scheme”. animal welfare 20: 89-101. relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ relations_9-1-2-2021_00b_sommario.pdf studies and research contributions pigs vs. boards beka jalagania the chincoteague ponies and what it means to be free alexis flower beyond the fairy tale of the shape of water viktorija lankauskaitė max scheler e la possibilità di una nuova forma di antispecismo enrico r.a. calogero giannetto distributive justice and animal welfare paola morreale unitarianism or hierarchical approach for moral status? a very subtle difference francesco allegri comments, debates, reports and interviews animals and justice paola fossati author guidelines respect for intergrity: how christian animal ethics could inform eu legislation on farm animals 47 relations – 5.1 june 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ respect for intergrity how christian animal ethics could inform eu legislation on farm animals alma massaro phd, university of genoa doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2017-001-mass almamassaro@gmail.com abstract the present article is based on the assumption that consideration of non-human animals is an important element of an integral reading of christian scriptures. as several authors have suggested animals, as god’s creation, have intrinsic value and play an active part in the reconciliation process of the whole earth. such a reading of scripture entails an interesting critique of the ways humans today relate to animals. moving from this assumption, the present article will focus on eu legislation regarding farm animals, presenting the challenges following from its being mainly economically driven. the primary aim of this paper is, therefore, to show how christian spirituality could help develop a new comprehensive ethics for living beings, beyond the paradigm of the “human benefit”; it will also suggest that christian “respect for integrity of creation” could inform eu policy in a positive and more humane way regarding other animals. keywords: christian animal ethics, animal ethics, food ethics, theocentrism, anthropocentrism, eu legislation, applied ethics, respect for integrity, christian spirituality, encyclics. 1. introduction christian spirituality, matthew scully argues, is inherently concerned with animal ethics: i know that they [animals] do not have reason comparable with ours. i know that their lives and place and purpose in the world are different from ours. i know that theirs is an often violent world. […] but i also know that whatever their place and purpose among us might be, it is a mysterious one beyond any man’s power to know. whatever measure of happiness their creator intended for them, it is not something to be taken lightly by us, not to be withdrawn from them wantonly or capriciously. (scully 2002, 2) http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/79 http://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2017-001-mass mailto:almamassaro%40gmail.com%20?subject= alma massaro 48 relations – 5.1 june 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ scully’s intriguing analysis resonates with the way the bible variously characterizes animals: for instance, animals are presented as models of wisdom (prv 6:6-8 and 30:24-28; gb 12:7-10; ger 8:7); as deeply connected both with god and with humans (gb 38-39; cf. patton 2000, 408); and, yes, as distinct (gn 1:24-28; 2:18-20) but not in opposition to humans. indeed, in the bible animals are created as helpers and companions for human beings (gn 2:18-19; cf. kemmerer 2007, 42); and, as it has been suggested, humans and animals “are thought of as constituting a single community under god” (hume 1980, 7). the very fact that animal reason and animal lives are markedly different from human lives is not a matter of better or worse. from a christian perspective humans are not to decrease their compassion because of these differences but, rather, to take seriously the conditions of animals’ earthly lives in the light of their heterogeneity. although a number of theological points concerning christian animal ethics could be discussed at this point, one thing is explicit: in the bible not caring for the earthly well-being of animals is regarded as a sinful attitude. as the book of proverbs states, “the righteous care for the needs of their animals, but the kindest acts of the wicked are cruel” (prv 12:10). at the base of this approach, as we will see later, there is that human dominion over the whole creation is meant as a thoughtful stewardship and not as a right to exploit (thomas 1984, 154; de benedetti 1999, 20-1). historically, christian ethics has never forgotten this point and “while the church itself has not been immune from anthropocentrism, there have also been traditions going back to the earliest days which are more in tune with the biblical respect for god’s creatures” (jones 2010, 18; cf. waddell 1995). from the desert fathers (e.g., st. macarius and st. pachome) to the celtic saints (e.g., st. ciaran and st. kevin); from the saints of the middle ages (e.g., st. francis and st. anthony) to those of the modern and the contemporary eras (e.g., st. martin de porres and st. john bosco), christians have always been influenced by exemplars who, in recovering their relationship with god, were able to restore a harmonious relationship with humans and animals too. not surprisingly, in contemporary times pope francis, following a distinguished tradition of papal interest in the treatment of animals (jones 2010, 26-9) inside the social agenda, has written in his encyclical laudato si’ “when our hearts are authentically open to universal communion, this sense of fraternity excludes nothing and no one” (francis 2015, par. 92). in spite of these longstanding traditions, contemporary animal ethics has tended to consider christianity to be at the root of the anthropocentrism that has led the western world to exploit other animals, and to think http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/79 respect for intergrity 49 relations – 5.1 june 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ of them as mere resources. similar to the way the famous american historian lynn white jr. accused christianity of being at the root of the contemporary ecological crisis (white 1967), so too animal ethicists have often considered the mistreatment of animals to be a consequence of the western monotheistic tradition (thomas 1984, 152). therefore, not surprisingly, attention to animal well-being has been regarded as the domain of nonreligious thought. it is only in recent years that a different approach has led a number of authors promoted an integral reading of the holy scriptures, with a new attention to the role played by animals in them (thomas 1984, 152-65; ryder 2000, 27-38; preece 2002, 62-90; deane-drummond and clough 2009). 2. the animals in the holy scriptures as vilma baricalla has suggested (1998, 1-23), the first chapters of the book of genesis contain two accounts of creation where god is presented both as an architect (gn 1:1; 2:4) and as a potter (gn 2:4-24); in the latter account animals are created as companions and helpers of humans (gn. 2:18-19), while in the first humans are endowed with dominion over the rest of creation (gn 1:28). it is essential to note that there is no contradiction between the connotation of animals as companions and the role of dominion endowed to humans. as recent interpretations of the scriptures have proposed, the verb dominate does not suggest human privilege or the right to exploit, but rather the duty to act as a vice-regent of god towards creation (thomas 1984, 154; de benedetti 1999, 16-8; kemmerer 2007, 6-8). furthermore, the opening chapter of genesis also contains the first alimentary precept according to which both humans and animals are to follow a plant-based diet (gn 1:29-30): as paolo de benedetti has made clear, the harmony of the garden is expressed not just in the perfect cooperation between living beings, but also in their diet (de benedetti 1999, 13). however, even if human dominion is to be understood as stewardship, human mastery over nature and animals is complete, and for better and worse, it works. the whole creation is said to be involved in the punishment of humans’ first sin being subjected to death and suffering (gn 3:124), and, in a subsequent moment, because of the persistent guiltiness of human beings, to the first environmental disaster: the flood (gn 6:5-9:17). at this point, the relationship between humans and other creatures is described as subject to a drastic deterioration, epitomised in the second biblical alimentary precept: humans are allowed to eat other animals, and animals, in turn, will fear them (gn 9:1-4). http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/79 alma massaro 50 relations – 5.1 june 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ as scully has pointed out, these genesiac narrations present a view of the creatures as individual beings also known by him […], sharing with man not only in the earth’s bounties but also – a still more intimate bond – in its punishment and suffering. for the first time animals are not only significant in themselves, belonging to him and not to us; they are players, however lowly, in the story of our own moral development. (scully 2002, 92) that is to say that the involvement of animals in the chastisement of humans reaffirms their close fellowship with humans and justifies their active participation in the eschatological history of the world (webb 1998, 20). in fact, although the old testament deals within the horizon of a collapsed world, often describing a history of violence and abuse perpetuated against both humans and animals, it also contains the eschatological and messianic promise of a return to the original peace and fullness of the garden. the whole creation is said to be involved in the salvation process: a new paradise awaits both humans and animals, where “the wolf shall dwell with the lamb and the leopard shall lie down with the kid and the calf and the lion and the fatling together. and a little child shall lead them” (is 11:6). in this time a new alliance will be established between god and all living beings (os 2:20 and ez 34:25; cf. nicora and massaro 2013). the first chapter of this history is told in the new testament. the restoration begins with the advent of jesus and will be completed with his second coming (ap 1-6). his advent prepares the conditions to restore definitively the primeval union and harmony of the whole creation (rm  8:19-22). in jesus, the new adam who spent forty days in the desert with the wild animals (mc 1:13; cf. bauckham 2009, 1-10), humans can return to an intimate relationship with god and, thus, with animals. here, jesus is the lamb of god, whose blood washes the sins of humanity away (gv 1:29); this is the ultimate and universal sacrifice which brings reconciliation between humans and god, and, therefore, with the whole creation – no more blood sacrifices are required (eb 9:11-14; cf. webb 1998, 137). waiting for the second advent of jesus, when harmony will be fully restored, humans can choose to experience the reign of god, that is, a reign of love (gv 13:34) already on this earth. one could interpret the lives of the so-called saints throughout christian history through this lens: in the experiences of countless people, “the christian spiritual life promotes peace with every creature, and creates a spirit of universal benevolence […] christian spirituality entails a vision of limitless love, and a life that reflects this understanding” (kemmer 2016; cf. bormolini 2014). being close to god through meditation, the “saints of all ages have modelled kindness, and are famous for their love of all creatures […] christian saints remind http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/79 respect for intergrity 51 relations – 5.1 june 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the faithful that to be in relationship with god is to have amicable relations with animals”, even with wild animals (hume 1980, 26-7). for the present argument, the point is not whether or not these stories are true. in fact, as ryder suggests, whether or not these stories are historical fact, it is true that they were of church lore for many centuries. if such compassion for beasts was attributed to the saints, it is clear that many ordinary men and women would have striven to follow their example. regardless as to what theologians were saying at the time, kindness to nonhumans must have been widely regarded as a saintly virtue. (ryder 2000, 32) but how far is this perspective from the current farming practices adopted inside the european union? 3. farm animals in the eu legislation the contemporary practice of farming in the eu is based on a striking different conceptualization of animals. a human benefit paradigm, primarily based on the idea of economic profit, has led to an objectification of animals – whose bodies are commodities to be transformed into money. farming is not intended as a relationship between humans – farmers – and animals – farm animals – but is a mere fact of business. in this context, the european union has developed its legislation for the protection of animals in between the real perception of animals as objects and the will to restore them to their original value as subjects. this gap between vision and reality emerges by the legal recognition of animals as “sentient beings” (art. 13 of the treaty on the functioning of the european union), while every year nearly 360 million pigs, sheep, goats and cattle as well as several billion poultry are killed in eu slaughterhouses 1. the same gap emerges from a comparison of the definitions of animal protection and welfare. even if animal protection is declared “not in itself one of objective of the community” (council decision 78/923/ eec), animal welfare is described as a “community value” (protocol no. 33 on the protection and welfare of animals annexed to the treaty establishing the european community) that needs to be preserved and promoted. in 2006 the commission grouped together the various aspects of eu policy on animal welfare. in particular, concerning farm animals it has declared: 1 http://ec.europa.eu/food/animals/welfare/practice/slaughter/index_en.htm. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/79 http://ec.europa.eu/food/animals/welfare/practice/slaughter/index_en.htm alma massaro 52 relations – 5.1 june 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ a horizontal directive covers the different aspects of the welfare of farmed animals [council directive 98/58/ec]. specific aspects are covered by eu legislation on transport and slaughter [respectively council regulation (ec) 1/2005 and council regulation (ec) 1099/2009]. specific eu requirements apply to the keeping of calves, pigs, laying hens and broilers [respectively: council directive 2008/119/ec; council directive 2008/120/ec; council directive 1999/74/ec; council directive 2007/43/ec]. 2 even if this legislation represents an important step through the protection of animals, it is still highly problematic. its main issues can be summarized in three points: 1. – firstly, it does not promote animal welfare for itself but rather it reconciles it with economic realities. as stated in the preamble of the directive 98/58/ec – which is a sum of all the practices involving farm animals in eu: “there is […] a need to establish common minimum standards for the protection of animals kept for farming purposes in order to ensure rational development of production and to facilitate the oganisation of the market in animals”. and again “a comparative examination of animal welfare provisions applicable in the community and in certain non-member countries together with an appraisal therof should be undertaken with a view to determining the nature of future community initiatives aimed at eliminating distortions of competition”. if the market is the main goal, then it is not surprizing that numerous morally questionable practices are still allowed in eu farms under the name of animal welfare (tail-docking, debeaking, dehornig, teeth pulling, castration without anaesthesia in farm animals, just to mention a few). 2. – it is from this focus on profit that the second problem follows, vagueness. this legislation is made vague through the use of an unspecific language (i.e., by using expressions as “necessary” and “appropriate” which are not further defined and can be subjective). looking at directive 98/58/ec: • article no. 3 states: “member states shall make provision to ensure that the owners or keepers take all reasonable steps to ensure the 2 communication from the commision to the european parliament, the council and the european economic and social committee on the european union strategy for the protection and welfare of animals 2012-2015. this same document highlights that “no specific eu legislation exists covering other species of farm animals (such as dairy cows, beef cattle or rabbits) despite several problems which have been highlighted by scientists and by the european food safety authority”, urging therefore the commission to work in this direction (p. 5). http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/79 respect for intergrity 53 relations – 5.1 june 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ welfare of animals under their care and to ensure that those animals are not cause any unnecessary pain, suffering or injury”. • annex, par. 11: “animals kept in buildings must not be kept either in permanent darkness or without an appropriate period of rest from artificial lightning. where the natural light available is insufficient to meet the physiological and ethological need of the animals, appropriate artificial lighting must be provided”. • annex, par. 12: “animals not kept in buildings shall where necessary and possible be given protection from adverse weather conditions, predators and risks to their health”. this lack of precision has been highlighted in the european union strategy for the protection and welfare of animals 2012-2015 annex, which states: “the general directive on the protection of farm animals […] contains provisions that are too general to have practical effects”. on this base the commission has pointed out “a need to simplify and develop clear principles for animal welfare”. because only through clear principles is possible to get rid of vagueness. 3. – the third problem, the incongruity, is directly connected with the first two. several points listed in the annex of directive 98/58/ec are extremely controversial: • point no. 7, about freedom of movement: “the freedom of movement of an animal, having regard to its species and in accordance with established experience and scientific knowledge, must not be restricted in such a way as to cause it unnecessary suffering or injury. where an animal is continuously or regularly tethered or confined, it must be given the space appropriate to its physiological and ethological needs in accordance with established experience and scientific knowledge”. apparently the first sentence is stating the need to guarantee to animals the freedom of movement but, thanks the use of the adjective unnecessary a wide range of farm practices that severely restrict the freedom of movement of animals keep being legal: tie stalls, cow electric trainers, and, in general, overcrowded intensive farms. • point no. 14, regarding feed, water and other substances: “animal must be fed a wholesome diet which is appropriate to their age and species and which is fed to them in sufficient quantity to maintain them in good health and satisfy their nutritional needs. no animal shall be provided with food or liquid in a manner, nor shall such food or liquid contain any substance, which may cause unnecessary suffering or injury”. if this point has to be taken seriously to its conhttp://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/79 alma massaro 54 relations – 5.1 june 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ sequences, then the production of both foie gras and veal meat would be definitely forbidden within the whole community area. • point no. 21 finally states: “no animal shall be kept for farming purposes unless it can reasonably be expected, on the basis of its genotype or phenotype that it can be kept without detrimental effect on its health or welfare”. again, the real practice does not fit with the requirements of the law. overcrowded farms, animals permanently confined, the selection of animal with physical characteristic selected only to answer the market demands are all practices that have detrimental effects on the health and welfare of animals. as ciwf as stated: “in intensive pig and poultry production, animals are kept confined in overcrowded conditions, usually with no outdoor access, and they are bred and managed for maximum yield (to grow faster or to produce more meat, milk, eggs, or offspring). these conditions compromise their health and their immune responses and encourage infectious disease to develop and spread easily. without the aid of drugs for disease prevention, it would not be possible to keep the animals productive in the intensive conditions in which they are often kept and managed” 3. in conclusion, the human benefit paradigm, based on the idea of economic profit, is the main obstacle to the application of the aforementioned art. 13. the gap between vision of animals as sentient being and reality of the directives on protection of animals will not be filled until this paradigm will be challenged. 4. conclusions there exists a striking difference between the christian consideration of animals as part of the reconciliation process of the whole earth and the one that informs the eu legislation about animal husbandry practices, based on an instrumental view of animals. in order to fill this gap, the community could inherit the broad sense of respect for the sacredness of the whole creation entrenched to christian animal ethics. in this direction it is possible to read “religious respect for the integrity of creation” mentioned in the encyclical laudato si’ (francis 2015, par.  130). respect for integrity of creation – and, therefore, of animals – 3 https://www.ciwf.org.uk/media/3758863/antibiotics-in-animal-farming-publichealth-and-animal-welfare.pdf. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/79 https://www.ciwf.org.uk/media/3758863/antibiotics-in-animal-farming-public-health-and-animal-welfare.pdf https://www.ciwf.org.uk/media/3758863/antibiotics-in-animal-farming-public-health-and-animal-welfare.pdf respect for intergrity 55 relations – 5.1 june 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ could become one of the objectives of the community. society, science, and economy could be guided by a careful attention to the wholeness of creation, that is, its own value estimated in relation to the value of each of its own part, rather than by a relativism, that deprives both animals and humans of their intrinsic value. recovering christian sense of sacredness for the integrity of life could help in developing a new comprehensive ethics for living beings, beyond the paradigm of the human benefit and the economics driven-society. christian animal ethics could inform scientific policy in a positive and more humane way. a focus on the integrity of creation calls eu community to promote new respectful way of farming: it would be more compassionate, more merciful and, therefore, more humane. references baricalla, vilma. 1998. “l’attesa del creato. riflessioni su alcuni capitoli del genesi”. in le creature dimenticate. per un’analisi dei rapporti tra cristianesimo e questione animale, edited by luisella battaglia, 1-23. cesena: macro. bauckham, richard. 2009. jesus and the renewal of nature: reading isaiah and the gospels ecologically. moscow: st tikhon’s orthodox seminary. bormolini, guidalberto. 2014. i santi e gli animali. firenze: lef. deane-drummond, celia celia, and david clough, eds. 2009. creaturely theology: on god, humans and other animals. london: scm press. de benedetti, paolo. 1999. e l’asina disse… l’uomo e gli animali secondo la sapienza di israele. biella: qiqajon. francis. 2015. laudato si’ (care for our common home) [encyclical letter]. accessed december 13, 2016. http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/ documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html. hume, charles w. 1980. the status of animals in the christian religion. hertsfordshire: universities federation for animal welfare. jones, deborah. 2010. concern for animals. london: cts. kemmer, lisa. 2007. “jewish ethics and non-human animals”. journal for critical animal studies 5 (2): 29-47. 2016. animals: tradition philosophy religion. christian ethics and nonhuman animals. accessed december 13, 2016. http://www.all-creatures.org/ articles/an-tpr-christian.html. nicora, gianfranco, and alma massaro. 2013. “human relationship with animals: reading the book of tobit in the light of christian tradition”. relations. beyond anthropocentrism 1 (2): 37-48. patton, kimberley c. 2000. “he who sits in the heavens laughs. recovering animal theology in the abrahamic traditions”. harvard theological review 93 (4): 401-34. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/79 http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html http://www.all-creatures.org/articles/an-tpr-christian.html http://www.all-creatures.org/articles/an-tpr-christian.html alma massaro 56 relations – 5.1 june 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ preece, rod. 2002. awe for the tiger, love for the lamb: a chronicle of sensibility to animals. new york: routledge. ryder, richard d. 2000. animal revolution: changing attitudes towards speciesism. oxford: berg. scully, matthew. 2002. dominion, the power of man, the suffering of animals, and the call to mercy. new york: st. martin’s griffin. thomas, keith. 1984. man and the natural world: chainging attitudes in englans 1500-1800. london: penguin books. waddell, helen. 2010. beasts and saints. bristol: pook press. webb, stephen. 1998. on god and dogs: a christian theology of compassion for animals. new york: oxford university press. white, lynn, jr. 1967. “the historical roots of our ecologic crisis”. science n.s. 155: 1203-7. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/79 verso i diritti degli animali. riflessioni e dibattiti nella storia del pensiero 5 is sn 2 2 8 0 -9 9 5 3 beyond anthropocentrism 1 • january 2013 inside the emotional lives of non-human animals a minding animals international utrecht 2012 pre-conference event special issue (genoa, italy, 12-13 may, 2012) edited by m. andreozzi, r. bennison, a. massaro, s. tonutti capabilities approach and animal bioethics • michele panzera animals and our emotions. how to approach the study of an interspecific community? • sabrina tonutti advocacy and animal rights • kim stallwood the emotional lives of animals: a christian perspective • alma massaro – gianfranco nicora animalia: ontology and ethics in weak antispeciesism • leonardo caffo the contemporary debate on experimentation • susanna penco – rosagemma ciliberti non-human animals and genetic engineering • arianna ferrari the relationship between humans and other animals in european animal welfare legislation • paola sobbrio human’s best friends? • matteo andreozzi elationsre l a t io n s . b e y o n d a n t h r o p o c e n t r is m 1 • 2 0 1 3 r 7.1-2 november 2019 the respect extended to animals: studies in honor and in memory of tom regan conference event special issue (florence, italy, february 20, 2018) edited by francesco allegri editorial exploring non-anthropocentric paradigms 7 francesco allegri introduction the importance of tom regan for animal ethics 13 francesco allegri studies and research contributions verso i diritti degli animali. riflessioni e dibattiti nella storia 19 del pensiero vilma baricalla respect, inherent value, subjects-of-a-life: some reflections 41 on the key concepts of tom regan’s animal ethics francesco allegri animalismo e non violenza. l’incidenza della lezione gandhiana 61 sul pensiero di tom regan luisella battaglia almost like waging war: tom regan and the conditions 77 for using violence for the sake of animals federico zuolo relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ relations. beyond anthropocentrism 6 comments, debates, reports and interviews ricordo di tom regan. intervista con luigi lombardi vallauri 95 francesco allegri author guidelines 99 relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 19 verso i diritti degli animali riflessioni e dibattiti nella storia del pensiero vilma baricalla istituto italiano di bioetica doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2019-0102-bari vilmabaricalla@virgilio.it abstract in our cultural tradition, a conception has prevailed that has supported the inferiority of animals, justifying their exploitation and their exclusion from the moral sphere. this vision, however, at various moments in history has been the subject of criticism and disputes. there are alternative voices and strands that departed from the traditional anthropocentric paradigm, rehabilitating animals and elaborating different models of interpretation of the world. this paper presents an overview of authors who – from the ancient world to the modern age up to almost the present day – made their voice heard in defence of animals, to whom they recognized value and dignity. the picture that emerges is varied and articulated and represents the rich background of contemporary theories of respect for animals and animal rights. keywords: animal machines; animal mind; anthropocentric vision; ethics; individuality; non-anthropocentric viewpoints; querelle des bêtes; sentience; soul; suffering. l’idea dei diritti degli animali e il riconoscimento di un loro valore intrinseco ha un retroscena storico-filosofico che – seppur non di rado misconosciuto – è tuttavia di grande spessore, in quanto ricco di una pluralità di prospettive. in quest’ottica si avverte l’esigenza di rinnovare la tradizionale lettura storico-filosofica, per considerare non solo quelle voci che hanno esaltato il cammino trionfale dell’uomo verso il “progresso” e la sottomissione del mondo naturale, ma anche visioni diverse che a quel percorso, in vari momenti della storia, hanno rappresentato una nutrita opposizione. la polemica inizia già nel mondo antico, di cui saranno brevemente evidenziate alcune voci, per concentrare poi l’attenzione intorno a quel dibattito che – svoltosi nell’età moderna – assumerà il nome di querelle des bêtes. relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2019-0102-bari mailto:vilmabaricalla@virgilio.it https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ vilma baricalla 20 1. la polemica nel mondo antico 1.1. critiche alla visione antropocentrica e riconoscimenti delle qualità animali nel mondo antico bersaglio centrale della polemica a favore degli animali è la filosofia stoica di crisippo, che sviluppa una visione radicalmente antropocentrica. tale concezione emerge con chiarezza da un brano di cicerone, che di tale filosofia fu seguace e divulgatore. “tutto ciò che esiste in questo mondo e di cui l’uomo si serve è stato appositamente creato e preparato per lui”, scrive nel de natura deorum (2, 154). e, dopo aver considerato i movimenti degli astri – che stimolano l’attività razionale umana – e tutto ciò che esiste, passa in rassegna gli animali, che esistono “per servire alle necessità dell’uomo”. infatti: che funzione hanno le pecore se non quella di permettere agli uomini di rivestirsi dei loro velli lavorati ed intessuti? basti considerare che questi animali senza una sollecita cura da parte dell’uomo non avrebbero potuto né alimentarsi, né sostenersi, né produrre alcunché di utile. e non parliamo dei cani […] che significa tutto ciò se non che il cane è stato creato per soddisfare le necessità dell’uomo? e che dire dei buoi? la stessa conformazione del dorso risulta inadatta a sostenere pesi, ma il collo appare nato proprio per reggere il giogo e gli omeri ampi e vigorosi per trascinare l’aratro […]. sarebbe troppo lungo passare in rassegna le benemerenze degli asini e dei muli certamente creati per servire l’uomo. quanto al maiale non serve ad altro che a fornir carne da mangiare, tanto che crisippo afferma che gli fu data persino un’anima come di sale per impedirne la putrefazione. proprio per queste straordinarie doti alimentari la natura ha fatto di questo animale il più prolifico di tutti. (ditadi 1994, i, 322-323) 1 e, dopo aver menzionato altri animali, conclude infine: si scorrano pure con gli occhi tutte le terre e tutti i mari: non si scorgeranno altro che immense estensioni di campi ricchi di messi, monti ricoperti di densissime selve, pascoli per gli allevamenti, rotte marine per le navi rapidissime da percorrersi. e non solo sulla superficie della terra, ma anche nelle sue profondità tenebrose vi sono innumerevoli sostanze utili all’uomo che sono state create perché egli possa farne uso e che lui solo è riuscito a scoprire. (ibid., 323) 1 per le considerazioni sul maiale merita di essere citato il commento ironico di leo pardi, per cui “se crisippo avesse avuto nel cervello un poco di sale in vece dell’anima, non avrebbe immaginato uno sproposito simile” (leopardi 1961, 56). relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ verso i diritti degli animali 21 secondo crisippo, l’uomo è l’unico essere dotato di ragione; l’animale, invece, è privo di capacità razionale e di libertà, incapace di scegliere moralmente tra il bene e il male, in quanto necessitato e dominato dall’istinto, da cui non si può discostare. anche quelle azioni che apparentemente sembrano frutto di intelligenza sono in realtà opera della natura, che agisce provvidenzialmente per la conservazione della specie. in tale visione, l’uomo è al vertice di quello che, per crisippo, è l’ordinamento gerarchico del cosmo; gli animali esistono per i suoi bisogni e per il suo benessere. contro questa concezione e contro l’idea che gli animali esistono per il benessere dell’uomo si levarono molte voci significative. autori come celso, plutarco, porfirio si opposero alla visione antropocentrica e alla svalutazione del mondo animale. contro tale visione obietta celso: “il mondo visibile non è stato concesso all’uomo, ma ogni cosa nasce e muore per la conservazione del tutto” (celso 1987, 101). e ancora: dunque l’universo non è stato fatto per l’uomo, e d’altronde nemmeno per il leone o per l’aquila o per il delfino, ma perché questo mondo, in quanto opera di dio, risultasse compiuto e perfetto in tutte le sue parti; a questo fine tutto è stato commisurato. (ibid., 106) gli uomini dunque non sono così importanti, poiché lo sguardo divino è volto alla totalità: “questo complesso è il solo di cui dio si preoccupa […]; e nemmeno accade che […] dio lo richiami a sé o si adiri per via degli uomini più di quanto non faccia per via delle scimmie o dei topi” (ibidem). negata da celso è anche l’unicità dell’uomo. le stesse qualità, che l’uomo considera sue esclusive, sono presenti anche negli animali. l’analisi prende in considerazione vari aspetti della vita, estendendosi a quella sociale e politica. in quest’ambito, se l’uomo si considera superiore per aver costruito le città e le strutture politiche, altrettanto fanno le formiche e le api. le api hanno una regina, con il suo seguito e la sua servitù, fanno guerre e riportano vittorie e sterminano le nemiche sconfitte e hanno città e sobborghi e suddivisione del lavoro e castighi per le pigre e le malvagie. (ibid., 103-104) inoltre – prosegue celso – le formiche venerano anche i loro morti; e quando si incontrano, comunicano tra loro, dimostrando di possedere ragioni e nozioni generali. tra le qualità presenti negli animali, celso giunge a menzionare anche la religiosità e la conoscenza di dio, da lui attribuite agli uccelli e agli elefanti (ibid., 105-106). altri autori si pronunciarono contro la svalutazione degli animali, riconoscendo ad essi qualità considerate, di solito, esclusivamente umane. relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ vilma baricalla 22 traendo spunto dalle opere zoologiche di aristotele, già teofrasto aveva sostenuto che non v’è differenza sostanziale tra l’uomo e gli animali né da un punto di vista fisico né psichico, poiché la struttura di tutti gli esseri viventi è la stessa: noi poniamo che tutti gli uomini e anche tutti gli animali appartengono alla stessa stirpe originaria, giacché i principi dei loro corpi sono per natura gli stessi: mi riferisco […] alla pelle, alla carne e a quegli umori che gli esseri viventi hanno in comune per natura; ma più ancora perché in essi l’anima non è diversa per natura, intendo dire quanto ai desideri, e agli impulsi, e anche alle facoltà razionali; ma soprattutto quanto alla capacità di sentire. (santese 1999, 76) anche plutarco – che, tra gli autori del mondo antico, è forse il più impegnato nella difesa degli animali – sostiene le loro qualità, osservando nel de sollertia animalium che essi sono in grado di percepire, di provare passioni e sono dotati di intelligenza. il pensiero, infatti, scaturisce dalla natura e la differenza tra animali e uomo è solo di grado e non strutturale e sostanziale. in questi autori il riconoscimento di una comunanza tra uomini e animali si traduce in considerazioni etiche e diviene motivo di condanna della loro uccisione. 1.2. parentela con gli animali ed etica vegetariana già teofrasto, riconoscendo l’esistenza di un legame originario tra uomini e animali, aveva sostenuto il dovere di rispetto degli animali e condannato i sacrifici cruenti, definiti “illegittimi” e sgraditi agli dei. la condanna di tali sacrifici si riscontra anche in autori di età più tarda ed è un filone presente in tutto il mondo antico. contro i sacrifici di sangue si pronuncia anche lucrezio, che li considera espressione di una falsa idea di religiosità e insiste, con accenti particolarmente toccanti, sull’orrore di tali pratiche, sul dolore e sull’angoscia che esse provocano. istituendo un parallelismo tra il sacrificio umano di ifigenia e quello di un vitello, lucrezio non si pone dal punto di vista di chi compie il rito, ma di chi lo subisce: la fanciulla, strappata alla vita nel cuore degli anni, e la madre del vitello, che cerca disperatamente il proprio figlio ucciso: spesso, infatti, un vitello immolato dinanzi agli splendidi templi / degli dei, si accascia presso le are fumanti d’incenso, / spirando dal petto caldi fiotti di sangue. / ma desolata la madre, errando per le verdi pasture, / cerca in terra le orme segnate dai piedi bisulci, / con lo sguardo scrutando relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ verso i diritti degli animali 23 dovunque, se possa in un luogo / scorgere il figlio perduto, ed empie di tristi muggiti / immobile il bosco frondoso, e spesso torna a cercare / nella stalla, angosciata dal rimpianto del suo caro giovenco. (lucrezio caro 1994, 183-185) anche plutarco, che dedica più opere alla difesa degli animali, sostiene doveri di rispetto nei loro confronti. esiste infatti – egli sostiene – un vincolo di parentela, una communio iuris, che obbliga l’uomo ad agire moralmente verso gli animali. in base a tali argomenti, plutarco condanna con forza l’uccisione degli animali e il consumo delle loro carni, soffermandosi a descrivere la crudeltà e le sevizie a cui, per tale pratica, essi sono sottoposti. nel de esu carnium esalta la purezza degli animali e la feroce brutalità dell’uomo, che solo per golosità e per i piaceri del palato provoca morte e tanta sofferenza: “chiamate selvaggi i serpenti, le pantere, i leoni, ma voi stessi uccidete con ferocia non cedendo a essi in niente quanto a crudeltà: per essi infatti l’animale ucciso è nutrimento, per voi solo un manicaretto!” (plutarco 1999, 137). e ancora: nulla ci confonde, non l’aspetto fiorente delle sembianze, non la forza persuasiva della voce, non l’accortezza dell’anima, non la purezza della condotta né la ricchezza di giudizio degli sventurati; ma per il piacere di un piccolo pezzo di carne strappiamo a un’anima la luce del sole, il tempo della vita, cose per cui nacque e fu generata. (ibid., 139-141) tra gli argomenti contro l’alimentazione carnea è addotta anche una maggiore virtù verso la stessa umanità, frutto di una docilità d’animo rafforzata dalla pratica vegetariana: “non vi sembra meravigliosa la consuetudine alla filantropia? chi mai, infatti, potrebbe commettere ingiustizia nei confronti di un essere umano se costantemente ha professato dolcezza e umanità verso esseri estranei e di diversa specie?” (ibid., 149). anche porfirio, alcuni secoli dopo, si pronuncerà a favore di un’etica vegetariana. egli addita il vegetarismo di pitagora quale esempio di saggezza e di virtù; e nel de abstinentia fornisce una interessante panoramica di popoli e religioni che praticarono il vegetarianesimo, illustrandone i costumi (ditadi 1994, i, 379-400). tali voci purtroppo furono dimenticate. nel percorso culturale dei secoli successivi, la visione gerarchica e antropocentrica fece sentire maggiormente il proprio peso e la propria influenza. e questa linea fu seguita anche dalla maggioranza della teologia cristiana. relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ vilma baricalla 24 2. l’età moderna e il dibattito sull’anima degli animali nell’età moderna contro la tradizionale visione antropocentrica e la svalutazione del mondo animale vi fu una ricca e nutrita opposizione. sull’argomento si sviluppò un dibattito che prese il nome di querelle des bêtes o “dibattito sull’anima degli animali”. le voci in difesa degli animali erano indirizzate principalmente contro due dottrine: la scolastica aristotelico-tomista, che considera gli animali privi di ragione, e – a partire dal seicento – la filosofia cartesiana, che nega loro anche la sensibilità, cioè la capacità di sentire. una breve presentazione di tali visioni vale ad introdurre le ragioni degli oppositori. 2.1. la visione gerarchica della creazione e gli animali-automi bisogna credere che le piante sono fatte per gli animali e gli animali per l’uomo, quelli domestici perché ne usi e se ne nutra, quelli selvatici, se non tutti, almeno la maggior parte, perché se ne nutra e se ne serva per gli altri bisogni, ne tragga vesti e altri arnesi. (aristotele 1966, 26) così aveva scritto aristotele nella politica 2. riprendendo tale visione, tommaso d’aquino fornisce una descrizione gerarchica e antropocentrica della creazione. in questa prospettiva l’uomo è fine dell’intero creato e vertice della struttura gerarchica del cosmo. egli è l’unico essere dotato di facoltà razionale, dovuta alla presenza di un’anima immateriale e immortale; ciò a differenza degli animali, a cui viene riconosciuta solo l’anima sensitiva, che è materiale e muore quindi con il corpo. pur riconoscendo negli animali sensibilità e sentimenti, tommaso li considera finalizzati al servizio e all’utilità dell’uomo. e nella summa contra gentiles precisa: “così viene eliminato l’errore di chi ammette essere peccato per l’uomo l’uccidere gli animali” (ditadi 1994, i, 425). infatti, leggiamo altresì nella summa theologiae: nessuno pecca per il fatto che si serve di un essere per lo scopo per cui è stato creato. ora, nella gerarchia degli esseri quelli meno perfetti son fatti per quelli più perfetti […] così le piante son fatte ordinariamente per gli animali; e gli animali son fatti per l’uomo. (ibid., 427) 2 duplice fu l’influenza di aristotele nella storia del pensiero: mentre negli scritti sulla natura è osservatore attento dei caratteri animali e sostiene la continuità tra le specie – anche tra animali e uomo – nelle opere pedagogiche e dedicate alle attività umane prevalgono affermazioni che hanno rafforzato visioni gerarchiche e antropocentriche. l’argomento è evidenziato da lovejoy 1981, 63. relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ verso i diritti degli animali 25 nella dottrina di tommaso l’inesistenza di doveri morali verso gli animali non si fonda solo sulla visione gerarchica. per tommaso infatti gli animali, dominati dall’istinto e privi di libera scelta, sono incapaci di conoscenza del bene e del male. pertanto, essi sono estranei alla sfera morale e moralmente irrilevante, di conseguenza, è il comportamento umano verso di loro. la svalutazione degli animali e la loro esclusione dall’orizzonte morale diviene ancor più radicale con la filosofia di cartesio. in questa dualistica suddivisione della realtà, l’uomo è l’unico soggetto in un mondo di macchine. netta è la separazione tra la res cogitans – il pensiero e l’anima immateriale dell’uomo – e il mondo naturale, qualificato come res extensa e caratterizzato da movimenti puramente meccanici (cartesio 1967, v, 160-171). in questo quadro, gli animali sono automi, incapaci non solo di pensare, ma privi anche di sentimenti e sensibilità, della capacità cioè di provar piacere e dolore. tale teoria incontrò critici, ma anche seguaci. ad alcuni teologi, ad esempio, essa apparve come una soluzione ai gravi problemi di teodicea legati alla capacità animale di soffrire. inoltre, la filosofia cartesiana rappresentava una spiegazione razionale della natura, che appagava la mentalità scientifica del tempo e con la tesi degli animali-automi rendeva possibile l’indagine diretta sul funzionamento dei viventi, senza residui di pietà ed eventuali scrupoli di carattere morale. contro la visione antropocentrica e contro la radicale svalutazione degli animali varia e articolata è la panoramica degli oppositori. 2.2. rorario, i libertini e la relatività dei punti di vista nei primi decenni del cinquecento, probabilmente nel 1539, un ecclesiastico, gerolamo rorario, scrisse un’opera dal titolo significativo gli animali spesso usano la ragione meglio degli uomini. nell’opera rorario adduce vari esempi per sostenere l’intelligenza degli animali, le cui azioni non sono spiegabili unicamente con l’istinto. api, ragni, formiche sono additati come modelli di saggezza. le formiche, ad esempio, mostrano comportamenti sociali e anche senso di giustizia; “insomma questa sorta di pulviscolo animato in niente è inferiore all’uomo” (rorario 1982, 61). abilità, intelligenza, comportamenti sociali e senso di giustizia sono dunque qualità degli animali, che per rorario possiedono anche il timore di dio. rimasto inedito, il manoscritto venne trovato dal libertino gabriel naudé che nel 1648 lo diede alle stampe, omettendo dal titolo l’avverbio relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ vilma baricalla 26 “spesso” per accentuare il tono di rottura. così, in pieno clima di dibattito, gli animali usano la ragione meglio degli uomini divenne, grazie ai libertini, un simbolo, una sorta di vessillo di quanti si schieravano contro la negazione della ragione animale. sicuramente, nel quadro complessivo della disputa, la corrente dei libertini è una delle più interessanti. essi riprendono e sviluppano il pensiero di montaigne, la cui critica alla visione antropocentrica è particolarmente acuta e approfondita: di tutte le vanità la più vana è l’uomo […]. che egli mi faccia capire con la forza del suo ragionamento su quali basi ha fondato quei grandi privilegi che pensa di avere sulle altre creature. chi gli ha fatto credere che quel mirabile movimento della volta celeste, la luce eterna di quelle fiaccole ruotanti così arditamente sul suo capo, i movimenti spaventosi di quel mare infinito siano stati determinati e perdurino per tanti secoli per la sua utilità e per il suo servizio? è possibile immaginare qualcosa di tanto ridicolo quanto il fatto che questa miserabile e meschina creatura […] si dica padrona e signora dell’universo? (montaigne 1970, 580) così è scritto in uno dei più significativi capitoli degli essais. per montaigne, l’uomo è incapace di comprendere l’anima degli animali: vediamo […] nelle nostre, più grossolane, [azioni] le facoltà che vi impieghiamo, e che la nostra anima vi si applica con tutte le sue forze; perché non pensiamo lo stesso di loro? perché attribuiamo a non so quale inclinazione naturale e bassa le opere che superano tutto quello che noi possiamo per natura e per arte? (ibid., 588-589) in realtà – osserva montaigne – il criterio con cui vanno giudicati gli animali è quello dell’analogia. essi sono intelligenti, la loro capacità di apprendere dimostra che “hanno internamente un raziocinio”; possiedono essi pure un linguaggio e comunicano tra di loro e con noi: che altro è, se non parlare, la facoltà che vediamo in essi di lamentarsi, di rallegrarsi, di chiamarsi a vicenda in aiuto, di invitarsi all’amore, come fanno con l’uso della loro voce? come potrebbero non parlare tra loro? parlano pure a noi e noi a loro. in quante maniere parliamo ai nostri cani? ed essi ci rispondono. (ibid., 593-594) questa nutrita difesa degli animali s’inquadra, nel pensiero di montaigne, nella più generale critica del pregiudizio. l’uomo considera universalmente vero e giusto solo ciò che è una sua abitudine mentale. è l’epoca delle conquiste delle americhe e del colonialismo e montaigne istituisce un parallelismo tra il pregiudizio verso gli animali e la discriminazione e subordinazione dei popoli “selvaggi”: relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ verso i diritti degli animali 27 un tempo ho visto fra noi degli uomini condotti per mare da lontani paesi; poiché non comprendevamo affatto la loro lingua e, quanto al resto, il loro modo di fare e il loro contegno e i loro vestiti, erano quanto mai diversi dai nostri, chi di noi non li riteneva selvaggi e bruti? chi non attribuiva a stupidità e bestialità il fatto di vederli muti, ignoranti della lingua francese, ignoranti dei nostri baciamano e dei nostri inchini serpentini, del nostro portamento e del nostro contegno che, senza fallo, la natura umana dovrebbe prendere a modello? tutto quello che ci sembra strano lo condanniamo, e così tutto quello che non comprendiamo: come accade nel giudizio che diamo sulle bestie. (ibid., 606) razzismo e antropocentrismo sono pertanto riconducibili ad un’identica matrice: quella visione gerarchica che, rapportando tutto ciò che esiste ad un unico modello, istituisce disparità e differenze di valore, rendendo incapaci di comprendere la diversità. contro l’unilateralità di tale visione, montaigne sostiene la parità del diverso: ogni popolo ha la sua cultura; e ogni animale ha il suo sguardo sul mondo, il suo linguaggio, il suo modo di pensare. queste considerazioni introducono ad un tema che diverrà centrale nella corrente dei libertini: la relatività dei punti di vista. non esiste un’unica verità: pluralità dei modelli, relatività dei punti di vista, parità della diversità – sia biologica che culturale – saranno temi basilari di questo movimento. libertino è anche charron che, amico di montaigne, ne riprende le argomentazioni a favore degli animali. e, dopo averne sostenuto le qualità, estende le sue considerazioni alla sfera dell’etica: “bisogna ricordare che tra le bestie e noi vi è qualche rapporto, qualche relazione ed obbligazione reciproca, non foss’altro perché esse appartengono allo stesso nostro padrone e alla stessa nostra famiglia. è quindi indegno esser crudeli verso di esse” (charron 1982, 90). ulteriori argomenti di critica dell’antropocentrismo sono forniti dalla rivoluzione astronomica. la perdita di centralità della terra induce al ridimensionamento dell’uomo e stimola a riflessioni sulla sua piccolezza. nelle fantasie fantascientifiche di cyrano de bergerac la nuova visione astronomica diviene uno spunto per sottolineare la relatività dei punti di vista e l’ingiusto rapporto dell’uomo con gli animali. nei suoi fantastici viaggi sulla luna e sul sole, una lezione all’essere umano giunge, infatti, dagli abitanti di altri mondi. così, se dagli “uomini-bestie” della luna cyrano è giudicato inferiore, privo di ragione e trattato come gli uomini fanno con gli animali (cyrano de bergerac 1982), gli uccelli abitanti del sole – fuggiti dalla terra per sottrarsi alla crudeltà degli uomini – istruiscono un processo contro la specie umana, per i crirelations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ vilma baricalla 28 mini di cui si macchia nel suo comportamento verso gli altri esseri viventi (cyrano de bergerac 1928). pluralità dei punti di vista ma anche senso di giustizia emergono da queste opere. l’uomo deve superare l’unilateralità del suo modo di pensare, non istituire differenze di valore ma aprirsi al “diverso”, all’altro vivente, che non è inferiore ma va compreso e rispettato in un’ottica di parità. 2.3. le problematiche del dibattito e la posizione di bayle una illuminata sintesi delle problematiche del dibattito è fornita da pierre bayle alla voce “rorario” del suo dictionnaire historique et critique: “i  fatti che riguardano l’abilità degli animali mettono in imbarazzo sia i seguaci di descartes che quelli di aristotele” (bayle 1976, i, 145). infatti – osserva bayle – se la tesi degli animali-automi manca di verosimiglianza, gli scolastici – pur riconoscendo alcune facoltà agli animali – pretendono poi di fissarne i confini, per sostenere ad ogni costo una differenza di natura tra la loro anima e quella dell’uomo. in realtà, anima dell’animale e anima dell’uomo sono della stessa natura, c’è solo una differenza di grado. riferendosi all’anima umana, così osserva: c’è un’infinità di pensieri, di sensazioni, di passioni di cui quest’anima è perfettamente capace […]; se fosse unita a organi diversi dai nostri, penserebbe diversamente da come pensa ora, e le sue modificazioni potrebbero essere molto più nobili di quelle che proviamo. (ibid., 170) l’anima dell’animale ha sostanzialmente le stesse potenzialità dell’anima umana: si ammette che essa sente i corpi, che li distingue, che ne desidera alcuni e ne rifugge altri. ce n’è abbastanza: essa è dunque una sostanza che pensa, capace cioè del pensiero in generale. può dunque accogliere qualsiasi tipo di pensieri, può ragionare, conoscere ciò che è onesto, gli universali, gli assiomi della metafisica, le regole della morale, eccetera. (ibidem) l’anima dell’animale, in sostanza, è come quella di un bambino: aristotele e cicerone, all’età di un anno, non avevano pensieri più sublimi di quelli di un cane, e se la loro infanzia si fosse prolungata per trenta o quaranta anni, i pensieri della loro anima sarebbero rimasti allo stadio di sensazioni e di passioncelle rivolte al gioco o per le ghiottonerie. è dunque un fatto puramente accidentale che essi abbiano superato gli animali. (ibid., 171) relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ verso i diritti degli animali 29 nel suo scritto bayle mette in luce anche i problemi morali e religiosi legati al riconoscimento della capacità animale di soffrire. se il dolore umano, infatti, è spiegabile con il peccato originale, gli animali sono innocenti e soffrono per una colpa non loro. la dottrina della sensibilità animale suscita, pertanto, inquietanti interrogativi, che potrebbero far vacillare la fede religiosa nella bontà e nella giustizia di dio: l’anima delle bestie non ha peccato, e tuttavia essa è soggetta al dolore e alla miseria, sottoposta a tutti i desideri sregolati della creatura che ha peccato. in che modo trattiamo le bestie? le facciamo sbranare fra di loro per procurarci piacere, le scanniamo per nutrirci; frughiamo nelle loro viscere, quando sono ancora in vita, per soddisfare la nostra curiosità, e facciamo tutto questo grazie al dominio che dio ci ha dato su di esse. che confusione! la creatura innocente è sottoposta a tutti i capricci della creatura colpevole! non c’è casuista il quale sostenga che si commette peccato a far combattere dei tori contro degli alani eccetera, o a uccidere, cacciare e pescare, ricorrendo a mille astuzie e violenze […], oppure a divertirsi ad ammazzare le mosche, come faceva domiziano. non è forse crudele e ingiusto sottoporre un’anima innocente a tanti tormenti? (ibid., 155) ovviamente, con la teoria cartesiana questi interrogativi vengono a cadere. tuttavia, per bayle, né la teoria cartesiana né la dottrina degli scolastici rendono conto dell’anima e delle capacità animali. egli addita pertanto un altro sistema filosofico, quello di leibniz, che giudica possa aprire interessanti prospettive. 2.4. l’individualismo biocentrico di leibniz nel quadro della disputa, leibniz merita un’attenzione particolare, poiché elaborò una profonda visione cosmologica, non solo in grado di opporsi efficacemente al cartesianesimo, ma anche ricca di spunti e suscettibile di interessanti sviluppi 3. se cartesio ha interpretato la natura come inerte e popolata da automi, la concezione di leibniz è dinamica ed energetica. egli si avvale anche delle ricerche di microbiologia a lui contemporanee e considera la natura come brulicante di vita: “ogni parte di materia può essere concepita come un giardino pieno di piante o come uno stagno pieno di pesci. ma ciascun ramo delle piante, ciascun membro dell’animale, ciascuna goccia dei suoi umori è ancora un giardino o uno stagno” (leibniz 1967d, 3 gli argomenti, appena accennati in questo paragrafo, sono esposti in baricalla 1995. relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ vilma baricalla 30 294). così scrive nella monadologia. si tratta di una visione panvitalista e, al tempo stesso, panpsichista. ogni vivente infatti è dotato di percezione, rappresenta il mondo e lo rispecchia con una sua singolare e originale prospettiva. leibniz paragona questa pluralità di punti di vista alle varie rappresentazioni di una stessa città, che appare in modi diversi secondo la diversa posizione in cui si trova colui che la guarda. queste molteplici percezioni del mondo sono, per lo più, rappresentazioni confuse, “piccole percezioni” che rimangono allo stato inconscio. l’errore dei cartesiani – sottolinea leibniz – è stato proprio quello di aver confuso percezione e coscienza: “per l’assenza di questa distinzione, i cartesiani sono caduti nell’errore […]. ed è stato ciò che ha fatto credere anche ai medesimi cartesiani […] che le bestie non hanno anime, e tanto meno principi di vita” (leibniz 1967c, 276). questa visione, che si potrebbe definire “biocentrica”, valorizza al massimo ogni individualità vivente. ogni essere infatti – e non solo l’uomo – è uno “specchio dell’uni verso”, ogni singolo individuo è unico e irripetibile. in questa estrema varietà di prospettive consiste la bellezza e la ricchezza del mondo e la stessa gloria di dio è moltiplicata dalle diverse rappresentazioni della sua opera. nella visione cosmologica di leibniz, la valorizzazione dell’individualità si accompagna ad un’ottica che si potrebbe definire pre-ecologica. tutte le cose infatti respirano insieme. sýmpnoia pànta: quest’espressione  – che il medico greco ippocrate usava per definire l’organismo vivente – è adoperata da leibniz per descrivere l’universo. come in un organismo, tutte le cose sono correlate. la natura è un sistema di relazioni e la modifica di una parte – anche se minima – si ripercuote inevitabilmente su tutte le altre e sul sistema generale. infatti: “tutte [le cose] cospirano tra loro e simpatizzano e nulla avviene in una creatura di cui non giunga un qualche effetto corrispondente a tutte le altre” (leibniz 1967a, 250). questa visione si estende anche al piano teologico. come evidenzia leibniz nella teodicea, anche dio non ha un’ottica antropocentrica. egli è attento ad ogni creatura e bada, soprattutto, all’equilibrio generale. pensare diversamente sarebbe “una sopravvivenza dell’antica massima, molto screditata, che tutto è fatto unicamente per l’uomo” (leibniz 1967b, 529). partecipando al dibattito, leibniz riconosce agli animali qualità come sentimenti, memoria, capacità di associazioni empiriche e sentimenti morali. tuttavia, è soprattutto importante l’impostazione generale del suo sistema, che rende questo pensatore unico non solo nell’ambito della querelle, ma dello stesso panorama storico-filosofico. relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ verso i diritti degli animali 31 2.5. gli sviluppi del meccanicismo e la parità tra l’uomo e gli animali nel quadro della considerazione degli animali, fondamentale è il contributo di quegli studiosi – filosofi e spesso scienziati – che abbracciano il meccanicismo senza tuttavia aderire al dualismo metafisico di cartesio, di cui rifiutano l’isolamento del pensiero dalla sostanza estesa. secondo questi autori, ogni manifestazione mentale non va riportata ad un principio spirituale, come sostenuto da cartesio, ma dipende dal “meccanismo” cerebrale ed è riconducibile pertanto alla corporeità. attraverso l’interpretazione meccanicistica dell’uomo, questa corrente approda così a una visione sostanzialmente paritaria di uomini e animali, soluzione che cartesio aveva inteso invece scongiurare 4. con questa impostazione guillaume lamy – che unisce la formazione filosofica all’esperienza di medico – introduce i suoi discours anatomiques criticando la visione antropocentrica e la tesi del posto privilegiato dell’uomo nella creazione. il confronto anatomico rivela affinità di struttura tra l’uomo e gli animali e analogia del meccanismo corporeo: nella struttura del corpo umano non vi è niente di più sorprendente di quanto non vi sia in quello di una bestia […]; d’altronde la differenza che si riscontra tra la disposizione e il numero delle parti dell’uomo e la disposizione e il numero delle parti dell’animale, non sempre è a vantaggio dell’uomo. (lamy 1982, 151) è l’epoca in cui ci si apre all’ipotesi della “materia pensante”, che riconosce nella corporeità l’origine del pensiero. lo scrive esplicitamente, a metà del settecento, offroy de la mettrie nell’opera dal titolo significativo l’homme machine. nella sua opera la mettrie tenta di sfatare i numerosi pregiudizi con cui si vuol tracciare una linea di demarcazione a tutti i costi. anche nell’uomo, infatti, ogni manifestazione è riconducibile a una concatenazione di moti meccanici, di stimoli e reazioni. con questa parificazione di uomini e animali la mettrie riconosce a questi ultimi qualità, che la tradizione aveva considerato esclusivamente umane: tra queste, anche la coscienza morale. essa è opera della natura. riconoscere ciò è necessario – precisa la mettrie – se si vuole ammettere l’esistenza di una moralità nello stesso essere umano, che al regno animale appartiene integralmente. infatti: 4 cartesio si preoccupò degli sviluppi materialistici della sua dottrina, tanto che sconfessò un suo discepolo, l’olandese henry de roy, che considerava il pensiero una modalità della sostanza estesa. relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ vilma baricalla 32 la natura ha usato una sola e medesima pasta, di cui ha variato soltanto i lieviti. se dunque l’animale non si pente di aver violato il sentimento interno di cui parlo, o meglio, se di tale sentimento è assolutamente privo, è necessario che l’uomo sia nella stessa situazione e allora addio alla legge naturale e a tutti quei trattati che si sono pubblicati intorno ad essa! […] ma, viceversa, se l’uomo non può fare a meno di distinguere sempre […] coloro che hanno onestà, umanità, virtù, da quelli che non sono né umani, né virtuosi, né onesti; se è convinto che è facile distinguere ciò che è vizio e ciò che è virtù […] ne segue che gli animali, fatti della stessa materia, alla quale forse non è mancato altro che un grado di fermentazione perché fossero in tutto uguali agli uomini, devono partecipare alle stesse prerogative dell’animalità, e quindi non c’è anima o sostanza sensitiva senza rimorsi. (la mettrie 1990, 44) 2.6. critiche degli animali automi la tesi del distacco radicale tra l’uomo e gli animali, la riduzione di questi ultimi ad automi e la loro svalutazione furono oggetto di aspre contestazioni. significativa è protesta di voltaire alla voce “bestie” del suo dizionario filosofico: che vergogna, che miseria aver detto che le bestie sono macchine prive di conoscenza e sentimento, che fanno sempre tutto ciò che fanno nella stessa maniera, non imparano niente, non si perfezionano ecc. come? quell’uccello che fa il suo nido a semicerchio quando lo attacca ad un muro, che lo fa a quarto di cerchio se lo mette in un angolo, e a cerchio intero intorno a un ramo, quell’uccello compie i suoi atti sempre allo stesso modo? […] e il canarino al quale insegni un’arietta, la ripete forse immediatamente? […] non ti sei accorto che sbaglia e si corregge? (voltaire 1989, 63) anche se non parlano, osserva voltaire, gli animali possiedono sentimenti, memoria, idee e sono in grado di manifestare tutto ciò. la sensibilità, il sentimento e le numerose qualità degli animali sono dimostrati anche dalla scienza, che evidenzia in essi gli stessi organi dell’uomo. ma questo riferimento contiene anche un tono di condanna morale per la sofferenza inflitta agli animali dall’indagine sui loro corpi vivi: dei barbari uomini afferrano quel cane, tanto prodigiosamente superiore all’uomo nell’amicizia; lo inchiodano su di una tavola, lo sezionano vivo per mostrarti le vene mesaraiche. tu scopri in lui gli stessi organi di sentimento che sono in te. e rispondimi macchinista: la natura ha forse disposto tutti gli organi del sentimento in quell’animale affinché esso non senta? ha esso dei nervi per essere impassibile? non supporre questa impertinente contraddizione nella natura. (ibid., 64) relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ verso i diritti degli animali 33 tra le fila dei più agguerriti anticartesiani v’è anche un personaggio curioso, il fiorentino monsignor guarnacci che – sotto lo pseudonimo di “zelalgo arassiano, pastore arcade” – pubblicò un volume di poesie che contiene un canto dedicato agli animali: sente il bruto […] / […] / sente, e pensa ogni belva, e veggio il cane  / […] ragione in lui scorgo, e pensiero, / e ragiona ogni bruto in sua bisogna; / fugge il periglio, esamina il sentiero, / e al fin proposto industremente agogna; / lascia il cibo fallace, e cerca il vero, / e par, che in qualche caso abbia vergogna. (guarnacci 2001, lii) la difesa degli animali è accompagnata da un’accesa polemica contro cartesio, definito “filosofo meschin” e considerato responsabile non solo della riduzione degli animali ad automi ma anche della dottrina che riduce ogni loro azione all’istinto: filosofo meschin; sogni, o sei desto, / che delle cose a noi confondi il nome? / dunque istinto è anco in me, se lieto, o mesto / di mia sorte infedel stringo la chioma; / dunque istinto è l’onor, la fe, la speme, / […] / dunque istinto è ogni cosa! è un sol desio / che ogni vivente incoraggisce, e muove; / è un’alma, che nell’uomo ha posta iddio: / e ancor nei bruti, e non l’ha posta altrove. (ibid., liii) 2.7. soggettività degli animali e critiche all’antropocentrismo nel pensiero di leopardi al dibattito sull’anima degli animali partecipa anche giacomo leopardi 5. dopo aver affrontato i temi della querelle già nella giovanile dissertazione sopra l’anima delle bestie, negli anni successivi torna più volte sull’argomento per sostenere l’intelligenza, la razionalità e le numerose qualità animali: “anche gli animali hanno un uso sufficientissimo di ragione, hanno il principio toù logismoù, il principio di conoscenza innato in tutti gli esseri viventi, non già nel solo uomo”. così scrive in un pensiero dello zibaldone del 2 dicembre 1820 (leopardi 1983, i, 240-241). anche gli animali, sottolinea leopardi, comunicano e sono dotati di linguaggio. come l’uomo, essi si associano per far fronte ai bisogni comuni e si prestano aiuto reciproco, come mostra l’esempio di numerose specie tra cui le formiche, le api, le gru ed i cavalli. le qualità degli animali e le analogie con l’uomo, riconosciute in vari pensieri dello zibaldone, sono sostenute con ancora maggior forza 5 sulla visione della natura e del mondo vivente in leopardi, si segnala polizzi 2008. relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ vilma baricalla 34 nei paralipomeni della batracomiomachia. chiunque non voglia chiudere gli occhi o essere in malafede – afferma leopardi – deve convenire che la differenza tra gli animali e l’uomo è solo di grado per cui, se si nega all’uno una qualità, non la si può riconoscere nell’altro. anche gli animali sono dotati di sentimenti e di pensieri. essi hanno una loro soggettività; svalutarla equivale a svalutare lo stesso essere umano. infatti: s’estimar materia frale dalla retta ragion mi si consente l’io del topo, del can, d’altro mortale, che senta e pensi manifestamente, perché non possa il nostro esser cotale non veggo: e se non pensa in ver né sente il topo o il can, di dubitar concesso m’è del sentire e del pensar mio stesso. (leopardi 1956, 425) sostenitore delle qualità animali, leopardi è altresì un acuto critico della visione antropocentrica. come altri autori prima di lui egli adduce, tra gli argomenti contro l’antropocentrismo, la rivoluzione astronomica che  – sottraendo alla terra la sua posizione di centralità – ha detronizzato l’uomo dal posto più importante dell’universo (leopardi 1961, 200-212). oltre alla critica fondata sui riferimenti astronomici, particolarmente interessante è una confutazione dell’antropocentrismo che si potrebbe definire, in un certo senso, bio-epistemologica. essa emerge dal dialogo di un folletto e di uno gnomo nelle operette morali. nell’opera s’immagina che la specie umana sia scomparsa; eppure – osservano i due personaggi – il mondo va avanti ugualmente: “la terra non sente che le manchi nulla, e i fiumi non sono stanchi di correre, e il mare, ancorché non abbia più da servire alla navigazione e al traffico, non si vede che si rasciughi” (leopardi 1961, 57). concordi nel criticare l’uomo, il folletto e lo gnomo si sono trovati tuttavia in disaccordo quando si è trattato di stabilire per quale fine è stato creato il mondo, essendo ciascuno dei due convinto che tutto esista in funzione della propria specie. la disputa non ha soluzione per cui, osserva infine il folletto: “lasciamo stare questa contesa, che io tengo per fermo che anche le lucertole e i moscherini si credano che tutto il mondo sia fatto a posta per uso della loro specie” (ibid., 55). l’antropocentrismo – se ne deduce – null’altro è che un errore epistemologico, frutto di una falsa, ma specifica, prospettiva che porta ogni vivente a credere il mondo creato per lui. su tal punto però l’ostinazione è inevitabile per cui “ciascuno si rimanga col suo parere, chè niuno glielo caverebbe di capo” (ibidem). relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ verso i diritti degli animali 35 3. verso i diritti degli animali nel 1791 john oswald scrive the cry of nature, in cui lancia un “appello alla compassione e alla giustizia” nei confronti degli “animali perseguitati” (oswald 1994). riflessioni di carattere etico, attente ai temi della sofferenza animale e della giustizia compaiono verso la fine del settecento. nell’introduction to the principles of morals and legislation  jeremy bentham, facendo riferimento a una diversità corporea che non deve essere motivo di schiavitù, prospetta l’estensione della considerazione morale agli animali aggiungendo, ai temi classici della razionalità e del linguaggio, la più importante e fondamentale capacità animale di soffrire. sulla scia delle dottrine del diritto naturale e delle dichiarazioni dei diritti, fa la sua comparsa l’idea di un riconoscimento di “diritti” agli animali: può arrivare il giorno in cui il resto degli animali del creato potrà acquisire quei diritti di cui non si sarebbe mai potuto privarli, se non per mano della tirannia. i francesi hanno già scoperto che il nero della pelle non è una ragione per cui un essere umano debba essere abbandonato senza rimedio al capriccio di un carnefice. può arrivare il giorno in cui si riconoscerà che il numero delle gambe, la villosità della pelle, o la terminazione dell’os sacrum sono ragioni altrettanto insufficienti per abbandonare un essere senziente allo stesso destino? quale attributo dovrebbe tracciare l’insuperabile confine? la facoltà della ragione, o, forse, quella del discorso? ma un cavallo o un cane adulto è un animale incomparabilmente più razionale, e più socievole, di un neonato di un giorno o di una settimana, o anche di un mese. ma anche ponendo che le cose stiano diversamente: a che servirebbe? la domanda da porre non è: “possono ragionare?”, né “possono parlare?”, ma: “possono soffrire?”. (bentham 2013, 353-354) la questione etica – che durante il dibattito era rimasta, in un certo senso, sottintesa o appena accennata – diviene ora esplicitamente dichiarata. nell’ottocento, se diminuisce in genere la partecipazione alla querelle des bêtes, si registrano tuttavia alcune voci di rilievo, sensibili alla causa animale e particolarmente attente al problema etico. interessanti pagine ne i fondamenti della morale scrive, ad esempio, schopenhauer, per cui la sensibilità verso gli animali è garanzia di un comportamento morale verso gli stessi esseri umani: la sconfinata pietà per tutti gli esseri viventi è la più salda garanzia del buon comportamento morale. chi ne è compreso non offenderà certo nessuno, non farà del male a nessuno, avrà invece indulgenza con tutti, perdonerà, aiuterà, fin dove può, e tutte le sue azioni recheranno l’impronta della giustizia e della filantropia. (ditadi 1994, ii, 785) relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ vilma baricalla 36 e ancora: “la pietà verso gli animali è talmente legata alla bontà del carattere da consentire di affermare fiduciosamente che l’uomo crudele con gli animali non può essere buono. questa compassione proviene dalla medesima fonte donde viene la pietà verso gli uomini” (ibid., 788). in alcuni autori le istanze di giustizia verso gli animali e le considerazioni di carattere etico si sposano con ideali umanitari, appaiono come una naturale conseguenza degli ideali di giustizia sociale, nell’ottica di una progressiva estensione dei diritti ad una sfera sempre più ampia di soggetti. impegnato sul piano sociale è, ad esempio, henry stephens salt, che lotta per migliorare la condizione degli esseri umani 6 e si prodiga, al tempo stesso, per i diritti degli animali giungendo a promuovere un’etica vegetariana, come attesta la pubblicazione di plea for vegetarianism e animals’ rights: considered in relation to social progress (salt 2015). tra i sostenitori della causa animale, non mancano coloro che fanno appello alla teoria dell’evoluzionismo biologico, per sottolineare che un vincolo di parentela lega l’uomo alle altre specie con la conseguenza di una loro doverosa considerazione morale. in questo senso si pronuncerà, nei primi anni del novecento, un autore particolarmente sensibile alla causa animale, thomas hardy, che in una lettera del 1910 individua nell’estensione dell’etica la principale conseguenza della teoria darwiniana: la conseguenza più vasta della stabilita origine comune di tutte le specie riguarda l’etica […]. forse lo stesso darwin non se n’era reso conto completamente, anche se vi aveva alluso. fin tanto che l’uomo era considerato una creazione separata da tutte le altre creazioni si credeva che verso le specie “inferiori” andasse bene una moralità di secondo o di terz’ordine; oggi però nessuna persona ragionevole può sottrarsi alla conclusione che questo non può essere sostenuto. (la vergata 1990, 597) nel novecento – prima della nascita dei movimenti per i diritti degli animali e di una diffusa coscienza animalista, sorta a seguito delle opere di singer e regan – alcuni autori, già nella prima metà del secolo, mostrarono una spiccata sensibilità verso il problema animale. mi limiterò a citare due figure significative: piero martinetti – che in un bel saggio su la psiche degli animali riprende lo storico dibattito sulla mente animale (martinetti 1973) – e albert schweitzer, che affianca la cura dedicata all’umanità sofferente a un’etica di rispetto per tutti gli esseri viventi. questo tema 6 fondatore della humanitarian league, salt si impegnò sul piano sociale, lottando contro le disuguaglianze e adoperandosi anche per l’abolizione della pena di morte e la riforma del sistema carcerario. relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ verso i diritti degli animali 37 emerge ripetutamente nei suoi scritti e nella sua stessa autobiografia, in cui scrive: il grande errore di ogni etica è stato finora quello di credere di dover occuparsi soltanto del rapporto dell’uomo con l’uomo. in realtà invece è in gioco il suo atteggiamento verso il mondo e verso tutta la vita che entra nel suo raggio d’azione. egli è morale soltanto quando considera sacra la vita in quanto tale, quella della pianta e dell’animale come quella dell’uomo, e dà il suo aiuto alla vita che ne ha bisogno. soltanto l’etica universale basata sul senso della responsabilità, allargata all’infinito, verso tutto ciò che vive, trova giustificazione nel pensiero. l’etica del rapporto fra uomo e uomo non è qualcosa a se stante, ma solo un aspetto particolare che deriva da quell’atteggiamento generale. (schweitzer 1965, 143) a conclusione di questa pur breve e lacunosa panoramica, viene spontaneo osservare che – se tante voci si sono adoperate nel corso della storia per contrastare pregiudizi, discriminazioni, ingiustizie ai danni degli animali – è lecito auspicare che questa volta tali sforzi giungano a buon fine. riferimenti bibliografici aristotele. 1966. la politica [iv sec. a.c.], trad. it. di renato laurenti. roma bari: laterza. baricalla, vilma. 1995. leibniz e l’universo dei viventi. pisa: ets. bayle, pierre. 1976. dizionario storico-critico [1696], a cura di gianfranco cantelli. roma bari: laterza, 2 voll. bentham, jeremy. 2013. introduzione ai principi della morale e della legislazione [1789], trad. it. di stefania di pietro. torino: utet. cartesio. 1967. discorso sul metodo [1637]. in opere, a cura di eugenio garin, i, 129-182. bari: laterza, 2 voll. celso. 1987. il discorso vero [ii sec. d.c.], a cura di giuliana lanata. milano: adelphi. charron, pierre. 1982. la saggezza [1601]. in filosofia e psicologia animale. da rorario a leroy, a cura di maria t. marcialis, 73-90. cagliari: s.t.e.f. cyrano de bergerac, h. savinien de. 1928. storia comica degli stati e imperi del sole [1662 post.], trad. it. di nino de sanctis. milano: sonzogno. cyrano de bergerac, h. savinien de. 1982. l’altro mondo ovvero stati e imperi della luna [1657 post.], trad. it. di giovanni marchi. roma: theoria. ditadi, gino. 1994. i filosofi e gli animali. este (pd): isonomia, 2 voll. guarnacci, mario. 2001. “sulla natura degli animali” [1769]. in poesie di zelalgo arassiano. pastore arcade, xlix-lxvi. rist. anast., bologna: forni editore. la mettrie, julien offroy de. 1990. l’uomo macchina [1747]. in l’uomo macchina e altri scritti, a cura di giulio preti, 9-71. milano: se. relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ vilma baricalla 38 lamy, guillaume. 1982. “i discorso anatomico” [1672]. in filosofia e psicologia animale da rorario a leroy, a cura di maria t. marcialis, 147-152. cagliari: s.t.e.f. la vergata, antonello. 1990. l’equilibrio e la guerra della natura. dalla teologia naturale al darwinismo. napoli: morano. leibniz, gottfried wilhelm von. 1967a. prospetto delle scoperte sui mirabili segreti della natura in generale [1698?]. in scritti filosofici, a cura di domenico o. bianca, i, 248-258. torino: utet, 2 voll. leibniz, gottfried wilhelm von. 1967b. saggi di teodicea sulla bontà di dio, sulla libertà dell’uomo, sull’origine del male [1710]. in scritti filosofici, a cura di domenico o. bianca, i, 373-731. torino: utet, 2 voll. leibniz, gottfried wilhelm von. 1967c. principi della natura e della grazia fondati sulla ragione [1714]. in scritti filosofici, a cura di domenico o. bianca, i, 274-282. torino: utet, 2 voll. leibniz, gottfried wilhelm von. 1967d. i principi della filosofia o monadologia [1714]. in scritti filosofici, a cura di domenico o. bianca, i, 283-299. torino: utet, 2 voll. leopardi, giacomo. 1956. paralipomeni della batracomiomachia [1842 post.]. in opere, a cura di sergio solmi, i, 329-452. milano napoli: riccardo ricciardi, 2 voll. leopardi, giacomo. 1961. operette morali [1827]. milano: a. mondadori. leopardi, giacomo. 1983. zibaldone di pensieri (1817-1832) [1898 post.]. milano: a. mondadori, 2 voll. lovejoy, arthur oncken. 1981. la grande catena dell’essere, trad. it. di lia formigari. milano: feltrinelli. lucrezio caro, tito. 1994. la natura delle cose [i sec. a.c.], trad. it. di luca canali. milano: rizzoli. martinetti, piero. 1973. la psiche degli animali [1926]. in funzione religiosa della filosofia. saggi e discorsi, 249-296. roma: armando. montaigne, michel de. 1970. apologia di raymond sebond. in saggi [1580], ii, xii, a cura di fausta garavini, i, 565-805. milano: mondadori, 2 voll. oswald, john. 1994. il grido della natura o un appello alla compassione e alla giustizia a nome degli animali perseguitati [1791], a cura di luisella battaglia. torino: satyagraha. plutarco 1999. il cibarsi di carne [i sec. d.c.], trad. it. di giuseppina santese. napoli: d’auria. polizzi, gaspare. 2008. “… per le forze eterne della materia”. natura e scienza in giacomo leopardi. milano: francoangeli. rorario, gerolamo. 1982. gli animali usano la ragione meglio degli uomini [1648 post.]. in filosofia e psicologia animale. da rorario a leroy, a cura di maria t. marcialis, 51-72. cagliari: s.t.e.f. salt, henry stephens. 2015. i diritti degli animali considerati in relazione al progresso sociale [1894], a cura di attilio pisanò ed eugenio leucci. napoli: edizioni scientifiche italiane. relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ verso i diritti degli animali 39 santese, giuseppina. 1999. “introduzione”. in plutarco, il cibarsi di carne, 7-89. napoli: d’auria. schweitzer, albert. 1965. la mia vita e il mio pensiero [1931], trad. it. di amerigo guadagnin. milano: edizioni di comunità. voltaire, françois-marie arouet. 1989. dizionario filosofico [1764]. torriana (fo): orsa maggiore. relations – 7.1-2 november 2019 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ editorial energy ethics: emerging perspectives in a time of transition 7 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ energy ethics: emerging perspectives in a time of transition editorial giovanni frigo university of north texas, denton, tx usa doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2018-001-frig giovanni.frigo@unt.edu 1. introduction “e” is an algorithm, “energy” is a loaded word. “e” is meaningful only within a formula, “energy” is charged with hidden implications: it refers to a subtle something which has the ability to make nature do work. ivan illich, the social construction of energy (2015) this special issue grapples with the timely and exciting theme of “energy ethics”. it is a one of a kind publication bringing together 16 intellectuals from 10 different countries. it includes both young researchers and established scholars working in disciplines as different as anthropology, sustainability studies, public policy, theology and, of course, philosophy. its cosmopolitan orientation and the diversity of its contributions offer a wide range of positions together with innovative approaches to the study of energy. the goal of this collective project is threefold. first, it aims at exploring energy’s multifaceted cultural and philosophical dimensions with a specific attention to ethics. for this reason, authors were given significant freedom of inquiry and yet, they have been invited to develop their original work in line with the scope and orientation of the journal. second, the overall collection shows that the humanities in general, and ethics specifically, can fruitfully contribute to the energy discourse, bringing analytical acumen and reflective depth concerning the moral and socio-cultural implications of energy. third, despite the fact that such unpredictable engagements with the topic of energy may sometimes appear unusual or challenging, they are aimed at sparkling further dialog across disciplines, enriching the debate about current energy transitions from fossil fuels to clean, renewable and sustainable sources. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ http://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2018-001-frig mailto://giovanni.frigo@unt.edu giovanni frigo 8 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ following the usual format of relations. beyond anthropocentrism, this special issue is also published in two separated volumes. the present issue, vol. 6.1, will be followed in november 2018 by vol. 6.2. besides this introduction, each edition contains five research papers, two comments, one interview and reviews. in the second issue, the “energy ethics” interview will feature philosopher of technology carl mitcham, one of the most influential contemporary thinkers on the topic of energy and ethics. the dialog with mitcham – a tireless public intellectual internationally recognized for his efforts in bridging the gap between engineering and ethics – will help further engage the reader with the theme of energy and ethics from its inception in the early 1970s to its recent developments in china and beyond. since the present editorial serves both volumes, the second issue will not feature a separated introduction. instead, vol. 6.2 will begin with a broad literature review of the most relevant antecedents in the study of energy and ethics. it will survey past and current scholarly literature in energy humanities, anthropology of energy and ethics of energy, including recent conferences and interdisciplinary projects. it will thus help the readers better orient themselves in this new area of intellectual engagement and hopefully intrigue some to explore further. in the attempt to present the overarching narrative of this project and introduce the inspiring work of the authors – my patient companions in this one-year-long intellectual journey – this introduction ponders on the exciting opportunity to think philosophically about energy. section  2 suggests an indirect reflection on energy inequality and injustice by presenting some implications of contemporary “energivorous” lifestyles, namely those surrounded by techno-science and addicted to fossil fuels. in section  3, i discuss how the modern and scientific concept of energy is a cultural construct emerged during the early industrial revolution (wrigley 2010) through the work of several natural philosophers, later known as disciplinary scientists and engineers (frigo 2017). understanding the emergence of the scientific conceptualization of energy is pivotal to appreciate, evaluate and then challenge some key assumptions that lie at its basis. for instance, it is rarely appreciated that the energy discourse commonly depends on a rather specific understanding of the human-nature relationship that is tacitly assumed and taken for granted. in section 4, i will fully embrace the spirit of relations and explore ways to think about energy as if humans were not the center and the measure of everything. namely i will try to philosophize about energy beyond anthropocentrism. this part constitutes the core of the article and supports the thesis that it is time to update and reorient the energy concept in an ecocentric direction. i propose that an ecocentric philosophy of energy – or http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ energy ethics: emerging perspectives in a time of transition 9 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ an ecocentric energy ethic – can successfully integrate the understanding of energy produced by physics, chemistry and engineering with knowledge and insights drawn from ecology, inter-species energy justice and ecocentric environmental philosophy. i argue that an ecocentric energy concept would improve the human-nature-energy relationship, updating humans’ understanding of the fundamental links between energy, ecology and ethics towards the actualization of strong sustainability (neumayer 2013). section 5 concludes the editorial and clarifies the significance of the project. throughout the text i also have the honor to introduce the inspiring contents of this collection. 2. high energy societies and the conundrum of energy transition the commonly accepted basis of our economy is the supposed possibility of limitless growth, limitless wants, limitless wealth, limitless natural resources, limitless energy, and limitless debt. wendell barry, faustian economics (2008) starting in the western world, modern societies have become high energy socio-political assemblages (illich 2015). in many parts of the globe, humans are extremely energivorous, addicted to a commodious lifestyle based on abundant and intense power, the availability of which they expect and take for granted (borgmann 1984). contemporary lifestyles are based on sophisticated techno-scientific premises and are unthinkable without recurring to ad hoc socio-political and economic apparatuses that guarantee an enormous and steady input of resources into the system. although homo sapiens has always used the environment to survive (mcelroy 2009, 2010; pain 2017), it is especially over the last two centuries that a growing number of humans have extracted from nature larger amounts of fuels and materials, exploiting not only the work of other humans, but especially that of animals and the services of ecosystems at rates that many consider unsustainable (heinberg 2003, 2015; elliott 2007; brown 2009; meadowcroft 2009). the astonishing rate of population growth has brought humans from 1.6 billion in 1900 to more than 7.6 billion in 2018, an almost five-fold increase. in the span of just few decades a new animal has appeared, homo energeticus who, through techno-scientific domination, reifies, commodifies and prices nature to serve its growing needs (kowalsky and haluza-delay 2013). http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ giovanni frigo 10 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ on this regard, italian “human overpopulation” thinker andrea natan feltrin tackles in his comment “energy equality and the challenges of population growth” (second volume) the issue of energy equality in relation to human population growth. he argues that “going beyond the capitalistic myth of never-ending growth becomes a moral duty” if we are to attain a fair distribution of energies on a planet with limited resources. an energy transition to renewables is currently happening worldwide. this seems to require the electrification of infrastructures and devices to attain the switch of entire systems (meadowcroft 2009; smil 2010; grubler 2012; araújo 2014) to potentially 100% renewable sources (delucchi and jacobson 2011; jacobson and delucchi 2011; jacobson 2014; jacobson et al. 2017). however, the opportunity of providing a reliable system 100% based on renewable sources has raised scientific controversies and feasibility doubts (clack et al. 2017). an evolution of energy sources has always happened in the history of humanity (fouquet and pearson 2012), and in very different ways (o’connor 2010), but current energy transitions imply unprecedented scales and must deal with the addiction to, and dependence on fossil fuels. but, of course, energy transition is not only a policy issue and actually implies and expects behavioral changes of millions of people too. dealing with a poignant example of such complex struggle, italian anthropologist alice dal gobbo’s article entitled “desiring ethics: reflections on veganism from an observational study of transitions in everyday energy use”(second issue) adopts observational ethnographic methods to study everyday energy transitions in northern italy. dal gobbo presents empirical material to “reflect psycho-socially on the potentialities of veganism as an energy ethics of sustainability” and warns of the danger of adopting a plant-based diet as an abstract moral imperative rather than a situated and nuanced ethical choice. like any systemic transformation, energy transition implies risks. these derive from unpredictable factors, uncertainty or ignorance. since decisions must eventually be made, it is pivotal to address the ethical implications of just and sustainable energy transitions. in the present issue, bertrand andre rossert’s article “ethical risk and energy” explores the currently grey area between ethics and risk management, focusing specifically on the notion of ethical risk in relation to the energy sector. rossert agrees that there is an urgent need for an energy ethics as a fundamental tool to evaluate risk and proposes both a theoretical clarification of key concepts and a strategic pathway for the creation of a “risk management checklist”. he delves into the nuances of the notions of ethical violations, deterioration, and improvement offering a series of compelling and relatable examples. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ energy ethics: emerging perspectives in a time of transition 11 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ an updated version of ethical risk (perhaps even a biocentric one) provides a richer understanding of uncertain situations often occurring in complex energy projects. advocating for an energy ethics that begins with a risk approach, rossert affirms that “when energy ethics is as developed as bioethics is today, then energy companies will be able to take it into account”, thus leading to a significant improvement of energy ethics in practice. during this transition toward alternative and more sustainable systems, it is important to understand the premises from which we are moving. in other terms, we need to make sense of what it has meant to live for more than 200 years embedded in petrocultures (black 2012; lemenager 2014; petrocultures research group 2016) which have allowed unprecedented, incredible transformations as well as problematic consequences. in the first article of this issue – “ethics, nafthism, and the fossil subject” – finnish philosophers tere vadén and antti salminen highlight that the presumed human “victory over nature” – an emblem of modern western thinking – is “supremely ironic” because its essential material conditions depend on fossil fuels, a very natural occurrence. expanding a thread of thought they started in their book energy and experience (2015), here the authors point out that the ethics of modern subjects is detached, forgetful of its dependence on a specific energy regime. vadén and salminenhelp us understand humans’ entanglement with fossil fuels through a compelling “nafthology” and argue that a post-fossil energy ethics should ultimately be a-subjective and based on non-modern premises. it is nowadays commonly agreed among climate and energy scholars that transitioning away from fossil fuels is the prerequisite for a meaningful worldwide contribution to climate change mitigation (stephenson 2017) and has the potential to bolster significant technological innovation (stolten and scherer 2013). however, we might wonder whether techno-scientific strategies are enough for energy transitions that will take into account also non-human life. the question is not trivial because, again, it concerns the underlying assumptions of individual and collective lifestyles, policies and political decisions as well as the actual existence and wellness of non-human beings, biotic communities and ecosystems. in the wake of several other contemporary thinkers in energy humanities and social sciences, i hold that energy transition is not only a technical affair. hence, it should not be understood only as a human socio-technological and economic problem, but also at its core as an ecological and philosophical one. transitioning to clean and sustainable systems is intertwined with other dimensions of individual, social and ecosystemic life. culturally and philosophically, they imply metaphysical, psychological, sociological, behavioral, gendered, legislative and religious considerations. ecologically, they take place within http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ giovanni frigo 12 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ complex ecosystems in which also other species require adequate space and resources to thrive. for example, one of the most interesting and yet quite rare perspectives on the ethics of energy is that of religion. expanding her pioneering work on energy ethics from a christian standpoint (2016), erin lothes biviano contributes to this volume with her comment “catholic energy ethics: commitments and criteria”. in it, she lays the foundations for a theocentric theology of energy that is based on the “covenantal economy of creation and salvation”, a proposal that acknowledges humans’ privilege and addresses the irresponsibility for the implementation of an “integrated ecology of family, community, society, and earth”. again, what is important to remember is that both cultural and ecological dimensions of the transitions are less visible than wind farms or tesla model 3 but, in my opinion, also essential to fully grasp their breadth and depth. if we ignore them by underestimating their influence or sweeping them under the rug as humanistic nuisance or unnecessary environmental alarmism, we run the risk of understanding only part of the story. as janet stephenson suggests, “to work effectively across disciplines, social scientists [and philosophers/ethicists] will need to learn something of what energy means, and physical scientists will need to learn something of what energy means” (stephenson 2017). environmental ethics, philosophy of technology, energy humanities and social sciences can help integrate the understanding of energy produced in the natural sciences toward a more holistic account. in this special issue, three north american scholars specifically enlarge the boundaries of the energy discourse beyond anthropocentrism. in the first volume, jacob bethem’s article “life within energy policy” proposes to recognize and integrate the powerful and shared concept of “life” (value and sacredness of, reverence for) in energy policy. moving from environmental philosophy, bethem bridges his theoretical proposal to the case study of the navajo generating station near page, arizona. in this way, he is able to show the possible concrete implications of a life-based philosophy of energy within a specific native american struggle of moving beyond fossil while reimagining the community’s future. on a similar note, matthew j. burke’s paper entitled “mutually-beneficial renewable energy systems” (also in this volume) adopts “a relational view of energy futures, emphasizing and shifting attention toward the role of nonhuman elements of renewable energy systems to explore opportunities for rethinking renewable energy systems as processes for restoration and healing of human-nature relationships”. burke develops the rationale for his proposal addressing four areas: practice, ecology, ethics and culture. then, he discusses several practical energy technologies with the goal http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ energy ethics: emerging perspectives in a time of transition 13 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ of not only avoiding or minimizing harm, but also supporting ecological enhancement and mutually-beneficial consequences for both human and non-human nature. in the second volume, environmental philosopher joseph m. aloi brings us to the rural areas of west virginia to delve into the intricacies and the trade-offs between the culture of coal extraction and food ethics. his “coal feeds my family: subsistence, energy, and industry in central appalachia” presents “the change in land-human relationships through the lens of food”. aloi analyzes and deconstructs the metaphor “coal feeds my family” and offers a nuanced description of a multifaceted energy reality in which the fossil economy based on the dead (coal) struggles to make sense of its disintegration. meantime, communities are rediscovering their rich preindustrial agricultural energy economy and land-based culture. these three articles contribute significantly to the development of a nuanced philosophy of energy that moves beyond anthropocentrism, one that acknowledges and accounts for essential ecological, economic and socio-cultural interdependencies. the relationship between economics, energy and human work is also discussed in nora ward’s review of the book blood and earth: modern slavery, ecocide, and the secret to saving the world by kevin bales. connecting past and present types of slavery to the theme of energy, she discusses how “labor of human hands and human (and animal) bodies, occurring in conditions of coercion, poverty, and violence” still supplies “much of the raw energy for even the most advanced economies”. so, current planetary imbalances of energy access and distribution are coupled with a system of exploitation. ward highlights that “this kind of labor is not only destructive to the humans and human communities that it occurs in but also has devastating impacts on animals, plants, and wider ecological communities”. 3. the modern and scientific energy paradigm paradoxically, the term energy, used for the preceding 300 years to designate the forcefulness of a face or the liveliness of a statement was first used to designate the “force of nature” precisely at the time when – in all the natural sciences – nature’s vitality, its “lebenskraft”, was being systematically denied. ivan illich, the social construction of energy (2015) few topics are as important as energy. indeed, energy is not so much a distinct topic as it is a thread woven throughout many of today’s most pressing issues – from political economy to ecology to science and techhttp://www.ledonline.it/relations/ giovanni frigo 14 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ nology. as a result, there is no shortage of talk about energy. especially since the oil crises of the early 1970s, one just needs to open a newspaper or scroll a webpage, to find a wide range of discussions that span from the energy costs of bitcoin mining to surging wind development in west texas, to talk of gas pipelines in southern italy, the miracles of the shale revolution, or the promises of tesla’s powerwall. yet, no matter what the topic of conversation, i contend that the discourse is grounded on a problematic understanding of “energy”, a forma mentis that has its deep roots in the modern worldview, and specifically in a flawed assumption about the human-energy-nature relationship. i call this assumed understanding “the energy paradigm”, an account that has been produced by the natural sciences and has manifested in practice through the groundbreaking marvels of engineering 1. in the discussion of such a paradigmatic worldview, i agree with lynn white jr. that what we do depends on what and how we think: “what people do about their ecology depends on what they think about themselves in relation to things around them” (1967). similarly, the conceptualization of energy has had remarkable material consequences. i will explain that what we practically do in terms of power production, consumption, distribution and waste ultimately depends on what we think about energy. in this special issue, four authors directly challenge different aspects of the common understanding of energy. in very different ways, they suggest alternative outlooks which entail, overall, a profound reflection on several ingrained cultural assumptions that are worth unpacking. dutch philosopher of energy robert-jan geerts – one of the few contemporary thinkers of techno-science who has engaged the theme of energy from an explicit philosophical perspective (geerts et al. 2016; geerts 2017) – offers in this first issue a theoretical challenge to a dominant reasoning of current energy transition discourse. his “beyond scarcity: perspectives on energy transition” evaluates and criticizes the two usual notions of “boundless consumerism” and “eco-frugality” as they problematically relate to ideas of well-being and good life. geerts considers both concepts somehow flawed because they share and move from the unappealing and unpopular idea of scarcity. alternatively, he suggests that a third path is available, namely that of qualitative abundance. instead of scarcity, qualitative abundance is based on ideas of prosperity and simplicity, hence it 1 i use the term paradigm as a “pattern” or “characteristic way” of conceptualizing energy, and indirectly of seeing the non-human world. this interpretation bridges both thomas s. kuhn’s “extended” or “global” meaning of scientific paradigm (kuhn 1962; kuhn 1969) and albert borgmann’s idea of a “pattern of technology” represented by the devices which constitute the modern way “to take up with the world” (borgmann 1984). http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ energy ethics: emerging perspectives in a time of transition 15 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ reframes the notion of a “good” energy system away from “too much or too little” and thus reshapes the lingo of the energy transition discourse. the other three articles that challenge ulterior aspects of the energy paradigm will feature in the issue of november. french environmental cyclo-philosopher damien delorme challenges the common monopoly of the automobile transportation system in his exciting piece entitled “contesting the radical monopoly: a critical view on the motorized culture from a cyclonaut perspective”. delorme shares his six-months-longbike road trip across the united states following an imaginary ligne verte made of surprising intellectual and environmental encounters with both human and non-human animals 2. his journey represents a decentering experience that affords “a critical outlook on the norms and usages brought by the engine culture”. his paper proposes enriching our phenomenological experiences of energy through “autonomous movement that broadens our social imagination and contributes to face our current environmental crisis”. on a similar note, german philosopher roman meinhold moves away from mainstream considerations about energy as electricity or fossil fuels and focuses instead on neglected, yet crucial aspects of human energy. his article concerns the fundamental and often forgotten recognition that humans are active and moving beings. meinhold deals with four types of human energy: interpersonal/social, movement, intellectual, and spiritual. his philosophical anthropology of energy merges phenomenology, virtue ethics, and a call for activity oriented toward wisdom. his proposal calls for a balanced and wise energy ethics that starts from within and requires practice. finally, italian independent intellectual federico battistutta’s comment, provocatively entitled “energy of ethics / ethics of energy” challenges the culture-nature dichotomy. he adopts insights from thinkers such as luce irigaray and sigmund freud to inquiry types of psychic and emotional energy that are not very well represented in the literature of energy and ethics but deserve indeed more attention in order to broaden our understanding of energy’s ontology. the work of these authors is in tune with, and seems to further support my claim that there is indeed a conception of energy that is prevalent and tacitly assumed in the energy discourse generally and in the context of energy transition specifically. this notion implies a great number of features typical of the modern period: a certain ideal of progress, assumptions of anthropocentrism linked to the commodification of nature, a strong reli 2 see his journey – untaking space: the u.s. project – at: https://usproject2016. com/. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ https://usproject2016.com/ https://usproject2016.com/ giovanni frigo 16 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ance on the techno-scientific apparatus, a proactionary approach to risk assessment, free-market capitalism, individualistic and competitive values, and so on. the scientific understanding of energy is a cultural construct produced in a very specific context, the western, modern, and scientific world. energy has been defined primarily by the natural sciences as a property of objects, that is the capacity of matter to do work. but this and other similar definitions stress only certain measurable, quantifiable and mechanistic properties of reality leaving outside everything else. i claim that the modern energy paradigm has been emphasizing anthropocentric ideas and instrumental values within the human-energy-nature relationship. again, its norms, values, and principles derive from a scientific, mechanistic, quantitative, mathematized and even patriarchal approach that accounts only partially for the complexity of energy as a multi-faceted phenomenon 3. moreover, these characteristics make it not only obviously reductionist but ecologically and philosophically problematic too. the key point is that such modern and scientific understanding of energy has been taken for granted, becoming the “traditional” way in which most people think and act about energy. in practice, the most important implication is that this mentality has been having remarkable consequences (i.e. human population growth, technoscientific advancements but also devastation and ecocides), transforming planet earth in dramatic ways. especially over the past two centuries, energy practitioners (policy-makers, engineers, politicians, stakeholders) who have been operating according to this worldview have expanded built environments and at the same time drastically affected the non-human world and ecosystemic equilibria. since this special issue concerns energy and ethics, it is important to recall that the modern energy paradigm has its roots in the scientific attempt, starting in the 18th century, to “make sense” and name various phenomena related to, for example, heat exchanges, magnetism, light, electricity. the study of these phenomena was accompanied by the idea of improving the efficiency of different engines (e.g. steam, internal combustion), and hence the productivity of machines. therefore, the study of energy bears the weight of its initial aim, namely improving the efficiency of machines. as vaclav smil has put it, theoretical energy studies reached a satisfactory (though not a perfect) coherence and clarity before the end of the nineteenth century when, after 3 for the sake of focus, in this article i will not delve into the last of these characteristics. one of the most thorough account of the relationships between patriarchy, control of nature and the scientific revolution is merchant 1980 (see also merchant 2006). http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ energy ethics: emerging perspectives in a time of transition 17 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ generations of hesitant progress, the great outburst of western intellectual and inventive activity laid down the firm foundations of modern science and soon afterwards developed many of its more sophisticated concepts. the ground work for these advances began in the seventeenth century, and advanced considerably during the course of the eighteenth, when it was aided by the adoption both of isaac newton’s (1642-1727) comprehensive view of physics and by engineering experiments, particularly those associated with james watt’s (1736-1819) improvements of steam engines. (2006, 13) the western conceptualization of energy has depended on the scientific control of the forces of nature through mathematical language and the application of the scientific method: a rather homogeneous conception of energy emerged, which has become predominant and has been reigning substantially unchallenged in educational settings and policy-making. the blooming of the industrial revolution, a tremendous population expansion, the diffusion of ideas of progress and human exceptionalism have increased human hubris, individualism and greed, with the support of ad hoc socio-economic and ethical theories (moncrief 1970). these views are so deeply ingrained that they have become normalized, and consequently invisible. another article in this first issue helps us better understand and indirectly appreciate the implications of the western conceptualization of energy. in his “renewable energy issues in africa contexts”, nigerian philosopher diana-abasi ibanga provides an intriguing analysis that begins by criticizing the western approach as inappropriate or inadequate to fully understand african energy dynamics. drawing from sources as rich and diverse as braai filosofie, bantu and annang languages, ibanga develops an “african-specific understanding of the complex nexus of human-environment-posterity” and suggests principles and guidelines for ethical energy transitions and investment decisions broad enough and still peculiar to the african continent. an ulterior challenge to the modern and scientific energy paradigm comes in this issue through the comment by anthropologist deepti chatti. in her “cows, cookstoves, and climate change: a non-anthropocentric view of household energy use in the rural indian himalayas”, chatti shows how cows, cookstoves and climate change are interconnected in the worldview and in the livelihood of people in the rural indian himalayas. the real risk of imposing technological artefacts such as “improved lpg cookstoves” must deal, on the one hand, with the unequal adverse impacts of household burdens on the health of children and women. on the other hand, it faces the existence of profound, complex multi-species entanglements between humans and cows, which also entail a specific gendered http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ giovanni frigo 18 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ care and responsibility for both human and non-human beings. chatti’s comment thus contributes to a more complex understanding of energy in non-western contexts and to the articulation of a more inclusive energy ethics. going back to my discussion regarding the modern scientific energy paradigm, i argue that it is problematic for several reasons but, first of all, because of its manifest anthropocentrism. the problem of an anthropocentric energy paradigm is not limited to fossil fuels and their socio-environmental implications. even current transitions to renewable energy sources perpetuate the energy paradigm, that is, they largely fail to account for the non-human world. moreover, as mentioned above, this notion of energy emphasizes instrumental, mechanistic, and quantitative properties of nature which are assumed in the study, management and consumption of the natural world. energy projects and policies are focused on maintaining or expanding the current production of power, or extending its distribution, for more human consumption. questioning the deeper assumptions of such doings, evaluating alternative directions and addressing the related ecological consequences are only minor preoccupations. in the meantime, there are dramatic issues of energy poverty and access worldwide and, of course, it is still essential to provide basic access to electricity to more than one billion people. it is important to clarify upfront that criticizing the anthropocentric nature of the traditional energy paradigm does not conflict with issues of human justice and equity. in fact, although the discourse of energy justice that emerged during the past decade has been tackling these issues, it has also been substantially humancentered. yet, even though there is much good in the ongoing transitions to renewables and in the concerns of energy justice scholarship, they are both still problematically focused on humans and consider everything else as secondary, if at all. a transition to a truly just and sustainable energy future requires a change in mindset – about the human-energy-nature relationship – and not only a change in policies or technologies. because i maintain that energy transitions should be just also in inter-species terms and ecologically sound, i suggest that a more inclusive and non-anthropocentric account of energy is needed. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ energy ethics: emerging perspectives in a time of transition 19 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 4. toward a philosophy of energy beyond anthropocentrism i follow the guidance of nature […] not to stray from nature and to mold ourselves according to her law and pattern – this is true wisdom. seneca, on the happy life (about 58 c.e.) some antecedents of the type of reasoning i will outline here began in the mid-1970s in the field of environmental philosophy and ethics. ecocentrism is a philosophical position that acknowledges and promotes the moral centrality and worth of all the species and the inanimate beings that live within different ecosystems of which humans are also considered an essential part. non-human beings can be understood individualistically (each singular entity) or as part of communities (plants), populations (animals), ecosystems, eco-regions, or even the entire earth (eckersley 1992; callicott 2013). although it has been accused of being excessively radical and even indicted for eco-fascism, ecocentrism need not be misanthropic. indeed, the vast majority of ecocentric positions typically argue not against humanity, but rather against the centrality or primacy of human beings, and advocate for a reshaping of the human-nature relationship in less hierarchical ways. generally speaking, ecocentrism derives metaphysical and moral implications from the knowledge and insights of the ecological sciences (callicott 1986). since its emergence in the early 1970s, ecocentrism has branched out into several versions, or philosophical positions. some of the most influential and “classic” references are north american scholars holmes rolston iii (1988; 1991) and john baird callicott (1989; 1999), along with norwegian philosopher arne naess (1973; 1989), the father of the “deep ecology” movement. here, i embrace an ecological definition of energy à la aldo leopold, the conservationist and writer who, in “the land ethic” proposed the idea that the very functioning of nature depends on the circulation of a “fountain” of solar radiation flowing through the land: plants absorb energy from the sun. this energy flows through a circuit called the biota, which may be represented by a pyramid consisting of layers. the bottom layer is the soil. a plant layer rests on the soil, an insect layer on the plants, a bird and rodent layer on the insects, and so on up through various animal groups to the apex layer, which consists of the larger carnivores. […] land, then, is not merely soil; it is a fountain of energy flowing through a circuit of soils, plants, and animals. food chains are the living channels which conduct energy upward; death and decay return it to the soil. the circuit is not closed; some energy is dissipated in decay, some is added by http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ giovanni frigo 20 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ absorption from the air, some is stored in soils, peats, and long-lived forests; but it is a sustained circuit, like a slowly augmented revolving fund of life. (1949, 182-4) this deliberately broad description, for instance, integrates, rather than oppose, the mechanistic definition of physics that reduces energy to the “capacity of doing work”, transforming nature into something to be used for the needs of humans. it is important to consider that thinking about energy from the perspective of environmental philosophy accomplishes two important goals. first, it enriches our understanding of energy in its conceptual and cultural dimensions. second, and related, the proposal of an ecocentric outlook reshapes and reevaluates our relationships to the planet and its other (in)animate non-human beings. an ecocentric perspective can shed light on the theoretical frameworks of the energy discourse, the soundness of its reasoning and the ecological, ethical and socio-political implications of its practical developments in energy policies and projects. 4.1. anthropocentrism vs ecocentrism environmental philosophy typically recognizes several possible ethical positions: strong anthropocentrism, weak anthropocentrism, sensiocentrism, biocentrism and ecocentrism. an ecocentric account of energy directly challenges the anthropocentric nature of the modern energy paradigm. surely enough, ecocentric positions have been developed by several scholars in the field of environmental philosophy while others have criticized such “centric” lingo altogether (samuelsson 2013). ecocentrism should be understood as among the most radical philosophical positions that emerged during the environmental movement that started in western countries in the 1960s. in a sort of parallel with the so-called second wave of feminism and the civil rights movement, environmental activism and scholarship initially aimed at changing and moving beyond cultural narratives which had been supporting oppression – of women, of minorities, and of nature. in particular, ecocentric thinkers have derived the most radical philosophical implications from the findings of the ecological sciences and environmental studies (frigo 2016). accordingly, ecocentrists typically start by posing a great ontological and metaphysical challenge: re-defining and re-positioning human beings and their role within ecosystemic functioning rather than considering mankind at the top of the ecological hierarchy. it goes without saying that, if taken seriously, the consequences of this change of perspective would be groundbreaking for both human and non-human beings. it has been argued that humans, thanks to their ability to work in http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ energy ethics: emerging perspectives in a time of transition 21 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ groups, organize, cooperate, and eventually develop techno-science have progressively occupied the top ranks of the food chain. but, ecologically speaking, humans are not “top predators” and “dominators” but rather omnivorous animal somewhere in the middle of the food/energy pyramid. an ecocentric perspective challenges the idea that the earth is necessarily destined to become a “human planet” as the ecomodernists envision. by limiting human hubris, ecocentrism decenters humans and thus provides a paradigm shift similar to that occurred in 16th century astronomy from geocentrism to heliocentrism. ecocentrists maintain that also modern humans are still dependent on the ecosystems of which they are part and, paradoxically, still know so little about. ecocentrism borrows from ecology the notion that, in each ecosystem, there is a myriad of different beings who are constantly born or formed, live, die, decay and are cyclically transformed in nutrients by decomposers as part of the biosphere functioning. simply put, these are animals (top predators, carnivores, omnivores, herbivores), primary producers (plants), decomposers (fungi) or detritivores (earthworms, woodlice, and sea cucumbers), minerals, soils, waters, airs 4. in this worldview, humans do not occupy a special place, yet they are considered “special animals” in the sense that their power to dramatically change nature is acknowledged. despite the “convergence hypothesis” of philosopher bryan g. norton (1991, 237-243) – “the view that if we have a suitably sophisticated anthropocentrism, then in practice, anthropocentrism and nonanthropocentrism will converge” (mcshane 2007) – when it comes to policymaking, the policy interests of anthropocentrists and nonanthropocentrists do not ultimately nor obviously converge. in both anthropocentric and ecocentric perspectives exergy is limited. but for the former, useful energy is primarily destined to benefit humans, while the latter posits that also the non-human world deserves the amounts necessary for its flourishing. moreover, an ecocentric view suggests that there may exist immaterial, spiritual, or relational forms of energy that fall through the cracks of the old paradigm because they are not epistemologically relevant or objectively measurable (they are non-quantitative and therefore non-mathematizable). however, these other more qualitative “dimensions” are relevant and should become part of the current energy debate. since humans have the possibility to become keenly aware of their power, they can also decide to follow the ecocentric philosophy of energy 4 i intentionally borrow from leopold the use of plurals for all these different beings. see his essay “the land ethic” in leopold 1949. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ giovanni frigo 22 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ and live in ways that are compatible not only with their own survival and growth, but also with the preservation, flourishment, and wellbeing of other non-human beings. if we conceive the fluxes of energy throughout the ecosphere in this inter-dependent and relational way, we begin to better understand the alternative outlook provided by ecocentrism. the type of ecocentrism that i embrace here does not equalize humans with any other beings, but rather attempts to take into account the wellbeing of the non-human world as well. it considers humans “special animals” who possess a tendency to become an invasive species. as a disclaimer for possible accusations of eco-fascism, i immediately clarify that humans, in this perspective, are still relevant yet not central. they are not put on a pedestal or glorified as the conquerors of nature. instead their power is acknowledged upfront and, because of it, they are recognized in the role of ecological companions, or co-inhabitants rather than managerial stewards/ guardians or mere exploiters (de groot et al. 2011). but this re-positioning of humans in the ecosphere goes hand in hand with the recognition of the limitedness of key environmental/energy factors, such as space and exergy (or useful energy). in a world currently hosting more than 7.6 billion people and counting, in the future there will inevitably be less available resources and space not only for humans, but also for all other beings who are present in a specific ecosystem. 4.2. the balance between instrumental and intrinsic values we have seen that the old energy paradigm taught humans to dominate nature and extract from it anything that may benefit them. but i also clarified that humans need to use some parts of nature to survive, likewise other biotic organisms. so, the second characteristic of an ecocentric philosophy of energy follows the realization that there are ecological and thermodynamic (broadly understood) thresholds. the key point is that they make it physically impossible to instrumentalize all nature for the benefit of some humans and the detriment of everything else. these are limitations inherent to the functioning of the ecosphere as well as the technosphere (all machines have efficiency limits), affecting both humans and other beings for they all share, eventually, ecosystemic energy. this is either coming into the system as solar radiation or is already present on the planet in the form of converted solar radiation (e.g. fossil fuels). to better understand the instrumentality of the energy paradigm let’s use the example of a deontological theory and turn to kant’s second formulation of the categorical imperative, known as the “formula of http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ energy ethics: emerging perspectives in a time of transition 23 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ humanity” 5. in his groundwork of the metaphysis of morals (1785), kant wrote: “the practical imperative will thus be the following: so act that you use humanity, in your own person as well as in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means” (kant 2011, 87). since i propose that the energy paradigm should combine instrumental and intrinsic value (rather than focusing only on the former), the kantian deontological principle can be expanded to include non-human animals as well as inanimate beings. the re-formulation would be: “so act that you use nature, in your own person as well as in the person of any other (in)animate being (living and non-living), never as an end, and as little as possible as a means”. this extended definition takes into account the non-human world also in an intrinsic way. it recognizes that some reasonable use of nature for human ends is inevitable, but it points to the precautionary principle of non-action whenever the consequences are unclear or possibly dangerous (kriebel et al. 2001; defur and kaszuba 2002; cooney 2004; sandin 2004; comest 2005). moreover, this formulation would be in tune with traditional conservation (pinchot 1910; callicott et al. 1999), radical conservation (adams 2006) as well as preservation (muir 1911; howard et al. 1991). it would imply, and thus prescribe, that when basic human needs have been met there is no need for any ulterior instrumentalization of the non-human world. energy-nature should not merely or solely be conceptualized as a means, but rather the recognition of intrinsic value should become a priority, leading to actions aimed at preservation and ultimately protection (norton 1986; meyer 1997). energetically speaking, the worldview of modernity pictures scarcity as a temporary inability to obtain more, and it sees limits as chains that constrain an absolute freedom towhich modern humans are somehow entitled. the ab-solutus character of the human-nature relationship is key in understanding the modern energivorous lifestyle. as it will appear more clearly, researching the ontological and axiological dimensions of energy is the first step towards a philosophy of energy that can help improve praxis – energy ethics – that is our practical relationship to energy as it is linked to energy policies, personal choices, preferences and political decisions making. 5 it should be clarified that my “extension” of kant’s deontological principle is appropriate only if, accordingly, the notion of agency is expanded beyond humans. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ giovanni frigo 24 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 4.3. a holistic and more qualitative view of energy contrary to the mechanistic view of energy promoted by the traditional energy paradigm, an ecocentric philosophy of energy offers a holistic account. energy has been understood in multifaceted ways, and in its most material form as fuels and geo-chemical compounds, bio-chemically as the flux of nutrients within organic and inorganic life, metabolically as the transformation of food into movement and heat. however, there are other types of non-quantitative energies that people (and perhaps also other beings) can experience. since these phenomena are not reducible to a quantitative and therefore measurable form, the traditional energy paradigm has disregarded or tacitly ignored them. but isn’t it true that we often speak about a particularly energetic atmosphere in a room, of a special energy in a relationship, or the energy that one can perceive while meditating alone in the middle of a forest? neuroscience may attempt to reduce also these phenomena to “states of the mind” related to specific chemicals and electric impulses in the brain, but that explanation would be, again, a form of reductionism dependent on a mechanistic and quantitative view. however, other areas of human knowledge are sometimes capable of intercepting these phenomena. in this regard, anthropology and ethnography of energy offer powerful lenses to appreciate a more qualitative side of inquiry. another big part of human creativity that has been pushed out of the energy discourse are the humanities such as literature and poetry. for this reason, i argue that an ecocentric philosophy of energy and ethics would consider forms of expression such as poetry as qualitative sources of an understanding of energy, as much as the laws of thermodynamics are used to explain energy quantitatively. for example, we can find examples of this kind of work in the emerging field of energy humanities, but also in the poems ofintellectuals such as ralph waldo emerson and henry david thoreau. let me conclude this section with one of thoreau’s poems, nature, which perfectly merges the theme of intimate connection with the environment with a call for human humility: o nature! i do not aspire to be the highest in thy choir, to be a meteor in thy sky, or comet that may range on high; only a zephyr that may blow among the reeds by the river low; give me thy most privy place where to run my airy race. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ energy ethics: emerging perspectives in a time of transition 25 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ in some withdrawn, unpublic mead let me sigh upon a reed, or in the woods, with leafy din, whisper the still evening in: some still work give me to do, – only – be it near to you! for i’d rather be thy child and pupil, in the forest wild, than be the king of men elsewhere, and most sovereign slave of care; to have one moment of thy dawn, than share the city’s year forlorn. finally, borrowing leopold’s ecocentric perspective, it can be said that an ecocentric philosophy of energy “enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land” (1949, 173). in the meantime, it at least decenters human beings and “charges” them with the role of being the responsible co-inhabitants, companions, and tutors of the non-human world. 5. conclusion: the significance of this project energy is one of the most debated topics in contemporary public discussions and it is the subject of an increasing amount of theoretical and applied research that is carried out especially by the stem disciplines. historically speaking, the energy discourse has indeed mostly relied on the expertise of techno-science. its operative arm, engineering, has played a predominant role in deciding how to tackle and overcome issues related to energy production, accessibility, distribution, consumption, and waste. this means that for more than two hundred years the study of energy and its countless applications (and by a large extent also energy transition!) have been the domain of the natural sciences and engineering. this fact may appear obvious to many but, again, it depends on an underlying, invisible philosophy of energy that has been taken for granted. this understanding affects not only the thinking (or thoughtlessness) of people but what they do in both the private and public spheres. humans’ energy-related past and present practices, those being individual actions, social choices, or public policies fundamentally depend on the traditional energy paradigm but can be enhanced through the development of a radical ecocentric philosophy of energy provide the theoretical foundations for ecologically sound and just energy transitions. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ giovanni frigo 26 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ besides the three goals mentioned in the beginning, i think that the significance of this special issue resides in the attempt to offer compelling reflections that break the disciplinary model of “purified” academic philosophy (frodeman 2010; frodeman and briggle 2016). developing new ways of tackling real world problems demands philosophers and social scientists to get out of their comfortable dens. it requires them to become familiar with other branch of knowledge while preserving their curious and inquisitive attitude, methodology, and epistemological autonomy. hopefully the pages of these two volumes will shed some light on what it is like to philosophize about energy, with passion and enthusiasm, in a time of transition. references adams, jonathan s. 2006. the future of the wild: radical conservation for a crowded world. boston: beacon press. https://books.google.com/books?id= iz2o7jbeufcc&pgis=1. araújo, kathleen. 2014. “the emerging field of 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santa barbara: praeger abc-clio. stephenson, janet. 2017. “what does energy mean? an interdisciplinary conversation”. energy research and social science 26. elsevier: 103-6. doi: 10.1016/j. erss.2017.01.014. stolten, detlef, and viktor scherer. 2013. transition to renewable energy systems. weinheim: wiley-vch. doi: 10.1002/9783527673872.indsub. white, lynn jr. 1967. “the historical roots of our ecologic crisis”. science (new york, n.y.) 155 (3767): 1203-7. doi: 10.1126/science.155.3767.1203. wrigley, edward a. 2010. energy and the english industrial revolution. cambridge: cambridge university press. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ life within energy policy 69 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ life within energy policy jacob bethem school of sustainability, arizona state university, tempe, az usa doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2018-001-beth jbethem@asu.edu abstract the “sacredness of life” is foundational to environmentalism, and “being alive” is the fundamental criterion for moral considerability. it is also recognized by some philosophers that well-being is often only assessing the individual in a vacuum, neglecting the moral component of impact to other lives (both human and nonhuman). in this way, the “value of life” bridges these related philosophies and provides theoretical support for decisions of social and environmental sustainability where lives are impacted, such as in the energy field. so, we ought to be explicit about those impacts if we are concerned about the morality of policies. too often taken for granted, “life” is powerful – like no other term, it is immediately referring to two ends of a causal chain – our choices impact lives. to the extent that someone does not consent to a threat to being alive, we should do everything in our power to comply. with transparent, engaged, and inclusive discussions, informed by full life cycle analyses, we can not only protect fundamental rights of the least well-off but also can plan an energy transition that helps everyone to flourish. the case of the navajo generating station illustrates impacts on real lives. keywords: life; value; energy; transition; environmental ethics; sustainability; well-being; social sustainability; policy; navajo. 1. introduction philosophers will sometimes search for a lowest common denominator (hedges and sacco 2012, 121) or a grand unifying concept to simplify a large swath of principles into a single rule of thumb. for instance, the golden rule of “treat others as you want to be treated”, holds a popular esteem across cultures and time as one of these guides. however, as harry gensler demonstrates, following the golden rule in certain situations can be ill-advised, if not immoral (2002) 1. substitutions have been created, such as the silver rule and bronze rule, but they are no better at whittling 1 wrestling with your sister, kissing an attractive stranger, or a deaf person hollering at others are similar to his examples. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ http://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2018-001-beth mailto:jbethem@asu.edu jacob bethem 70 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ethics into a single, exceptionless turn of phrase. when it comes to policy, we 2 should be no less surprised that no single metric can fully illustrate the success of any regulation, as even a minor defect can constitute a failure. the same can be said within the philosophy of well-being. bryan little and brian treanor argue that a more comprehensive notion of well-being would include impacts on other people and on the environment surrounding the life that we are evaluating (treanor 2010; little 2014), since one poor aspect of that individual’s life may nullify the successes. as much as i might be inclined to say that “life” might be a metric that does what other metrics cannot, there are still shortcomings if “life” would be suggested as a concept that singularly replaces all other metrics or stands alone as a guiding value in policy decisions. here, i argue that “life” has certain strengths that arguably dodges problems with other common metrics; it offers something further that none of those metrics can offer on their own; but further complications arise from this thought experiment that still inhibit it from being the one, ultimate guide of all decisions, for the time being. my argument will be presented through a lens of energy-related cases, since climate change is a menacing global problem and since energy generation is the leading contributor, of greenhouse gases. finding ways to simplify this “wicked problem” (rittel and webber 1973) would go a long way toward helping many people across the world; so, it deserves attention. because energy problems can impact lives and well-being and since energy problems’ environmental, social, and financial aspects are commonly discussed through a lens of sustainability, this case presents an opportunity to unite these two realms of philosophy, which are greatly related but infrequently addressed together. with the help of environmental ethics acting as a bridge, i use the value of life to relate the philosophy of well-being to sustainability, there remain troubles with operationalizing a life-based principle in energy but policy decisions. while energy issues additionally (as is more common require social evaluation rather than only strictly technological concern), this imperative is easier said than done, since gaps exist between theory and practice and between values and action. this study will investigate the former knowledge gap in order to determine what is still missing to make principles of the sacredness of life more immediately useful to guiding energy policy decisions to address the latter action gap. 2 the invitational “we” is used throughout the paper to refer to anyone interested in joining the conversation, as used in the work of julia annas (2015), attributed to bernard williams. it includes philosophers, energy researchers, sustainability advocates, policymakers, decisionmakers, and anyone else generally curious about their lives, others’ lives, or energy. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ life within energy policy 71 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ throughout this article, phrases such as the “value of life”, “sacredness of life”, “reverence for life”, or “life-affirming” will synonymously refer to giving priority to life within the values or ideals that an individual or group holds. for much of this paper, “life” will refer to being alive, as opposed to a nonliving object or being dead, but it will be shown that this simple definition does not capture all uses of the term. though there are other theories that also take this name, a philosophy that holds life in high regard is referred to as “vitalism”, as opposed to say autonomism, which would hold autonomy in high regard. for purposes of this paper, a weak vitalism is adopted, i suggest that life should be given more value than is commonly given to it today, even taken for granted at times, but not the only thing of value. furthermore, while the particular case study will not be discussed in terms of its impacts on other creatures, a weak biocentric approach is utilized which contends that nonhuman lives also matter such that less trivial interests of humans may sometimes be outweighed by survival interests of nonhumans. this view is not as strong as a biocentric outlook that values any one animal, plant, or microbe equally as a human. i aim to open new values perspectives to individuals who are not as naturally inclined to these views. new ways of giving voice to individuals who have such perspectives but have not found a good way of putting their view into words are offered. yet, perspectives, closer to more mainstream views are adopted in order to open the conversation in a gentler way to a wider audience. the discussion begins with a quick review of well-being and sustainability philosophy that suggests a usefulness for the concept (“life”) that might be currently underutilized. this paper is primarily a work within the emerging field of energy ethics, which i will describe as a modern form of environmental ethics linking various matters from theoretical philosophy of ethics, economics, and politics to sustainable business and science scholarship. next, a thought experiment reveals that life makes a good supplement to common metrics in energy decision-making rather than a stand-alone substitute. vagueness and ambiguity reveal difficulties that come with operationalizing life as a metric, but thinking in terms of ethics brings to attention its strength and significance. consent in a participatory process informed by life cycle analysis is suggested to put ethics into action and to begin to give value to life within energy decision-making. lastly, the navajo generation station provides a case study where lives are on the line in some form on both sides of the decision to shut down or continue operation. however, the case also shows that these problems will not be solved easily and that there is still much work to do to explain how considering life can help us make better decisions. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ jacob bethem 72 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 2. relating life, well-being, and sustainability when we greet someone asking, “how are you?”, we are informally doing something similar to asking more formally, “on a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your life over the last 24 hours?”. that is to say that evaluating how a life is going is a common practice, operationalized in a variety of ways. this area of research is the focus of ethics, positive psychology, and philosophy of well-being. the formal way just described is a type of life satisfaction question that appears in surveys assessing subjective well-being. however, life satisfaction is not the only form of subjective well-being assessment, and subjective well-being is not the only type of well-being. positive affect, or happiness, is another subjective form, and aristotle’s flourishing (2002), sen’s and nussbaum’s capabilities (robeyns and zalta 2016), and other objective forms exist. little and treanor argue that none of these forms properly captures a comprehensive notion of well-being more useful for ethical policy-making than the conventional, abstract, philosophical sense of the term (veenhoven 1999). their worry is that a life that is going well could be considered going poorly if its impact on other lives or the environment is negative. as they see it, well-being is often only assessing the individual in a vacuum, ignoring the context and surrounding community. for instance, the healthiest, richest, happiest person might be doing others down in the process, and that life would not be respectable and is likely disrupting the community, which would make for poor policy. therefore, to properly operationalize well-being, we cannot neglect the moral aspects of well-being, just as aristotle historically presented his view of the good life including moral assessment. in this way, when we try to put a conception of well-being to work in policy-making, we might think of kantian, democratic, ethical ideals of universalism (that a rule should apply to everyone, or it is not a just law) or arguments trying to explain egoism in such a way as to make it work when adopted by everyone (which are not commonly accepted as reasonable ways of living in society) (kant 2008). a policy should work for everyone (or to the best of our ability do no harm), and in order to have a proper policy of well-being, we need a comprehensive sense of well-being that includes impacts on others and the environment. policies which destroy lives would be tough to argue as just laws. so, the well-being philosophy that provides grounding principles used in constructing the rule should include notions that can account for lives impacted, and energy policy is no exception. assessing real impacts on other lives not only helps give a more comprehensive sense of well-being that can guide energy policy, but it also http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ life within energy policy 73 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ provides a fundamental value which can direct sustainability and further support public policy theoretically from a different approach. that is, besides saying that a particular energy policy supports “well-being”, by more specifically speaking of whether that policy supports “life”, you are also able to portray a sense of how sustainable that policy is. as i hope to elaborate throughout this discussion, the vitalistic perspective of the sustainability movement contends that what it is that is to be sustained when we are planning for sustainability is life. therefore, a system that unnecessarily destroys life would be an unsustainable system. as far as sustainability is a proxy for that which is ethical, a life-destroying system would be unsustainable and also thereby be unethical. with this translation, schweitzer’s (1936) principle contending that which affirms life is ethical, and that which destroys life is unethical, is reflected in this perspective 3. as cicovacki (2007, 8) interprets schweitzer, his principle is better translated as two principles – (1) do not destroy life, (2) enhance life. other components of well-being or quality of life are then second in priority to being alive, and this corollary recognizes lifestyle is also important for life-affirmation. in a similar way, since life is commonly required for well-being, a policy must first protect life before it could properly claim to be supporting well-being, and if the policy is protecting some lives while destroying others, it is arguably not supporting the more comprehensive notion of well-being that little and treanor describe. this perspective unites sustainability and well-being through ethics since initiatives that reflect sustainability or that enhance well-being are generally more likely to be considered ethical than those that are unsustainable or that impair well-being. although some authors have tried to link sustainability and well-being, their work has come up short without pinpointing the specific value that grounds sustainability theory (o’neill 1993, 2006, 2008; o’neill, holland, and light 2008; kjell 2011; o’brien 2013). additionally, dale jamieson finds that defining sustainability does not do enough to properly operationalize the term, especially when taken to mean that anything should be sustained (1998). in those cases, without some underlying value, people might work past each other or even against each other in trying to reach their potentially conflicting goals. as he suggests, the sustainability movement is founded on certain principles that share common values. while 3 daniel callahan (1969) offers additional arguments to support the value of life and five referents that may be invoked in vitalistic rules, including integrity of: species survival, family lineage, being alive, individuality, and body, but space does not allow a comparison of these arguments or comparisons to the definitions of life given later. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ jacob bethem 74 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ it is sometimes difficult to put those principles into words, jamieson cites the work of rajni kothari, who advises, “we should treat all life as indispensable” (kothari 1994). kothari provides the foundational value of the sustainability movement – a biocentric vitalism. the sacredness of life discourse has roots in environmental ethics literature discussing the limits of moral considerability – deciding who matters in ethical decisions. kenneth goodpaster extended moral considerability to all living beings, going beyond peter singer’s inclusion of all sentient creatures (singer 1975; goodpaster 1978). this expansion of considerability based on having life gives life an important role in decision making guidance. life matters in morality, and it provides a key value that is used as the criterion to qualify for moral considerability. it is attributed this significance due to constituting the very thing essential for our nature. life can be said to have instrumental or intrinsic value. without life, we cannot do anything. being alive is not a meaningless or trivial idea, and it is not the same as merely existing – which also happens as a memory, even in some sense if you are already dead, even some senses of not yet being born, etc. even objects exist, but schweitzer (in 1936) contends that being alive inherently gives teleology or purpose through the notion of the “will to live”, supporting life’s intrinsic value. in this way, life’s value provides theoretical support for notions of social and environmental sustainability where lives are impacted from multiple angles. multiple avenues of support are important since instrumental value is sometimes treated as dehumanizing and since intrinsic value or meaning of life are criticized by some perspectives as noncredible. so, as far as policies include elements of sustainability or impact lives, we ought to be explicit about those impacts if we are concerned about the morality of those policies. in the bigger picture, this vitalistic view of policy-making seeks to align the mission of social planning (within governments, businesses, or other organizations) with individual lives and livelihoods uniting us all (humans) with a shared sense of purpose to lead mutually-enhancing lives, which also respects nonhuman lives. 3. defining life comprehensively and fundamentally is powerful now that life has shown usefulness in a theoretical sense in two different fields helpful to supporting policy-making in a way that somewhat unites them, it can be compared to other metrics. life has moral significance which obligates us to avoid unnecessarily taking lives, and this obligation along with a secondary corollary to help life to flourish gives a sense of purpose http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ life within energy policy 75 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ important to creating more sustainable societies. just as life adds to other elements of well-being to produce a more comprehensive notion, so too can life add to policy evaluations by complementing metrics in a comprehensive way. however, it is unclear whether using the notion of “life” escapes all of the concerns that using other metrics bring, as will be explained. gross domestic product (gdp), jobs, health, sustainability, and carbon emissions are examples of metrics or buzzwords for evaluating climate change policy success, and each have drawbacks which can highlight difficulties for using life as a metric. for instance, gdp is often criticized for failing to account for unfairness due to unequal distribution of wealth (beckerman 2010). the same might be said for lives. some countries have more people, live longer, or have better quality of life than others. each might be construed as a distribution inequality of life, since each aspect is dependent on resource availability. while it is more typical to consider differences in these aspects between countries as differences of the distribution of resources, in effect, they are also instances of distribution of the effects as well, and it ultimately determines how large of a population can survive there and how well. quality of life also relates to the problems of using jobs as metric of success. the jobs may not be meaningful or provide proper benefits to employees; therefore, only counting them would be not so telling of their significance to the population. health suffers from similar problems as well-being, but it is not as fleeting as happiness is sometimes considered and has a more credible regard since happiness is not always taken academically. in some senses, life might not be taken credibly, as when denoting a person’s social reputation, which is to say that sometimes our reputations are not realistic portraits of us as individuals; so, our lives depicted as a measurement taken through public image would be similarly inaccurate. lastly, sustainability has difficulties being defined by a single measure and is not understood by everyone, making it a difficult metric to utilize. life suffers from these problems, too. the vagueness of what we mean by “life” could be difficult as life can mean at least a few different notions: • life1 being alive. • life2 lifestyle, the choices we make, the actions we do. • life3 all well-being components. • life4 the community of all organisms. it is too easy to equivocate these different senses, which is a logical fallacy, though they are not always equally significant and sometimes conflict with one another. as with other metrics, carbon emissions are a very specific factor impacting climate change, which is a strength for certain applications, but do not cover all concerns about living well. even if carbon emissions were completely controlled, there would still be other worries. life1 might http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ jacob bethem 76 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ be similarly overly specific, since being alive is important, but countless other concerns then follow. further, life2 and life3 might be too broad to be used practically. life4 might be something like the plural form of life1 (see also intersubjective well-being in lee and kim 2016). although, since it refers to a multitude of beings, the nonhuman reference would likely give many folks discomfort. not everyone brings to the table vitalistic (valuing life above anything else) or biocentric (biased toward living organisms) values. when we consider one of these meanings of “life”, we still may be neglecting or taking for granted the other meanings. even with these difficulties, life (including meanings 1-4) provides the functionality that other metrics target in their use and more, but each meaning should be addressed individually so as not to equivocate this complex concept. furthermore, it is also important to also address the concept of life as a complex. being alive (life1) allows any individual to have well-being (life3) and to have a lifestyle (life2), and how any individual acts (life2) (which is to say how the individual uses life1) impacts others’ well-being (life3) for humans and nonhumans (life4). recognizing this complex, created by the interrelation of these meanings of life and interrelation of living beings, refers to the comprehensive notion of life as a system, uniting these meanings rather than merely equivocating them. the interdependence between these notions is sometimes as important to protect as any component is. when considering well-being beyond an individual, it becomes an ethical task (rather than merely prudential) which expands “the good life” to consider others and enters social and environmental realms of sustainability. in this way, life is both fundamental and comprehensive, since it is the unit of interest as well as the system of significance. while a variety of meanings of life creates some ambiguity, it also offers flexibility. the term captures a sense of all of these meanings and provides the extra aspects of being what animates us and what unites each of us together and with the planet. life is special in this way. other terms do not inherently capture all four of these senses (life1-4), and what that allows is a single concept that refers to both what we choose and whether someone is alive or dead. in this way, it is powerful. like no other term, it is immediately referring to two ends of a causal chain – our choices impact lives. this realization is too often taken for granted 4, but it is often said that we manage what we measure. ungar and miller make the case that most of the population does not (perhaps cannot, due to overwhelming vastness of information) stay informed on all issues, let alone consider themselves experts in technical subjects such as 4 it is much harder to ignore in the personal accounts within eerkens 2014 and hedges and sacco 2012. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ life within energy policy 77 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ energy or energy policy (miller 1983; ungar 2000). because of the invisible nature of emissions harms, some specialty knowledge is required to realize some of these dangers. therefore, it is likely that the general public, many policy makers (such as a congress made up of experts on law rather than energy), and even some energy experts (such as those scientists who understand the materials and physics of energy generation without much knowledge of social implications) do not realize all the ways in which lives are endangered throughout the energy system. if we are more explicitly considering how our choices are going to impact lives, while noting that being alive is an irreplaceable and irreproducible characteristic with more weight than most other decisions which are often practically reversible, then we more explicitly adopt a moral framework, one that highlights the sacredness of all life. by doing so, we can augment any other metric, by including the context (quantitative and qualitative assessments of impacts on lives) that gives each of us purpose. 4. how the proposed process differs we can see how it would work in an energy case. for instance, if building a new power plant will raise gdp, how that gdp will impact lives can be weighed against the polluting emissions’ impact on lives, human and nonhuman. this evaluation is different from merely comparing gdp to emissions, such as converting dollars to tons of co2. i am also advocating for something more than merely converting dollars or tons of co2 to number of lives saved or quality-adjusted life years (qaly’s). using a metric of lives saved turns each dilemma into a “trolley problem”, which is simple but still allows individuals to be sacrificed against their will for a greater good, which is commonly criticized as immorally overstepping moral boundaries. it is also problematic to merely say, someone will die either way. while it might tend to be true these days, not all sources of energy generation take lives as quickly as the next form 5. it is also not the case as in a trolley problem that the people cannot give their say. however, a participatory process 6 whereby all moral patients (positively or negatively) affected by the proposed power plant can be informed 5 some examples of comparisons of lives lost across various energy forms in phadke 2010. 6 policy-making and participatory governance is an art that requires practice because each attempt brings unique mixes of responses rather than a science that can simply follow a recipe for success each time. however, advice for effective engagement from the perspective of abusive instances of the process can be found in snider 2010 and arnstein http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ jacob bethem 78 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ and weigh in whether they consent to the project would be a much more morally comfortable state of affairs. in that situation, they can offer other opinions or alternatives, which vitalists would argue should hold a prominent place in the dialogue, with survival and health concerns getting priority over technical matters. for instance, because of its importance, the initial consideration might be to delay consideration of any alternatives that would result in deaths unless it is determined that no nonlethal options are available, which then opens consideration to less lethal options. in this way, a default stance as on top of a decision tree begins on the side of life and keeps it in a high place of value, prioritizing decisions in favor of protecting life (see bartha and desroches 2016 for more on this technique). through this suggested method, it relieves some of the most intimidating moral tension within the community and helps to establish the sense that energy is creating “clean money” and “gives the community a voice” (bomberg and mcewan 2012). as mentioned earlier, it need not be the case that everyone is treated as a vitalist, but to the extent that they do not consent to a harm in their life, particularly if it is a threat to being alive, we should do everything in our power to comply to that preference. i make this claim within reason – someone disapproving of the view of a landscape being altered by a wind turbine would not have the same weight as someone else’s fear of a nuclear meltdown (barry, ellis, and robinson 2008). giving both the public and decision-makers information on energy harms, speaking more directly about those impacts, prioritizing concern for them, and providing an avenue to express concerns together contribute to creating a type of informed consent or procedural justice that is becoming more strongly advocated in energy justice literature. to facilitate making the value of life more explicit in energy policy contexts, it would be helpful to have full life cycle assessments of each energy form (laurent and espinosa 2015). from extraction to generation to use and wastes created, if all the impacts on lives along the value chain were detailed, we could more easily see in particular cases what is at stake, to make more informed choices, and also to attempt to construct workarounds to resolve as many of those hindrances as possible. we may not need to go so far as to say that there are never cases when it is acceptable to lose a life, but it is important to be aware of precedent for such reasoning and that such reasoning has been filtered through public consent. consent could be collected through typical avenues such as town halls or through surveys administered through electric companies. perhaps, they can be 1969. a “consultative” and “deliberative” process as described in warren 2008 is hoped, as working so well that the government is fearful of protests if it is ended. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ life within energy policy 79 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ sent along with energy bills or posted within a section of customers’ online accounts. forums with the most highly impacted groups might be the most effective way to offer information while giving the best opportunity for feedback, and also could help to build rapport between various stakeholder groups. with nonhumans, it would be more difficult to determine consent, but gauging species diversity, lifetime, and population sizes of various species could help to devise whether their lives are being respected. with transparent and engaged discussions, we can better understand so-called exceptions to the rule. similar examples of exceptional cases of loss of life are available in just war theory, morality of abortion 7, and can be found, for example, in chris edwards’ good reasons to kill anthology. with these exceptional cases, we might also be able to set a precedent for what is acceptable compensation as anticipatory justice if the threat is such that cannot be eliminated or also to address what may have been hidden historical inequities brought to light during engagement, offering a chance for restorative justice as well. after all, forgiveness is one of the only ways to break cycles of violence or hate and has a way of resetting relationships back on an even keel. reconciling with other communities can go a long way toward incorporating new social and economic relations for mutuallybeneficial paths toward sustainability. while this safeguard could be seen as fair to some, it may conjure the worries of immorally monetizing a life as in the notorious case of the ford pinto. however, if the moral patients, those impacted by the decision, are included in the deliberation of the moral agents and consent to the compensation (perhaps even paid to move if no solution can be achieved, but sufficient public approval has been gained), then this worry is nearer to being alleviated. 5. navajo generating station although an initial decision was made to shut down the navajo generating station (ngs) coal plant in page, arizona, in 2017, a last-minute agreement has extended operation until 2019 (rainey 2017; randazzo 2017). the decision is ominous since no transition plan for the employees was created 7 the topic of abortion is extremely controversial, and while i do not mean to bring too much attention here to cases of one life versus another, i only mean to mention that abortion is an interesting topic here because exceptions including when the fetus’ or mother’s life is in danger, rape, incest, or serious health complication for the fetus are specifically listed in literature to create discussion about whether or not the moral verdict changes in any particular case. putting these details on the table to determine what ought or ought not to be an exception is important for setting a justified precedent. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ jacob bethem 80 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ in advance; stakeholders are only beginning to come together to decide alternative plans. ngs is owned (42.9%) and operated by salt river project (srp), leasing the land from the navajo, while the bureau of reclamation (24.3%), arizona public service (14%), nevada power (11.3%) and tucson electric power (7.5%) share ownership. though over 90% of the employees at ngs are navajo (according to www.srpnet.com), the navajo tribal government has authority for setting electricity rates for its territory but otherwise has little involvement in plant management, besides deciding whether the land lease can be extended. the plant loses tens of millions year to year since plants fueled by natural gas in the us currently offer cheaper electricity (randazzo 2017). it is unclear how much of an impact the $51 million in revenue that navajo and hopi tribes receive annually for leasing the land represents, as sources estimate the impact between 8% (sanzillo 2017) to 40% (navajo-hopi observer 2017) of tribal budgets. the energy loss will be made up through supply available across the grid, and the money can be made up with new business ventures; therefore, this issue is not an energy issue and not strictly a financial issue, but a moral one, as workers are threatened with job loss. as the plant is one of the top-10 most polluting in the us (schneider, madsen, and boggs 2013, 28), this case includes lives on the line through unhealthy emissions weighing against the lives and livelihoods of the plant workers, coal miners, and 2,000-3,000 folks with indirectly-related jobs that could be lost, but reports cite economics rather than lives as the determining factor (randazzo 2017). kayenta mine, owned by peabody coal, also exclusively services ngs; so, roughly 700 employees between the mine and plant could become displaced. those 700 direct job losses represent approximately half of the lechee chapter population (about 1,400) or are roughly 10% the size of page’s population (about 7,500 according to the us census), while the indirect jobs outnumber the chapter population or are approximately 30-40% of page’s population. what makes the case more complex is that the navajo identify so closely and have livelihoods so dependent on the plant, that their lives are arguably more directly affected than citizens downwind of the smokestacks. while the navajo nation is historically marginalized, facing such issues as historical pollution-damaged soil and waterways, alcoholism, unemployment, food insecurity, poor education, lack of electricity, heat, and running water, criminality including rape and murder, and high suicide rates (tsosie 2009; noisecat 2015; nadesan and pasqualetti 2016), the decision to close could exacerbate problems. attention is being brought to this community in order to reflect a rawlsian recognition that any one of us could wind up in a similar situation and that we should prioritize helping the least wellhttp://www.ledonline.it/relations/ http://www.srpnet.com life within energy policy 81 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ off. however, the plant workers might not be the least well-off since they regularly receive higher salaries, insurance, and retirement compensation, which many retail workers in page do not receive (wyloge 2017). within navajo culture, a sense of identity tied to place creates a reluctance to move to live or work elsewhere, further complicating decisions. for the employees, it is not as simple as relocating, as the closest major city is flagstaff (over 2 hours away), closest coal plant is likely four corners power plant (although also partially owned by srp, is over 3 hours away in new mexico), and since both coal and nuclear plants are facing closures across the country (haggerty 2017; kennedy 2017). relocation may only delay the problem temporarily. it is important to accommodate them, but it is not clear whether they are readily inclined to build renewable energy facilities, especially on sacred grounds (though one solar installation has opened, smith 2017) or to take up new schooling or training, since the education provided to them is some of the worst in the country. even if we feel a moral imperative to save lives lost due to emissions by closing down the plant, we ought to develop a transition plan to protect the lives of the workers as well, so that we are not merely trading some lives for others. in any case, there is immediate concern to recognize their preferences and to allow them to participate in the transition process. asking the employees if they prefer a pension, retraining, or relocation is not enough. since this community has multiple difficulties, it is important to survey citizens to determine which concerns are most pressing for them, which ought to be addressed first. this moment presents a window of opportunity to reach out beyond employment, to care for other needs of the workers and their families as well as other members of the community who also struggle. the historical pollution harms in this area might also be remediated to help the health of both humans and nonhumans. who takes on these responsibilities and how they are funded are intimidating challenges with no single solution, but the universities and energy companies in the area (including both utilities and solar providers) are joining coalitions to assist. what this example illustrates is that lives are on the line from both decisions (keeping it running or shut down); so, considering lives is no simple calculus. even with the plants remaining in operation for the time being we should assess the injustice imposed on any unwilling victims of the air pollution and how to satisfy moral obligations owed them; otherwise, we are disrespecting their human dignity. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ jacob bethem 82 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 6. conclusion an awareness of other lives brings to attention a greater sense of moral awareness, including previously neglected moral patients, such as marginalized cultures or nonhuman beings, into consideration. looking out for their well-being reflects back on how well (or not so well) our lives are going and how sustainably (or not) we are living. externalizing negative effects of our actions for others to manage is irresponsible, and we ought not to enact energy policy in the name of one group through the sacrifice of another non-consenting group. in this way, we betray the sacredness of life and dodge moral obligation. in the case of energy decisions, a systematic perspective reveals impacts on the line in a variety of ways through any form of energy considered, but we can be better mindful of these consequences and more receptive to others’ preferences. i have demonstrated that life provides a moral context complementary to well-being philosophy, that life provides a moral foundation to the sustainability perspective, and that life provides a moral context for policymaking. with life in view, we should conduct life cycle analyses of energy options because with such information, we can adhere to moral principles of consent and respecting the rights of others. prioritizing alternatives that are least lethal and helping communities that are the least well-off will contribute to creating a more sustainable and more ethical system. protecting life first, before turning to seeking ways to enhance those lives, follows a vitalistic prioritization. if it turns out that we inevitably cannot construct and operate energy systems without losing lives, we would at least be assured that the dignity of those individuals lost are respected, willingly risked, and fairly compensated. references annas, julia. 2015. 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york: harpercollins. smith, noel lyn. 2017. “navajo tribal utility authority opens first large-scale solar farm”. the daily times, july 30. http://www.daily-times.com/story/ news/local/four-corners/2017/07/30/navajo-tribal-utility-authority-opensfirst-large-scale-solar-farm/493090001/. snider, j.h. 2010. “deterring fake public participation”. the international journal of public participation 4 (1): 89-103. treanor, brian. 2010. “environmentalism and public virtue”. journal of agricultural and environmental ethics 23: 9-28. tsosie, rebecca. 2009. “climate change, sustainability, and globalization: charting the future of indigenous environmental self-determination”. environmental energy law & policy journal 4 (2): 189-255. ungar, sheldon. 2000. “knowledge, ignorance and the popular culture: climate change versus the ozone hole”. public understanding of science 9 (3): 297312. veenhoven, ruut. 1999. “the four qualities of life: ordering concepts and measures of the good life”. journal of happiness studies 1: 1-39. warren, mark e. 2008. “governance-driven democratization”. university of british columbia, interpretation in policy conference, university of essex, june 19, 2008. http://faculty.washington.edu/jhcook/seminar/governancedriven%20democratization%20talk%20revised%2012-12-08.pdf. wyloge, evan. 2017. “as coal plant shutdown looms, arizona’s navajos and hopis look for economic solutions”. navajo-hopi observer, november 7. https:// www.nhonews.com/news/2017/nov/07/coal-plant-shutdown-looms-arizonasnavajos-and-hop/. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ https://environmentamericacenter.org/sites/environment/files/reports/dirty%20power%20plants.pdf https://environmentamericacenter.org/sites/environment/files/reports/dirty%20power%20plants.pdf https://environmentamericacenter.org/sites/environment/files/reports/dirty%20power%20plants.pdf http://www.daily-times.com/story/news/local/four-corners/2017/07/30/navajo-tribal-utility-authority-opens-first-large-scale-solar-farm/493090001/ http://www.daily-times.com/story/news/local/four-corners/2017/07/30/navajo-tribal-utility-authority-opens-first-large-scale-solar-farm/493090001/ http://www.daily-times.com/story/news/local/four-corners/2017/07/30/navajo-tribal-utility-authority-opens-first-large-scale-solar-farm/493090001/ http://faculty.washington.edu/jhcook/seminar/governance-driven%20democratization%20talk%20revised%2012-12-08.pdf http://faculty.washington.edu/jhcook/seminar/governance-driven%20democratization%20talk%20revised%2012-12-08.pdf https://www.nhonews.com/news/2017/nov/07/coal-plant-shutdown-looms-arizonas-navajos-and-hop/ https://www.nhonews.com/news/2017/nov/07/coal-plant-shutdown-looms-arizonas-navajos-and-hop/ https://www.nhonews.com/news/2017/nov/07/coal-plant-shutdown-looms-arizonas-navajos-and-hop/ the party of the anthropocene: posthumanism, environmentalism and the post-anthropocentric paradigm shift the party of the anthropocene post-humanism, environmentalism and the post-anthropocentric paradigm shift 1 francesca ferrando faculty member, nyu doi: 10.7358/rela-2016-002-ferr ff32@nyu.edu abstract this article accounts for an environmental standpoint to be part of the post-human approach by accessing the post-human as a post-humanism, a post-anthropocentrism and a post-dualism. the main goal of this paper is to call for a post-anthropocentric turn by emphasizing the fact that the anthropocene and the actual ecological collapse are only the symptoms; it is time to address the causes, which have been detected in the anthropocentric worldview based on an autonomous conception of the human as a self-defying agent. an urgent answer to this scenario lays in philosophy, and specifically, in a theoretical and pragmatical post-anthropocentric shift in the current perception of the human. this article reflects on the ideal, but also uneasy, practices of letting go of anthropocentric privileges. such changes can only result by fully acknowledging the human species in relation to the environment. the anthropocene shall thus be addressed, together with sustainable forms of producing (less), recycling and co-existing with other species, with a socio-political and cultural shift: a passage from humanism to post-humanism, here underlined in its specific meaning of post-anthropocentrism. the methodology of this article develops as an assemblage of theoretical thinking, creative writing and artistic image analysis. keywords: post-humanism, anthropocene, environment, evolution, new materialism, zero waste, ecology, anthropocentrism, human-centrism, art. 1. introduction this article wishes to highlight the urgency to develop the posthuman turn into a practice of existence which fully acknowledges post-anthropocen 1 my most sincere gratitude goes to roberto marchesini, eleonora adorni, thomas roby, and abigail orzolek. mailto:francesca.ferrando@gmail.com http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 francesca ferrando 160 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ trism as the necessary paradigm shift 2 in the manifestation of our futures, alongside with a post-humanistic perception of the human species in the broader frame of post-dualism. its methodology develops as an assemblage of theoretical thinking, creative writing and artistic image analysis. freely following the methodology set by ihab hassan in prometheus as a performer: toward a posthumanist culture? (1977) 3, the literary use of multiple voices will allow for a symbiotic approach based on an expanded notion of subjectivity (braidotti 2013), reflecting the ideal, but also uneasy, practices of letting go of anthropocentric privileges. if post-modernity can be seen as the pluralistic symphony of the human voices who had been silenced in the historical developments of the notion of “humanity” 4, the post-human era adds to this concert the non-human voices, or better, their silencing in what is currently defined as the sixth mass extinction, which is caused, directly or indirectly, by human actions (wake and vredenburg 2008). this paper argues that an urgent answer to this scenario lays in philosophy, and specifically, in a theoretical and pragmatic post-anthropocentric shift in the current socio-cultural perception of the human. such a shift can only result by fully acknowledging the actual state of things. humans do not live in a vacuum; if we ignore what is happening to the environment and to the planet, we are compromising our own futures. for instance, the levels of pollution which have been raising dramatically in the last fifty years, are directly affecting human health as well: the human and the environment are in constant and constitutive “intra-changes” 5. more specifically this article accounts for an environmental standpoint to be part of the posthuman approach by accessing the post-human as a post-humanism, a postanthropocentrism and a post-dualism. 2 the term is used here as a socio-cultural adaptation of the scientific explanation proposed by thomas kuhn ([1962] 2012). 3 this article is the first written piece of literature where the term “post-humanist” can be found. 4 not every human being has been considered as such and granted the same rights and privileges. think for instance of the history of slavery, of sexism and colonialism, among other historical recurrent occurrences. 5 i have used this neologism instead of the term “exchange” under the influence of karen barad notion of “intra-action” (2007). i find the term “intra-change” more precise than “exchange”: “ex” comes from latin, meaning “out”, while “intra” highlights how changes affect each term of reference, and the process of changing itself. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 the party of the anthropocene 161 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 2. the party of the anthropocene – act i welcome to the glamorous party of the anthropocene, organized by humans for humans. we are going to celebrate the supremacy of the human, achieved after centuries of poverty, disease and labour. we made it. after the death of god (nietzsche [1883-1885] 2006) and the death of man (foucault [1966] 1970), whoever is left, can dance wildly on their ashes. this is going to be once in a lifetime. excess will rule. we are going to drink all the bottles of alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages ever produced; we are going to eat all the lobsters, cows and chickens left on earth. everything will be provided: oak tables sustained on elephant tusks legs to dine under the stars, plastic flower seats designed by the most famous brands, personalized polystyrene plates to eat as much as you wish. and … guess what? we are going to live forever! alive non-human animals are not allowed. robots are allowed, if accompanied by humans – they need tickets too. 3. behind the scenes – act i if posthumanist culture is the matrix of contemporary performance, there is a matrix larger still: the universe itself, everything that was, is and will become. hassan 1977, 831 this article focusses on the conditio sine qua non of our futures. we are talking about the macroscopic aspect of the human condition, that is, the material grounding for our embodied experience, the place which has granted humans the possibility to adapt and evolve: earth, our planet, the macro body where our actions and enactments integrate. the ground producing the food sustaining our metabolism; the atmosphere containing oxygen, without which humans would not breathe nor survive. humans, like any other organism, have evolved and adapted in accord to their environments; such a relation has been mutually transformative and can be http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 francesca ferrando 162 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ defined as an “intra-action” (barad 2007). on one side, natural selection has been favoring those traits which would improve adaptability to surrounding environments (darwin 1859); on the other side, with their actions and manipulations of their habitats, humans have had a pronounced impact on the environment. such an impact has become so massive as to give rise to the informal geological era of the anthropocene. the anthropocene is a term coined by paul crutzen and eugene stoermer (2000) to refer to the informal geological time that marks the extent of the impact of human activities on a planetary level. it stresses the urgency for humans to became aware of pertaining to an ecosystem which, when damaged, negatively affects the human condition as well. an example can be seen in the alarming rise of cancer rates. according to the national cancer institute: “cancer is among the leading causes of death worldwide. in 2012, there were 14 million new cases and 8.2 million cancer-related deaths worldwide. the number of new cancer cases will rise to 22 million within the next two decades” (national cancer institute 2016). from a historical perspective, crutzen and stoermer locate the anthropocene in the latter part of the eighteenth century, clarifying: “to assign a more specific date to the onset of the ‘anthropocene’ seems somewhat arbitrary, but […] we choose this date because, during the past two centuries, the global effects of human activities have become clearly noticeable” (2000, 17). ever since, the majority of human societies have been currently performing their material interactions in ways that are leading to a point of non-return in ecological and sustainable terms. in his article, the climate of history: four theses, historian dipesh chakrabarty explains: “in no discussion of freedom in the period since the enlightenment was there ever any awareness of the geological agency that human beings were acquiring at the same time as and through processes closely linked to their acquisition of freedom. […] geological time and the chronology of human histories remained unrelated” (2009, 208). this species-driven emphasis on the human as an autonomous entity stands on the psychotic perception of the human body as separated from planet earth. let’s delve into this aspect more thoroughly. from a macro perspective based on scale, human bodies live on the cosmic body of planet earth, as much as, from a micro perspective, bacteria live on, or inside, human bodies. humans are in an essential relation to the planet: without it, humans would not be able to survive. let’s notice that the term “ecology” derives from greek oikos, meaning “home”, that is, the discourse on the place we inhabit. and still, in the anthropocene, a specific type of relationship is prioritized and taken for granted; specifically, the majority of human societies are in a relation of non-mutual symbiosis with planet earth: in biology, such a relationship is http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 the party of the anthropocene 163 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ defined as parasitic. parasitism takes place when one species benefits at the expenses of another (the host), although this view has recently been challenged (goater, goater, and esch 2001). in this case, the question is: can planet earth be considered an organism? in order to answer this question, the gaia approach may come to mind, with its emphasis on the earth as a self-regulating complex system (lovelock 1995; margulis 1998); and still, although offering an important contribution to the reflection, from a post-human standpoint, its perspective is not exhaustive. as rosi braidotti notices, the gaia hypothesis is “geo-centered”, proposing “a return to holism and to the notion of the whole as a single, sacred organism” (2013, 84). braidotti further explains: what is problematic about it is less the holistic part than the fact that it is based on a social constructivist dualistic method. this means that it opposes the earth to industrialization, nature to culture, the environment to society and comes down firmly on the side of the natural order. (2013, 84) here, i would also like to take distance from a vitalist approach, which would grant an intrinsic value to planet earth by perceiving it as alive, as in the case of the vital materialism proposed by jane bennett in vibrant matter: a political ecology of things (2010). bennett’s proposal of a strategic anthropomorphization and a recognition of vitality to nonhuman agents runs the risk of turning their existence into a humanistic assimilation, which dissolves the original encounter with alterity, in a homogenization and reduction of the difference to the same. furthermore, it is important to highlight the fact that the notion of vitalism is necessarily related to the notion of life (“vita” in latin), which should not be taken for granted. first of all, the current understanding of life is merely descriptive, not definitive. viruses, for example, exhibit some of the characteristics common to organic life, while missing others 6, challenging the biological concept of life itself 7. as michel foucault noted in the order of things: an archaeology of the human sciences: “life does not constitute an obvious threshold beyond which entirely new forms of knowledge are required. it is a category of classification, relative, like all the other categories, to the criteria one adopts” ([1966] 1970, 161). within the western scientific context, for instance, the discipline specifically devolved to the study of life is biology. the recurrence of the prefix bio in western disciplines, further emphasized by the development of contemporary biotechnologies and bioethics, within 6 for instance, metabolism, which is the reason why they depend on their host cell. on the exchange between the virus and their host cells, see villarreal 2004a. 7 in his article are viruses alive?, villarreal has stated: “viruses today are thought of as being in a gray area between living and nonliving” (2004b, 97). http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 francesca ferrando 164 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the frame of biopolitics 8, needs a closer inspection from a post-humanist perspective, since it stands on a hierarchical dualism. as giorgio agamben reminds us in homo sacer: sovereign power and bare life, bios, in its greek etymology, is ontologically posed through its opposition with zoē: “the greeks had no single term to express what we mean by the word ‘life’. they used two terms that, although traceable to a common etymological root, are semantically and morphologically distinct” ([1995] 1998, 1). zoē, which is common to all living beings, “animals, men, or gods” (agamben [1995] 1998, 1), can be defined as “bare life”; bios, on the other end, is particular to the human because is related to logos, is the life that gives life meaning, that recognizes humans as “human”. as agamben notices: the fundamental categorial pair of western politics is not that of friend/ enemy but that of bare life/political existence, zoē/bios, exclusion/inclusion. there is politics because man is the living being who, in language, separates and opposes himself to his own bare life and, at the same time, maintains himself in relation to the bare life in an inclusive exclusion. ([1995] 1998, 8) if, on one side, the notion of “life” exceeds the notion of the “human” (humans are included in it, but do not extinguish it), on the other, the notion of the human precedes the notion of life: “life” is a human notion, created by humans for the purpose of self-locating themselves in the larger picture; it is based on human canons, and thus such a concept radically varies in different cultures and epochs. rosi braidotti underlines the political and social implications of the zoē/bios dualism, echoing the hierarchies enacted by other structural pairs, such as female/male, nature/culture, black/white. as she notes in transpositions: on nomadic ethics: “life is half-animal, nonhuman (zoē) and half political and discursive (bios). zoē is the poor half of a couple that foregrounds bios as the intelligent half” (2006, 37). it is important to contextualize the notion of “life” and the privilege given to bios, instead of zoē, to deconstruct the socio-cultural onto-epistemological assumptions which gave rise to the era of the anthropocene. such a deconstruction highlights the inextricable connection between the anthropocene and anthropocentrism. let’s then focus on anthropocentrism, a philosophical viewpoint a philosophical viewpoint according to which human beings are the central or most significant entities; an episteme which invites to see the human species as unique, superior, in an ontological void, above all the other species; a somehow reductionist mindset which allows humans to view the world merely as a “standing reserve” (heidegger [1953] 1977, 8 for a contemporary reflection on the origins and meanings of biopolitical discourse, see esposito 2008. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 the party of the anthropocene 165 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 17), to quote heidegger and his critical view of modern technology. as a post-anthropocentric approach, post-humanism stresses the urgency for humans to became aware of pertaining to zoē and being part of an ecosystem which, when damaged, negatively affects the human condition as well. a point which is of crucial importance and that shall be highly remarked in this context is: there is no anthropocene without anthropocentrism. the anthropocene per se is not the problem, but it is one of the consequences of an anthropocentric weltanschauung, based on an autonomous view of the human as a self-defying agent. for the large majority of the human population worldwide, anthropocentrism is taken for granted, undiscussed, a moral imperative. “humans, the most intelligent ones”. “humans, the most evolved ones”. “humans, created in the image of god”. how many times have you heard these phrases? how many movies? how many documentaries? “humans, the most evolved beings”. masters of the environment, self-sustaining creatures in an existential monologue … and still, who are those humans? it is a fact that not every human being has been invited to the exclusive party of the anthropocene. it is a fact that some parts of the world are contributing less to this ecological collapse, and that areas with less economic resources are more vulnerable to its consequences. think, for instance, of the environmental justice movement in the united states which, at the historical people climate march 9 was mostly represented by “african american, indigenous and latino people who have fought against toxic waste dumps, mining, incinerators and coalfired plants that are overwhelmingly in their communities”, as dianne feeley notes (2014, 28). think of the toxic waste disposal in the so-called “triangle of death”, located the eastern area of the campania region in southern italy, where massive illegal dumping have been operated by camorra 10 and where the adverse effect on human health in this area have caused a high increase of liver and lung cancer mortality and congenital malformation (triassi et al. 2015). think of food distribution: on planet earth, some people suffer from malnutrition; other people eat processed food, causing problems both to their health and to the environment (alsaffar 2016); some other people waste gourmet food, which comes in unsustainable containers … 9 held on september 21, 2014, this is considered the largest climate change march in history, with an estimated number of participants on the order of 400.000. see feeley 2014. 10 a type of mafia originated in the region of campania and characterized by illegal activities. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 francesca ferrando 166 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 4. the party of the anthropocene – act ii the dancing is getting wild; the guests are already wasted, so wasted. those humans are loosing their minds … robots do not drink. do not eat. do not hassle. they observe, digitally devoted to their mindfulness; an electric charge, and they are satisfied. they observe humans, at the dawn of the anthropocene, smashing the head of the last lobster on earth, sucking one of its claws and throwing away the whole body: “hey, rob [that’s how they call their robots, when they want to be friendly] … it was not warm enough”. they see one older man cutting down the last cherry tree: its pits truly annoyed him. each time he walked to his suv to check his phone (his favorite football team was playing), they would stick under his shoes. so he cut the tree down and threw away his nike sneakers. now he can walk barefoot and engage in sexy dances. they notice one bored young lady stealing a hand soap container, made of bright red plastic in the shape of a juicy strawberry. she knows, her grandmother will surely love it: “how cute … this strawberry looks just real!”. she quickly empties it in the vase hosting the last plant of basil, and walks away so happy that she does not notice the sharp green quickly perishing under the silky foam. the robots observe, practicing non-judgment, non-attachment. one man engages with them; he is intoxicated and start to verbally abuse them: “you, stupid bots [that’s how they call their robots, when they want to be nasty]! you are always gonna be our slaves!”. his face is swollen. he suddenly burps and starts vomiting: too much alcohol, too much food, too much ego, at the party of the anthropocene … http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 the party of the anthropocene 167 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 5. behind the scenes – act ii everything flows, but this river does not flow anymore. too much waste, too much plastic silencing the voice of the water (fig. 1). the connection has been lost, all the fish have perished, their dead bodies are invisibly deteriorating under the garbage, but their smell impregnates the air: there is no going back  … in the era of the anthropocene, under the reign of anthropocentrism, the emphasis on the autonomy of the human does not take into account all the necessary relations and intrachanges that occur between the organism and the environment (for instance, in the processes of self-maintenance, such as food providing 11 and waste releasing). the centrality of the human implies a sense of separation and individuation of the human from the rest of beings. a radical response to such an approach is post-humanism which, as braidotti remarks, brings to the discourse “the idea of subjectivity as an assemblage that includes non-human agents 11 as cognitive scientist marvin minsky recalls in the society of mind: “each of the cells of which we’re made, including those inside the brain, requires some chemical energy in the form of food or oxygen” (1985, 283). figure 1. – picture by jayaprakash r “plastic floats” (2010) cc 2010. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 francesca ferrando 168 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ […]: we need to visualize the subject as a transversal entity encompassing the human, our genetic neighbours the animals and the earth as a whole” (2013, 82). humanism, with its emphasis on human expectionalism, may not be of help in changing direction. post-humanism, on the other hand, can be the turning point, by addressing the question “who am i?” in conjunction with other related questions, such as: “what am i?” and “where and when are we?” (ferrando 2014). this shift in the social and individual perception of the human is one of the most important challenges we are currently facing as a species, as individuals, as moral, ethical and social beings. as individuals who care about the future, because we know that the future is already present. it is here now, in our acts, in our visions, in our behaviors. in our words, in our dreams. in what we eat and what we drink. in what we produce and in what we buy. in what we recycle, and in what we do not recycle. our bright future, which is melting in our lovely hands … (fig. 2 and 3). figure 2. – picture by ligorano / reese art work “dawn of the anthropocene” (2014) cc by. figure 3. – picture by ligorano / reese art work “dawn of the anthropocene” (2014) cc by. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 the party of the anthropocene 169 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ dawn of the anthropocene is an ice sculpture by us-based artists nora ligorano and marshall reese; it was installed in new york city on september 21, 2014 coinciding with the u.n. climate summit (september 23, 2014) and the people climate march 12. ligorano and reese’s public art work wishes to “underscore the necessity for immediate action to confront global warming. we plan for the future, measuring 21 feet wide and 5 feet tall, to melt away” (2014). when i saw the future and i touched the cold, melting sculpture, i got chills … are my hands contributing to the melting of our futures? i am trying to live a sustainable life, i rarely buy prepared food and i use reusable shopping bags. and still, at the end of the week i have two big bags full of plastic garbage. my organic salad, fancily packaged by the brand “organic girl”, comes in plastic. my 100% grass-fed happy cows’ yogurt by “maple hill” comes in plastic. my local raspberries, which, according to the seller, are grown “with love and care”, come in plastic. my natural sea salt comes in hard plastic. even my recycling bags come in plastic. i know this has to change, but what can i do? on earth day 2015, nyc mayor de blasio publicly announced a promising environmental plan: new york city aims to cut waste 90 percent (nbc news 2015). since i live in new york city, i was literally thrilled by the news … until i read the deadline: 2030, which meant 15 more years from the time of the announcement. i still want to thank the mayor for addressing such a crucial point, i know that changes can be slow, but do we need all these years to make this change? more than anything, do we have 15 more years? can the earth sustain 15, 12 or even 10 more years of this type of economy? if you have diabetes, can you eat sweets for 15 more years? if you have skin cancer, can you sun bathe for 15 more years? my dermatologist, who is in her fifties, recently told me that she is seeing, on very young children, specific types of skin cancer which, until 15 years ago, she would only see on her senior patients. the cause? the ozone hole and the exposure to ultra violet radiation on the skin. this is the type of change she has witnessed in 15 years. 15 years were crucial in the worsening of a non reversible condition … unfortunately, we may not have 15 more years of such habits. this is vital. this is our legacy to the future. to the planet. to history. to herstory 13. to the non human species. to our progenies. to us. to our health. to our survival. 12 see note 8. 13 i am referring to the feminist use of this neologism, coined as a critique of conventional historiography. in fact, although the term “history” comes from ancient greek and is not related to the masculine pronoun, its development have focused uniquely on preserving male lineages and his-stories. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 francesca ferrando 170 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ we need to switch episteme right now. because we can. because we want. because there is no tomorrow. we are talking about one of the most important challenges we are currently facing as a species, as individuals, as moral beings who care about the future, as selfish beings who are worried about their own survival. because we know that the future is already present. it is here now, in our acts, in our visions, in our behaviors. in what we eat and what we drink. in our words, in our dreams. in our actions, in our thoughts. our post-human futures … i saw changes happening faster than i could have ever dreamt of. i saw the people in turin, the italian city i grew up in, learning very quickly how to bring their own plastic bags, once the supermarkets started to charge for them. partial solutions are there, if we want to find them. for instance, according to the encyclopedia of consumption and waste: “the scandinavian countries have the highest beverage container recycling rates in the world, with 98 percent of glass bottles, 92 percent of aluminum cans, and 90 percent of pet plastic bottles recycled in norway in 2009” (jørgensen 2012). and still, we cannot only take care of the symptoms, we also need to take care of the cause. we need to be aware of our anthropocentric biases in the way we look at the world, in the way we teach at school, at university, at religious centers, in the sports, in the media, in the streets, at work. in the way we talk to our children, to our parents, to our friends and to our families. let’s kindly, but firmly, explain to them why we need a post-anthropocentric paradigm shift; let’s practice post-anthropocentric behaviours in our daily practices of existence; let’s celebrate together the party of the post-anthropocene … 6. conclusions there’s a party goin’ on right here. a celebration which will last a thousand years … celebration by kool and the gang the main goal of this paper is to call for a post-anthropocentric turn by emphasizing the fact that the anthropocene and the actual ecological collapse are only the symptoms; we need to address the causes, which have been detected in an anthropocentric weltanschauung. the notion of ecology, in this paper, has been underlined in its greek etymology of oikos, that is, home. the anthropocene shall thus be addressed, together with sustainable forms of producing (less), recycling and co-existing with other species, with a socio-political and cultural shift: a passage from humanism to post-humanism, here underlined in its specific meaning of posthttp://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 the party of the anthropocene 171 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ anthropocentrism. at this stage of things, even the most anthropocentric of the humans shall realize that the survival of the human species is related to the well-being of their environment, and that existence evolves in relational, symbiotic, entangled intra-acting processes. post-humanism must happen now and it is already happening. each of our action resonates in the dynamic texture of spacetime. we are making the change right now, and its wave is going to reach the future. 15 years from now we will meet again at the party of the post-anthropocene, a celebration which will last a thousand years … and now the future is not melting in our hands any more. because we are enacting this paradigm shift. because we are now envisioning, realizing, acting. because we are now creating our personal, social and existential changes. right now. the future is here, in our hands. in our words, because we know that words are not innocent. words constitute our social narratives: actually, words create worlds. we are making a change right now, in the way we speak, by bringing post-humanism into the discussion. in our visions, by perceiving the non-dual fluidity of natureculture 14. in our actions and reactions, by engaging in post-anthropocentric ways of existing. this is the now, and nothing will ever be the same. references agamben, giorgio. (1995) 1998. homo sacer: sovereign power and bare life, translated by daniel heller-roazen. stanford, ca: stanford university press. alsaffar, ayten aylin. 2016. “sustainable diets: the interaction between food industry, nutrition, health and the environment”. food science and technology international 22 (2): 102-11. barad, karen. 2007. meeting the universe halfway: quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. durham: duke university press. bennett, jane. 2010. vibrant matter: a political ecology of things. durham: duke university press. braidotti, rosi. 2006. transpositions: on nomadic ethics. cambridge: polity press. 2013. the posthuman. cambridge: polity press. chakrabarty, dipesh. 2009. “the climate of history: four theses”. critical inquiry 35 (2): 197-222. crutzen, paul, and eugene stoermer. 2000. “the ‘anthropocene’”. global change newsletter 41: 17-8. 14 here, i am using the neologism “natureculture” (without the hyphen) as specifically developed by donna haraway (2003), to express that nature is already cultural, and vice versa, thus avoiding the simplification or essentialization of each term. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 francesca ferrando 172 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ darwin, charles. 1859. on the origin of species by means of natural selection: or, the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. london: john murray. esposito, roberto. 2008. bíos. biopolitics and philosophy, translated by timothy campbell. minneapolis: university of minnesota press. feeley, dianne. 2014. “the people’s climate march: what september 21st showed”. against the current 29 (5): 28. ferrando, francesca. 2012. “towards a posthumanist methodology: a statement”. frame journal for literary studies 25 (1): 9-18. 2014. “posthumanism”. kilden journal of gender research 2: 168-72. foucault, paul-michel. (1966) 1970. the order of things: an archaeology of the human sciences, translated by alan sheridan. new york: random house. goater, timothy m., cameron p. goater, and gerald w. esch. 2001. parasitism: the diversity and ecology of animal parasites. cambridge: cambridge university press. haraway, donna. 2003. the companion species manifesto. chicago: prickly paradigm press. hassan, ihab. 1977. “prometheus as performer: toward a posthumanist culture?”. the georgia review 31 (4): 830-50. heidegger, martin. (1953) 1977. the question concerning technology and other essays, translated by william lovitt. new york: harper torchbooks. jørgensen, finn arne. 2012. “scandinavia”. in encyclopedia of consumption and waste: the social science of garbage, edited by martin klimke and joachim scharloth. thousand oaks, ca: sage. retrieved on june 22, 2016. https:// ezproxy.library.nyu.edu/login?url=http://search.credoreference.com/content/ entry/sagecw/scandinavia/0. kuhn, thomas. s. (1962) 2012. the structure of scientific revolutions. chicago: the university of chicago press. ligorano, nora, and marshall reese. 2014. the dawn of the anthropocene. retrieved on june 22, 2016. http://ligoranoreese.net/dawn-of-the-anthropocene/. lovelock, james. 1995. the ages of gaia: a biography of our living earth. new york: w.w. norton & company. national cancer institute. 2016. cancer statistics. retrieved on june 22, 2016. http:// www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/understanding/statistics. margulis, lynn. 1998. symbiotic planet: a new look at evolution. london: weidenfeld & nicolson. minsky, marvin. 1985. the society of mind. new york: simon and schuster. nbc news. 2015. new york city aims to cut waste 90 percent by 2030. last modified april 22, 2015. retrieved on june 22, 2016. http://www.nbcnews.com/science/ environment/new-york-city-aims-cut-waste-90-percent-2030-n346121. nietzsche, friedrich wilhelm. (1883-1885) 2006. thus spoke zarathustra, translated by adiran del caro, edited by robert pippin. cambridge: cambridge university press. triassi, maria, rossella alfano, maddalena illario, antonio nardone, oreste caporale, and paolo montuori 2015. “environmental pollution from illegal waste http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 https://ezproxy.library.nyu.edu/login?url=http://search.credoreference.com/content/entry/sagecw/scandinavia/0 https://ezproxy.library.nyu.edu/login?url=http://search.credoreference.com/content/entry/sagecw/scandinavia/0 https://ezproxy.library.nyu.edu/login?url=http://search.credoreference.com/content/entry/sagecw/scandinavia/0 http://ligoranoreese.net/dawn-of-the-anthropocene/ http://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/understanding/statistics http://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/understanding/statistics http://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/new-york-city-aims-cut-waste-90-percent-2030-n346121 http://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/new-york-city-aims-cut-waste-90-percent-2030-n346121 the party of the anthropocene 173 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ disposal and health effects: a review on the ‘triangle of death’”. international journal of environmental research and public health 12 (2): 1216-36. villarreal, luis p. 2004a. “can viruses make us human?”. proceedings of the american philosophical society 148 (3): 296-323. 2004b. “are viruses alive?”. scientific american 291 (6): 97-102. wake, david b., and vance t. vredenburg. 2008. “are we in the midst of the sixth mass extinction? a view from the world of amphibians”. proceedings of the national academy of sciences of the united states of america 105: 11466-73. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 senseless distributions: posthumanist antidotes to the mass hermit senseless distributions posthumanist antidotes to the mass hermit davide sisto post-doctoral researcher, university of turin doi: 10.7358/rela-2016-002-sist da.sisto@gmail.com abstract this essay aims at showing how the “mass hermit”, as defined by günther anders, is the logical point of arrival of that philosophical process which has interpreted human subjectivity as a closed system, intended as the sum of two mechanically overlapped parts: a biological-natural one and a psychological-intellectual one. this figure is counterposed with a subject who is “always already somewhere else, trapped in a senseless distribution”, as defined by jean baudrillard. a subject who is intended as a “living circuit” (cf. schelling), a multi-identity that – like with dissipative structures – is regulated by the dialectical relationship between order and chaos. this essay aims at comparing these two human figures, showing how the philosophical fruitfulness of the second figure can be ascribed to its ontological hybridization with what is not human, beyond any unproductive anthropocentric conception of humanity. keywords: anthropocentrism, mass hermit, senseless distribution, living circuit, dissipative structure, rhizome, surpass-rebuild, technology, dualism, hybridizations. 1. surpass-rebuild. foundations of posthumanist thought whenever we try to determine a clear genesis of the concept of “posthuman” – with or without a hyphen – we cannot help but consider as a starting point two basic ideas: the surpassing of humanism and the corresponding rebuilding of the self (hassan 1977). surpass and rebuild: the acts of overstepping and going beyond, recalled by the first of the two verbs, imply the necessity of revising some conceptual parameters, those of modern humanism, that were given for granted throughout the development of western culture, and commonly – and uncritically – considered as belonging to our tradition, therefore intangible and unquestionable. in other words, there seems to be no reason to question the typical dualistic and rationalistic way of reading reality as it has developed throughout the centuries according to mailto:da.sisto@gmail.com http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 davide sisto 196 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ humanistic precepts, regardless of all different philosophical schools that have emerged one after another. the foundation of this way of reading is the idea according to which explaining reality implies the simultaneous presence of two distinct principles or elements, the oppositional character of which hides any possible pretension of complementarity, from which follows a praise of separation, isolation and distinction from an arbitrary perspective that ultimately aims at favouring the human privilege over all that is not human. as hans jonas points out, those very unilateral philosophical schools – materialism and idealism –, as they try to resolve dualism inside a particular form of monism, namely the one that stems from the distinction between substance and function in materialism and between consciousness and appearance in idealism, cannot in themselves elude the dualistic shadow. the error of both is distinguishing a first level form a second level of reality: to concentrate all their attention on substance or on consciousness is indeed a strategy that results in a sort of reductionism which, as it does not understand the complex and hybridizing character of reality, remains stuck on the separation that is typical to all kind of dualism and on which humanism has built its empire (jonas 1966). founding the act of “surpassing” on this awareness means that we cannot avoid the simultaneous act of “rebuilding”. indeed, trying to surpass a current of thought implies the lucid ability to rebuild it immediately, in an unprecedented form, from the ruins of what has been surpassed. and this is exactly the first aim of any posthumanist perspective, the inherent value of which depends on the ability to even out the pars destruens with a particularly convincing pars costruens. this essay wants to follow two parallel theoretical paths, which keep into focus the double act of surpassing-rebuilding that connotes every genuine perspective internal to a philosophy of posthumanism. along the first path we will try to highlight how the deepest degeneration of a dualistic interpretation of the man-world relationship must be the mass hermit as described by günther anders and related to the development – through the xx century – of mass media. along the second path, parallel to the first, we will show a possible alternative to the mass hermit, and develop an image of man that, identified by the features of a “living circuit” (schelling 1810), of a “dissipative structure” (prigogine and stengers 1978) and of a “rhizome” (deleuze and guattari 1980), lives with the awareness that his relationship with the non-human is permanently unstable, constantly redefined by hybridizations, contaminations and exchanges that attest how the individual, intended as pure and strong identity, does not exist but in the shifting form of someone “trapped in a senseless distribution” (baudrillard 1993). http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 senseless distributions 197 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 2. man as mass hermit: technological degenerations of anthropocentrism in 1956, when the first volume of the outdatedness of human beings is published, günther anders describes – with his typically disenchanted and sarcastic style – the harmful consequences on the relationships between man and world of the widespread diffusion of radio and television in the homes of western people. these considerations develop in a historical period when the man-world relationship is strongly marked by a process of mechanization of human activities, which harbours the hope of ultimately bringing to a solid perfection our biological flaws through means offered by the machines. these are the years when studies on cybernetics multiply, so studies on the idea according to which there is a similarity between the behaviour of living beings and that of communication machines, as showed above all in norbert wiener’s book the human use of human beings (1950). in this book wiener engages to show, on the one hand, the possibilities offered by machines in fields considered exclusive domain of human activities and, on the other hand, how the deciphering of messages and means of communication between man and machine can result in an improvement for our existence. wiener aims at optimising the resources, and at doing so by hybrid assemblies of technological and biological elements. particularly, he dwells on the – apparently commonplace – distinction between the figurine dancing in a carillon and animals tout court. as we all know, a carillon is nothing but a model arranged for automatically causing the figurines in it to move. it does imply a message, but such message is translated into a repetitive and unidirectional command, that causes just the movement going from the carillon to the figurines. there is no influence from past to future actions; each movement and communication is limited to the univocal and repeated relationship between the machinery of the carillon and the figurines, completely ignoring the presence of a world external to such relationship. in other words, the dancing figurines in the carillon are closed systems – isolated, catatonic and alienated – totally dependent on the founding mechanical laws of the carillon, which are subjected to no other influence and produce, in their turn, no effects external to themselves. by contrast, animals find themselves inside a complex web of messages and communications, through which they articulate their relationship with the world, so that the constant interaction between internal and external determines significant and mutual influences and changes. i draw a cat’s attention and he stares at me: this means i have sent a message to the cat, and he receives it with its specific sensory organs, assimilates it and then http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 davide sisto 198 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ reacts, in his turn, by a given act which will cause unpredictable effects on me. the cat is hungry and meows: the cat shows a specific need, so sends me a message that i receive with my own sensory organs, i elaborate, and then i react, in turn, with a specific act. from these obvious observations, wiener derives that modern machines, far from taking the carillon as a model, must be built keeping in mind the relationship between man and cat: namely they must be provided with sensory organs like with animals, organs that can receive external messages so as to generate a relationship between input and output as with animals. for wiener, building modern machines with sensory organs similar to those of animals is an effect of being aware of how degrading it is to segregate man in a factory and force him to carry out merely mechanical activities, which employ less than one millionth of his cerebral faculties. consequently, having at our disposal machines with features comparable to ours would allow to free man from his robotised working condition, leaving mechanical work to the machines, and to exploit the wide abilities of the human brain, that have been so far hindered by societies unable of taking full advantage. in other words, in the human use of human beings we find the intention of having the endless potential of the mind and brain interact with physical and bodily pleasures inside the human beings, an interaction that is usually prevented by working activities where the mechanical repetitiveness of actions clouds any possible spark of creativity (wiener 1950). in wiener’s intentions we can trace the roots of the way in which we intend technology nowadays, that nikolas rose effectively sums up with these words: technology, here, refers to any assembly structured by a practical rationality governed by a more or less conscious goal. human technologies are hybrid assemblages of knowledges, instruments, persons, systems of judgment, buildings and spaces, underpinned at the programmatic level by certain presuppositions and objectives about human beings. (1998, 26) in opposition to wiener’s considerations, integrated with rose’s definition of technology, günther anders maintains that, behind the intention of generally improving the human condition, the most important developments in the mechanical and technological field – such as the universal diffusion of mass media – secretly aim at reducing man to a dancing figurine inside a carillon, exploiting the idea of technology as “any assembly structured by a practical rationality governed by a more or less conscious goal”. both wiener and anders build their theories from the role robots start to play in the life of xx century human beings: yet, while wiener refers to the first definition of robot, indicating a “machine that emulates http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 senseless distributions 199 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the movements of animated bodies” so as to provide a valuable help to human activities, anders focuses on the second definition of robot, indicating a “person devoid of a will and performing gestures and actions automatically”. in other words, the theoretical difference between the two thinkers is based on the semantic opposition in the term “robot”, that can refer both to a machine that rises to the level of man, so man retains a qualitative superiority on the machine (wiener 1950), and to man lowering himself to the level of a machine devoid of consciousness, so that the machine becomes superior to man (anders 1956). we must now see why anders, from his point of view concerning mass media, cannot accept wiener’s perspective and consequently the first definition given to the word “robot”. first of all, according to anders, the new media have changed the established meaning of “mass”: this concept, as it retains the idea of a product of a process through which the individual is depersonalized in a uniform collectivity, with the spread of television no longer indicates a group of undifferentiated individuals gathering in a single place where they can develop emotional drives in compliance with the arbitrary demands of an external subject. it now indicates that people have been divided in the highest possible number of buyers: not the possibility that everyone consumes the same thing, but that everyone, driven by the same need, buys the same thing (anders 1956, 100). according to anders, from this division created by means of communication a particular model of man is born, the “mass hermit” (anders 1956, 102). with this expression he wants to define the millions of human specimens who, separated from each other yet all alike, sit like hermits inside their homes, not because they want to renounce the world, but rather because they don’t want to miss a second of a world totally encapsulated in its own audiovisual reproduction (anders 1956, 101-2). indeed, the mass hermit is nothing but the final, technological outcome of that philosophical process that gives a dualist and anthropocentric interpretation to the man-world relationship, namely starting: • from a complete identification of man with the structures of his consciousness, intended inside an antithetical bond with what has no consciousness in itself: namely, and broadly speaking, corporeality. in this way, man – considering himself as the only living being endowed with consciousness – can convince himself to be an exception in the universe; • from a radical reduction of the world to a representation that is subjectively produced by consciousness itself, so that it is impossible to conceive an objective reality independent from the gnoseological and epistemological instruments of the human individual. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 davide sisto 200 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ indeed, according to anders, mass media determine the whole transposition of the world from the outside to the inside, so that it finds its more congenial seat in the individual’s own room, in the form of an image to be consumed, of mere eidos, thus achieving on a practical level that conversion of the cosmos into a possessive, to which every form of philosophical idealism has aspired. the difference that is thus created between outside and inside, together with the attribution of a greater social relevance to the reproduced form over the original, causes the world, in the form of an image or a ghost as it is half-present and half-absent, to become my own representation or the outcome of my act of posing it, as it is the world itself that splits in two and, in its new imaginary and virtual form, meets me and my needs. the world that is represented in images and sounds from tv and radio, as it becomes my world, meets me and my needs: this sentence allows us to understand with precision the hermeneutical gap from the frame of interpretation inside which the gnoseological theories of philosophical idealism have developed. the concept of world that anders describes in relation to the rise of mass media is no longer – for example – that object of rational cosmology, an unconditioned unity of all external phenomena, of which kant said it could be thought but not known, according to an idea of knowledge that was completely unbalanced in favour of the conscious phenomenal individual. it is still a representation, unrelated to any form of objectivity that can transcend my peculiar way of interpreting it, but a representation that is built first and foremost outside of me and for me, according to that “practical rationality governed by a more or less conscious goal” which – according to rose – organizes the set of technologies (rose 1998): namely, the world represented through images and sounds by the television and radio comes to meet me and my needs in the sense that it comes with a “home delivery”, just like with gas and electricity (anders 1956, 110). this is a key moment, as it reveals a change of no small importance: i am no longer the active protagonist in representing the de-objectified world, as an individual provided with consciousness, but the role is taken by the technological device in itself, that turns me into a passive user who is given, from the outside, a world already made into representations in order to satisfy the more-or-less conscious aim that rules the practical reason. namely, “real” events are chosen, chemically purified and prepared for us as “reality” or a substitute of the same. since i dispose of this, as soon as it’s given to me from the outside, in the seclusion of my home, just as in all the homes of the other mass hermits like me, it generates in me the illusion to have a freedom of individual choice that actually hides the dissembled imposition of a unified lifestyle, inside of which actions, opinions and feelhttp://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 senseless distributions 201 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ings for the whole humankind are centrifuged. indeed, television and radio turn all citizens into passive spectators, and hand them over to programmes that are all alike through the different stations and channels (horkheimer and adorno 1969), conveying at will individual experiences and creating a ready-made reading of reality. this is precisely the “familiarisation of the world” (verbiederung der welt, anders 1956, 117), that is to say the process that makes people, things, events and situations feel familiar, even if they have nothing to do with our existence. three-dimensional cinema, hat was not invented for the sake of technical improvement nor to make the role of spectators more captivating, but rather for the desire to give maximum sensitive and spatial credibility to the suppression of the distance between what is given and those who are given; the familiarity between the spectator and the characters of tv fictions tailored by the screenwriters; the deliberate affectation that female tv presenters have to adopt; and the phantasmagoria of scenes inside of which everyday events are projected: all those are cunning forms of familiarisation that hide the intention to manipulate the lives of the citizens. ultimately, the alleged freedom of choice that should be guaranteed by mass media is nothing but a way to turn man into an outcome of mass production, where difference is seen as negligence, as an error in the weaving of the single specimen, as a consequence of non-predisposition, vagueness or strains in the manufacture product that is man (anders 1984). the mass hermit is involved in a world that is reproduced in images and sounds, that “is given” from the outside, so that he is nothing but an “undetermined article”, the automatic figurine – though in flesh and blood! – dancing on the carillon that wiener speaks about, as he finds himself involved in an autistic and alienated relationship with a fictitious world, depending from a mechanism where both the influences from and the effects on the outside are missing. just when we have closed the door behind us, the “outside” becomes visible; just when we have become windowless monads the universe is reflected for us; just when we have given our soul and body to the ivory tower, so that we sit inside instead of standing on it, just then the world is due to us, and touches us (anders 1956, 110). the alienated and solipsistic relationship between the mass hermit and the world reproduced in images and sounds through television and radio brings to the fore a series of aspects that show how his gradual automation implies an absolute identification of mechanisation and control (centini 1999). firstly, if things are arranged so that the world comes to me and not vice-versa, then i am no longer “in the world”, but i am just its passive consumer – the undetermined article or windowless monad mentioned above. secondly, as the world comes to meet me and my needs, but only http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 davide sisto 202 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ in the form of audiovisual representation, it is a ghost-world and not a real world. thirdly, if the world communicates with me but i cannot communicate with it, i am condemned to be debarred, and so subjugated. fourthly, if an event happening in a determined place can be transmitted and caused to appear in any other place in the form of “broadcasting”, it is turned into a movable good, even into an ubiquitous good and loses its principium individuationis that comes from a clear placement in space. fiftly, if the world is a movable good, that looks homologated and appears in a virtual way in countless specimens, it becomes a sort of serial product, turned into a merchandise in the moment it is supplied. finally, if the experience of the world is turned into the experience of a serial product, it means that indeed a world does not exist anymore and all our attempts at relating to it turn into fiction (anders 1956, 111-2). in order to support this consideration with an example, anders mentions a tale where an evil fairy heals a blind man. yet this healing does not consist in taking away the blind man’s cataract, but rather in a supplement of blindness: the evil fairy makes him unaware of the existence of his own blindness, makes him forget reality as it is, sending him dreams that endlessly follow one another (anders 1956, 125). 3. “trapped in a senseless distribution”: man as living circuit, dissipative structure and rhizome apart from anders’ philosophical and sociological reading of the changes brought by mass media in western society, certainly provided with an excessive pessimism, we want to highlight how the human figure of the mass hermit, as it is outlined by the german philosopher on the basis of the second meaning of robot, cannot but represent the technological degeneration of that reductionist and anthropocentric process to which, through the centuries, western culture has subjected the relationship man-world. the narcissistic belief to be “special” among the living beings, and so to have a particular privilege as the only being presumably endowed with reason and consciousness, gradually encourages the individual to become an undetermined article or a windowless monad, at the mercy of a ghostworld serially reproduced, the representations of which are “virtual”, tailored by the inner workings of mass media in order to achieve a rigid social control. this is to say that the mass hermit is for the ghost-world what the dancing figurines on the carillon are for the machinery that governs them. this shows how the gap between man and the world, brought about by http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 senseless distributions 203 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the anthropocentric conception of reality and leading to a depreciation of reality, to a cultural demonisation of all that is not consciousness and subjectivity, and to the sovereign power of representations, can turn against man himself. indeed, from a dominant subject of a world reduced to a mere object and instrument of his activity, he becomes in turn the object and instrument of a world that has been re-built in his own likeness to the extent that it takes control over him. if we want to take the relationship between man and world away from the technologically distorted reality where the mass hermit builds his existence, we need to follow the double process of surpassing humanism and rebuilding the self, starting from which the posthumanist theories of our days have developed. in order to achieve this, particularly useful are the words of jean baudrillard, in his book symbolic exchange and death, when he connects the typical western difficulty in considering death as an integral part of life to a strict and erroneous rationalistic concept of subjectivity. whether the cultural tradition of western humanism likes it or not, the individual never holds a fixed position inside a world that is simply represented, but he is rather constantly “trapped in a senseless distribution” in the folds of an unobjectifiable world, that endlessly influences and changes him. “in reality – baudrillard writes – the subject is never there: like the face, the hands and the hair, and even before no doubt, it is always already somewhere else, trapped in a senseless distribution, an endless cycle impelled by death” (baudrillard [1976] 1993, 159). the subject, that is never fixed and simply counterposed to an external object, and that is “always already somewhere else, trapped in a senseless distribution”, represents a way of relating to the world founded on mutual exchange, on hybridization, on contamination of elements that are never alike and fully corresponding. man trapped in a senseless distribution is not a closed system or an automatic being, that is to say a self-referring subject, devoted to the cult of the pure and unstained, and obsessed with cleansing, that is to say taking a diverging way from what is empirical and applied, a direction projected far from what is telluric and transcends experience, from what is incarnate and perceivable (marchesini 2002). this cleansing operation, based on fixism, namely on the idea that it is possible to give a definition of man that does not change with time, and on essentialism, namely on the idea according to which there are some traits in man that are exactly essential, that can identify and set him apart from other entities (longo 2015), is at the base of the atrophied relationship between man and world that serves as a background to the development of the mass hermit. the senselessly distributed man as defined by baudrillard is rather one who has the three basic features http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 davide sisto 204 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ of western anti-anthropocentric and anti-dualistic culture, that are fundamental in order to surpass humanism and at the same time rebuild the self, keeping the distance from a conception of man as an undetermined article. these features, strictly bound to each other, are: 1. being a living circuit, according to the precepts of the romantic-idealistic tradition derived from schelling (schelling 1810); 2. being a dissipative structure, as theorised by the sciences of complexity (prigogine and stengers 1978); 3. being a rhizome, as described by deleuze and guattari (deleuze and guattari 1980). first of all, man trapped in a senseless distribution is a living circuit where every term continually flows into another and where no element can be separated from the others, as each one needs all the others (schelling 1810). the conception of man as living circuit is developed by schelling at the beginning of the xix century, inside a radically anti-dualistic philosophical thought. his thought counterposes to the classic platoniccartesian distinction between res cogitans and res extensa the image of a man intended as a psycho-physical unit, starting from the assumption that in every living being – considering the original unity of the natural with the spiritual – the incorporeal and the corporeal correspond to and harmonize each other, so that it makes no sense to fix a rigid boundary between what is corporeal by definition and what is not. this aspect is very important in order to understand the kind of relationship that is established between the inside and the outside. indeed, man as a living circuit is the one who, by organizing and shaping himself, is open to what is outside of him, so as to be influenced and determined by it, and therefore placing himself inside a thick web of relationships that condition his own relationship with the world. in other words, the living circuit can organize himself only if he does not elude what influences this self-organizing process from the outside and changes it according to specific cases. in schelling this “outside”, that is fundamental for the self-organization of man as living circuit, is nature intended in spiritual, symbolic and mystical terms; a nature inside of which man is placed and that is both his fruitful starting point, from which he draws the impulse for constant self-development, and his dark abyss, an inhibitive force that recalls an ambiguous primordial state. according to this reading, external nature corresponds to internal nature and deeply influences the way man is. now, for a posthumanist reading of subjectivity, apart from any reference to the symbolic and the spiritual, the main points of interest of a conception of man as living circuit, according to schelling’s precepts, are the following: http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 senseless distributions 205 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ • relationality as ontological character of man as living circuit; yet, a relationality that is never harmonious, but rather marked by moments of unbalance, gaps, disharmonies, disturbances. the disharmony that characterizes this relationality, and that stems from schelling’s contrasting conception of nature, brings to the fore how unfruitful a merely rationalistic reading is, and underlines the influence of chance as well as how thin is the line that joins or separates logic from chaos. • the succession of balance and unbalance as founding element of the relationality of man as living circuit: a succession that defines the concept of life itself. the whole life of man as living circuit is structured on the boundary between balance and unbalance, a boundary that gives movement to it and drives it towards constant self-reworking. therefore: man as living circuit is undetermined by his nature, marked by a kind of order that can never do without chaos, by a kind of certainty that can never give up chance. relationality and the succession of balance and unbalance that characterize man as living circuit are the basic principles of the theory of “dissipative structure” developed by ilya prigogine and the theorists of complexity more than one century and a half after schelling (sisto 2013). dissipative structures indicate the tight affinity that can exist between structure and order on the one hand, and loss and waste on the other, so that conditions which are far from balanced can become a source of order. in life there are accidental crossroads where the tiniest fluctuations and moments of unbalance, happening under favourable circumstances, can generate new functions and behaviours. an apparently minor change inside or outside of man can be enough to determine a new discontinuity, from which follows a new creative event or a new organizing rule, from which again can follow both success and failure. as famously stated by napoleon, the outcome of a battle depends on a single instant that – during a fight – represents what makes the battle take a specific direction. dissipative structures must be thought in this sense: the central role of chance and chaos in human selfdevelopment (prigogine and stengers 1978; gandolfi 2008). the living circuit and the dissipative structure cannot but find their balance inside a definition of man that values his non-linear, non-univocal, non-consistent relationship with life and with reality in a broad sense. according to schelling’s and prigogine’s theories there is never a strong, static, self-centred and self-sufficient identity, namely a sovereign subjectivity independent from a relationship with the other. there are accidental or chaotic conditions, undetermined circumstances and crossroads that ontologically influence man; life itself, by definition, avoids order, rational rules and structures without obstacles. man thought as living circuit and http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 davide sisto 206 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ dissipative structure, unlike the mass hermit with his automatism, is a multi-identity open to contamination, the outcome of a creative process and not of a determined one, that constantly moves his own boundaries through exchanges, relationships, moments of unbalance. multi-identity implies a conception of the body as a fundamental threshold from which all relationships between the inside and the outside unravel, so that every single encounter with the biological and with the technological determines a significant change in the regulating principles of the vital activity of the single individual, and generates new forms, new identities, new living circuits. multi-identity, typical of a man inside of whom the romantic theory of the living circuit and the scientific theory of dissipative structure meet, is the element that best of all shows the bond between the romantics and posthumanism, as the following words demonstrate: […] multi-identity is an old idea that the romantics and modern culture have already expressed: inside of us we have many identities, as with dr. jekyll and mr. hyde, or even with the avatar. the image of a multitude belongs to the tales of the xix century and to popular tradition. there is never anything new, but everything happens again. multi-identity is the idea that, through communication forms that are no longer unidirectional, vertical and centralized, but are based on relation, interactivity and exchange, strong identities are not what is realized, but rather several identity moments that change according to conditions, to problems, to what is going on. (abruzzese and de kerckhove 2010; our translation) the several identity moment that outline the idea of a man that is alien to strong identities, as shown by the theories of living circuit and dissipative structure, cannot but remind us of the concept of rhizome as structured by deleuze and guattari, adding to multi-identity the belief that it is possible to create fruitful connections in all directions. rhizome, in reminding us that that there are never linear and vertical hierarchies we must necessarily comply with, following the rigid binary or dualistic categories of modern philosophical tradition, connects any point with any other, and each of its traits does not necessarily recall other traits of the same nature; it puts into play series of much different signs and also states of non-signs. the rhizome cannot be brought back to the one nor to the multitude. it is not made of units, but of dimensions or rather of moving directions (deleuze and guattari 1980). the heterogeneous connection recalled by the concept of rhizome, that derives from the moving directions on which it was shaped together with the characters of schelling’s living circuit and prigogine’s dissipative structure, allows us to understand the way followed by posthumanism in order to free itself from the mass hermit, the anthropocentric legacy of a reading that sees the counterposition between man and world. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 senseless distributions 207 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ if the mass hermit is a windowless monad that develops a purely external bond with a totally subjectivized world, man trapped in a senseless distribution, as he holds all the features of the living circuit, of the dissipative structure and of the rhizome, is a multi-identity subject marked by an active relationality with the organic, the natural and the corporeal. this relationality is alien to any autistic vision of the world typical of a strong and unidirectional identity, so that the multi-identity individual cannot but be influenced in a fruitful way by the effects of chance and chaos on his choices, which are never completely linear. he is a sort of open program who, placed inside a life that is hybrid and undetermined in itself, is structured so as to be penetrated from external reality, thus developing a dialogue with what is not human that aims at a mutual contamination and not at dominion or control. in other words, he cannot but radically reject the home delivery of a prefabricated world, because his own nature of a hybrid, contaminated and impure being causes him to place himself outside an anthropocentric reading of reality, which trivializes all that is not human treating it as a mere instrument of human fulfilment, and consequently ending up with the paradox of placing man in the condition to be abused. in conclusion, anders’ considerations on man as a mass hermit are useful, inside a posthuman perspective, to show one of the possible degenerations that stem from the idea according to which man is at the centre of the world, and the world is, consequently, made for man to use and abuse, characterized only by the interpretations that it is given by man himself starting from his specific features. surpassing such a way of interpreting the relationship between man and the world needs a process of rebuilding of subjectivity that, considering the positive characters of concepts like living circuit, dissipative structure and rhizome, never forgets that the only ways man has to relate himself to what is not human are constantly moving and strongly influenced by the teachings coming from the non-human. in fact, admitting to be trapped in a senseless distribution exactly means giving value to our own human features through the exchange and the hybridization with the other, starting from the fundamental premise according to which life itself has its own norms based on a constitutive indetermination, and culture, far from being an instrument to obviate to natural lacks, is nothing but a “creative non-balance”, a constant movement of thresholds that favours the hybridization processes with alterity (pireddu 2006). in spite of the mass hermit. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 davide sisto 208 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ references abruzzese, alberto, and derrick de kerckhove. 2010. “saper leggere il libro del mondo. reti e connessioni al tempo di ‘avatar’”. multiverso 10. retrived on july 10, 2016. http://www.multiversoweb.it/rivista/n-10link/saper-leggere-il-libro-del-mondo-reti-e-connessioni-al-tempo-di%e2%80%98avatar%e2%80%99-3382/. anders, günther. 1956. die antiquiertheit des menschen. i. über die seele im zeitalter der zweiten industriellen revolution. münchen: c.h. beck. 1984. mensch ohne welt. schriften zur kunst und literatur. münchen: c.h. beck. baudrillard, jean. 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dibattito sulla natura umana, edited by davide sisto, 27-46. pisa: ets. marchesini, roberto. 2002. post-human. verso nuovi modelli di esistenza. torino: bollati boringhieri. pireddu, mario. 2006. “la carne del futuro. utopia della de materializzazione”. in post-umano. relazione tra uomo e tecnologia nella società delle reti, edited by mario pireddu and antonio tursi, 13-28. milano: guerini e associati. prigogine, ilya, and isabelle stengers. 1978. la nouvelle alliance. métamorphose de la science. paris: gallimard. rose, nikolas. 1998. inventing our selves. psichology, power and personhood. cambridge: cambridge university press. schelling, friedrich wilhelm joseph. 1810. “clara, oder ueber den zusammenhang der natur mit der geisterwelt”. in sämmtliche werke, vol. 9: 1856-61, edited by k.f.a. schelling. stuttgart augusta: cotta. sisto, davide. 2013. narrare la morte. dal romanticismo al post-umano. pisa: ets. wiener, norbert. 1950. the human use of human beings. boston: houghton mifflin company. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 http://www.multiversoweb.it/rivista/n-10-link/saper-leggere-il-libro-del-mondo-reti-e-connessioni-al-tempo-di-%e2%80%98avatar%e2%80%99-3382/ http://www.multiversoweb.it/rivista/n-10-link/saper-leggere-il-libro-del-mondo-reti-e-connessioni-al-tempo-di-%e2%80%98avatar%e2%80%99-3382/ http://www.multiversoweb.it/rivista/n-10-link/saper-leggere-il-libro-del-mondo-reti-e-connessioni-al-tempo-di-%e2%80%98avatar%e2%80%99-3382/ desiring ethics: reflections on veganism from an observational study of transitions in everyday energy use 173 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ is sn 2 2 8 0 -9 9 5 3 beyond anthropocentrism 1 • january 2013 inside the emotional lives of non-human animals a minding animals international utrecht 2012 pre-conference event special issue (genoa, italy, 12-13 may, 2012) edited by m. andreozzi, r. bennison, a. massaro, s. tonutti capabilities approach and animal bioethics • michele panzera animals and our emotions. how to approach the study of an interspecific community? • sabrina tonutti advocacy and animal rights • kim stallwood the emotional lives of animals: a christian perspective • alma massaro – gianfranco nicora animalia: ontology and ethics in weak antispeciesism • leonardo caffo the contemporary debate on experimentation • susanna penco – rosagemma ciliberti non-human animals and genetic engineering • arianna ferrari the relationship between humans and other animals in european animal welfare legislation • paola sobbrio human’s best friends? • matteo andreozzi elationsre l a t io n s . b e y o n d a n t h r o p o c e n t r is m 1 • 2 0 1 3 r 6.2 november 2018 energy ethics: emerging perspectives in a time of transition special issue edited by giovanni frigo part ii studies and research contributions energy ethics: a literature review 177 giovanni frigo contesting the radical monopoly: a critical view on the motorized 215 culture from a cyclonaut perspective damien delorme desiring ethics: reflections on veganism from an observational 233 study of transitions in everyday energy use alice dal gobbo ethical risk and energy 251 bertrand andre rossert coal feeds my family: subsistence, energy, and industry in central 269 appalachia m. joseph aloi human energy: philosophical-anthropological presuppositions 287 of anthropogenic energy, movement, and activity and their implications for well-being roman meinhold http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ relations. beyond anthropocentrism 174 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ comments, debates, reports and interviews energy ethics outside the box: carl mitcham in conversation 301 with giovanni frigo carl mitcham giovanni frigo energy equality and the challenges of population growth 313 andrea natan feltrin the energy of ethics / the ethics of energy: a dialog with irigaray, 321 varela and jullien federico battistutta reviews alex epstein, a review of the moral case for fossil fuels (2014) 331 adam briggle author guidelines 335 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 233 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ desiring ethics reflections on veganism from an observational study of transitions in everyday energy use alice dal gobbo school of social sciences, cardiff university uk doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2018-002-dalg dalgobboa@cardiff.ac.uk abstract ecological issues are becoming more and more salient to our everyday lives as the effects of climate change become evident, resource depletion is put into government’s agendas, access to energy becomes increasingly costly and differentially distributed. they call on us to reconsider not only energy consumption and production systems, but also the very cultural and social premises of our societies. in particular, we need rethinking the anthropocentrism that has founded for centuries human exploitation of the earth. in this article i draw on empirical material from an observational study of everyday energy transitions in order to reflect psychosocially on the potentialities of veganism as an energy ethics of sustainability “beyond anthropocentrism”. i argue that, despite many promises, the transition to a plant-based diet can become politically dangerous if adopted (and promoted) as an abstract moral imperative and not as a situated and ethical one. keywords: energy transitions; energy ethics; everyday life; veganism; sustainability; dietary choices; desire; morality; political ecology; critique. 1. introduction the current ecologic situation suggests evermore clearly and pressingly that a dramatic change in the ways we produce, distribute and consume energy is due. current ecologic crises are putting us in front of planetary limits to the consumption of non-renewable energy sources like oil, gas and coal – now at the bases of our economies. not only these fuels are limited, but they are also causing massive disruption to the planet, above all through climate change. despite the faith in technological advancement http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ http://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2018-002-dalg mailto:dalgobboa@cardiff.ac.uk alice dal gobbo 234 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ to provide alternative solutions to maintain or even enhance our current lifestyles via clean and renewable energy sources, there does not seem to be as yet a satisfactory alternative to support in a sustainable way late capitalist economies and societies (georgescu-roegen 2003; latouche 2010). to be added to these ecological-economic difficulties, old and new contestations around so-called “green” provision systems suggest that energy involves issues of power that are eminently social and political (alier 2002; smith and high 2017). furthermore, the mass extinction of nonhuman animals and plants that we are witnessing in recent decades also opens questions around trans-human relations and justice (vinnari and vinnari 2014). ecology hence becomes not only a matter of economy and wise resource use, but it also shows a radically ethical character: the multiple relationalities that bind humans to the rest of nature become subject of evaluations – are they good or bad, and what is the form they ought to take? in this contingency, one of the central tasks of today’s political and cultural ecological practices is to challenge anthropocentrism, the assumption that human beings are superior to, and therefore masters of, the rest of nature (guihan 2008). this core socio-cultural tenet deeply runs through western cultures, institutions, economic structures, everyday life and subjectivities. not necessarily made explicit, it is for most of the time unconsciously lived and put into practice in banal and inconspicuous acts, sayings, choices (bennett 2004). a culture “beyond anthropocentrism” might foreground important consequences in terms of sustainability (bennett 2010; braidotti 2006a, 2006b; haraway 2015) because it can challenge one of the premises of the unsustainable ways in which humans are effectively “disposing” of the world (see pellizzoni 2015). this reflection starts to make clear that a transition towards more sustainable and ecological societies defeats mainstream behaviour change and other sustainable development policies. not only because they themselves often rest on anthropocentric assumptions, but also because they impose a view of what sustainability is, how it should be achieved and what the appropriate “ethics of energy” (frigo 2017, 8; groves et al. 2017) are. this has both serious depoliticising effects over ecological issues (gorz 1980; blühdorn 2007) and dangerous biopolitical consequences in terms of everyday life (shove and walker 2007, 2010; butler 2010; shove 2010). differently, a radical change might be promising in as far as it arises not as a result of abstract and imposed moral imperatives but as a collective, immanent, constitution of a more ecologicallysensitive trans-human ethics. the social sciences can help in this, for instance, by understanding energy ethics as they are lived and experienced in everyday life, asking http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ desiring ethics 235 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ to what extent and how such a movement beyond anthropocentrism can happen and is happening at the level of energy use, consumption and demand. this bottom-up and empirical approach is not concerned with a judgement about the moral worth (or, more generally, desirability) of practices, but rather with the study of what things matter and have significance for social actors (henwood et al. 2015; frigo 2017; groves et al. 2017; smith and high 2017). nonetheless, beyond describing these values and relationalities as they emerge, there is also the need to map their dynamic unfolding, their lines and, especially, their effects – an immanent assessment of the ethics and politics of everyday energy use to become the springboard for a collective constitution of non-anthropocentric transition pathways. the aim of this article is to explore the dynamics of everyday energy transitions that, characterised by ethical concerns, go in the direction of challenging anthropocentrism. drawing on data from an in-depth observational study in the north-east of italy, i concentrate on the challenges and opportunities of veganism as a peculiar energy ethics that destabilises anthropocentric categories and possibly pushes a change towards sustainability in other life practices. i now briefly turn to the rationale for this choice; then, i outline the scope and design of my study. the main section of the article is a psychosocial analysis of empirical data. finally, i present an overall discussion on the prospects and challenges of veganism as energy ethics, i.e. a standpoint from which “good” ways of using energy are distinguished from “bad” ones. 2. some background the adoption of plants-based diets is of interest to sustainability transitions and to the constitution of a non-anthropocentric energy ethics for two main reasons. on the one hand, the vast majority of people who choose to eliminate from their diets animals and their derivatives do so out of an ethical preoccupation over the life, pain and suffering of what are assumed to be kin, sentient, beings. this commitment is mainly informed by a conviction that human beings are animals like all the others and there is no neat distinction between “our” and “their” experiences. hence, if violence and abuse of power over other human beings are deemed wrong, then this should also apply to animals (regan 2004; singer 2015). the anti-anthropocentric repercussions of such a claim are quite obvious, for it de-centres what in modernity have been constructed as human beings’ ontological privileges (e.g. sensitivity and sensibility, http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ alice dal gobbo 236 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the capacity to feel and create bonds, intentionality, etc.) – which in turn have supported animal exploitation. the fact of not breeding animals can therefore constitute a first step towards the dismissal of the human (especially white, male) dominance over the rest of nature (adams 2015; twine 2017). on the other hand, it is now widely accepted that intensive fishing and farming associated with widespread meat, dairies and eggs consumption are having devastating effects on planetary ecosystems both on local and global scale due to the carbon-intensive nature of industrial farming, methane emitted by cows’ digestive processes, polluting waste, deforestation, wasteful use of agricultural land, depletion of oceans’ livestock, reduced biodiversity, etc. (see, for a comprehensive review, kemmerer 2014). in the face of a growing population and the threats that climate change is going to present in terms of feeding the planet, the transition to (at least largely) plants-based diets is increasingly being proposed as a structural necessity – especially for affluent countries (cole 2008; vinnari and vinnari 2014). we might add that the effects of climate change are impinging so deeply on all animal (and non-animal) species on earth that “it is not ontologically or normatively accurate to falsely dichotomise an ‘environmental veganism’ from a ‘veganism for the animals’, since the former is also the latter” (twine 2017, 194). hence, although in the majority of cases people who adopt a vegetarian or vegan diet are pushed to do so by concerns over animals’ wellbeing and rights, one might expect that becoming vegan or vegetarian will imply a wider change in attitudes and practices towards nature, energy use, sustainability, etc. 1. yet, quite surprisingly, the link between plants-based diets and sustainable everyday life practices is not much explored. a relevant exception is twine’s (2017) investigation of the dynamics of vegan transitions through a practice theory lens. the author makes clear the link between veganism and everyday sustainability, hoping that a deeper knowledge of successful adoptions of plant-based diets might be of use for society and policy makers to spread veganism among the wider population. the article does not consider, however, the opportunities for a vegan transition to “spill-over” and invest other everyday energy practices. in what follows i will try to contribute to the nascent field of study on changing diets and sustainable transitions through an in-depth engagement with qualitative data. before doing this, i will briefly elucidate something about the research context where the data was produced. 1 this does not, of course, rule out the possibility that the opposite happens: more general ecological concerns being a push towards the adoption of plants-based diets. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ desiring ethics 237 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 3. about my study the data i draw upon come from my phd research project. the overall concern of the study was an in-depth mapping of the dynamics of energy transitions in everyday life. i was interested in how the 2008 financial crisis (with its thoroughgoing consequences in terms of unemployment, reduced affluence, diminished socio-economic stability, changing future horizons, etc.) has impacted people’s daily practices of energy use and consumption in the north-east of italy. on the basis of the recognition that one of the most challenging ecological issues of the present is overconsumption, and in turn over-production, based on the capitalist imperative to economic growth – i asked to what extent the vacillation of this very economic system might be conducive to ecologic transitions as well. i conducted ethnographic multi-media participant observation of everyday life (complemented by interviews). the total number of case studies was 10. these cases were selected among people living in an area that refers to the town of vittorio veneto (tv), in the north-east of italy 2. i was interested in the intersections between economic and biographical transitions as moments of change in the ways energy is used, interpreted and “sensed” in the sphere of daily life. this apparently private sphere of existence was sociologically examined as part of wider communities, flows of objects and things, material and cultural milieus, socio-historical lines, etc. hence, i understood everyday transitions as part of institutional, discursive and material changes that are powerridden and traversed by different and opposing forces in the social field. at the same time, i posed attention to how the everyday is alwaysalready a space of micro-resistance as the bodies and desires that inhabit it are irreducible to social determinations. in line with this commitment to respect singularity in the social, i adopted a bottom-up approach to understand sustainable transition as emergent within lived experience rather than imposed in the form of technocratically pre-established “solutions”. more than an interest in behaviour change interventions and strategies, therefore, my study aimed at taking stock of the changes that are spontaneously happening in the conundrum of the economic, ecologic and social crises that are traversing western countries – as they are embodied at the fleshy and affective level of lived experience. against 2 this is an area where meat consumption, especially cured meats from pig, is very traditional and recognised as part of the local identity. my participants themselves often mention being fond of these foods before becoming vegetarian and then vegan. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ alice dal gobbo 238 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ hegemonic unsustainable assemblages, i asked to what extent the resistances arising in the everyday could foreground more ecological ones. central to both data gathering and analysis was deleuze and guattari’s philosophies. their work allowed me to focus attention on post-representational issues such as materiality, affect, desire and the body without nonetheless forgetting the socially constructed nature of “reality” (see lather and st. pierre 2014). this was important in two senses. firstly, ecological issues are by nature very material and therefore need to be dealt with on this level (coole and frost 2010); secondly, the everyday as habitual and embodied sphere comprises much more than rational calculations or even discursive power effects: it includes things, matter and the bodily, sensuous, unconscious dimensions of desire and affects (bennett 2015). finally, the “empiricist” attitude that characterises deleuze’s philosophy was in line with studying the everyday in an immanent way – as it unfolds, without the super-imposition of moral codes or normative views of how it should be; attentive to the potentialities of “molecular” resistances to established moral (and indeed) “molar” practices (see deleuze 1991; deleuze 2002; deleuze and guattari 2014, esp. 76-7). in what follows i would like to concentrate on a few cases of energy transitions that were co-emerging with dietary choices and specifically a turn to veganism. the data i use comes from the engagement with three participants and there is no claim to statistical generalisability. yet, it might be argued that there is some consistency among at least part of the people adopting veganism, for the latter often comes to form a “lifestyle” that is relatively shared, codified and promoted through official and institutional declarations, discourses, on-line posts, images, etc. (twine 2017) – something i could personally observe during my fieldwork. this warrants some, partial and provisional, theoretical generalisations of empirical micro-observations to a wider social context. 4. dietary assemblages as desiring and affective energy ethics: an exploration throughout my fieldwork, food repeatedly stood out as one intensive point through which participants related to issues of energy, sustainability and ecological transitions. for instance, concern for health and a good bodily functioning normally co-emerged with an interest in organic and natural food – therefore with a commitment to production practices that are less impacting on ecosystems. this tended to have the effect of http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ desiring ethics 239 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ introducing wider ecological concerns in everyday life, such as attention to means of transportation, detergent products, household heating, etc. but, as far as i could witness, the most thoroughgoing transformations that dietary transitions implied were related to participants who turned to plant-based diets. these, although spurred mostly by concerns for animals and their suffering, introduced a change in other energy practices as well. i will exemplify this with the help of three participants, who are very closely related and whose life trajectories are intertwined and interdependent: laura, a 18-year-old girl, her brother mark (24-year-old) and eleonore, mark’s girlfriend (22-year-old) 3. it was the entering of eleonore in laura and mark’s family to initiate the transitions that i will outline. when eleonore and mark started dating, eleonore was already vegetarian and she convinced mark to become vegetarian as well, out of respect for her decision not to kill animals for eating. after mark started to believe in the rightness of being vegetarian, the two persuaded laura. gradually, knowing about the mistreatment of animals in farms, eleonore started to avoid animal products altogether, followed initially with some reticence by the others. finally, they all became vegan – including other family members. 4.1. for the love of animals (and girlfriends) – passionate transitions it is often taken for granted that adopting a plant-based diet is mainly the outcome of rational-ethical considerations, contrasting with a sensuousdesiring drive towards the (assumed) pleasures and habits of meat. this position has been challenged by empirical literature in which, through the narratives and accounts of vegans, we start to appreciate how much changing diet brings with it novel and sometimes expanded food pleasures, sensitivities and physical wellbeing (cole 2008; vinnari and vinnari 2014; twine 2017). in relation to this debate, my data suggest a tension between these two poles. i start with the latter. my participants often reiterate the sensuous pleasures and bodily benefits of being vegan. laura, for instance, emphasises that her physical situation has improved: she now has less spots, less oily skin and hair; she has also managed to lose weight without effort – something she had tried to do in the past with little success. eleonore, on her part, likes to experiment with cooking and tells me that she has found back pleasure in food since she became vegan. before, she only 3 i use pseudonyms throughout. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ alice dal gobbo 240 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ liked meat and would rather get all the rest of her nutrition via tablets; since she gave up meat and derivatives, she discovered the wealth and tastiness of plants, which are also good for her health. beyond this, all three trajectories of becoming vegan suggest that their “choices” emerged not primarily out of rationally autonomous and free deliberations, but rather at the crossroads of encounters, proximities and intensities between bodies, human and non-human, that are affective-desiring in nature. for instance, eleonore recounts how she suddenly stopped eating meat. she has always loved animals. when she was 17 she was volunteering in a cat refuge: one day, going back home, she realised how stupid it was to help cats and then go home and eat cows, “and so i started to get informed and i became vegetarian basically on the spot”. here, eleonore does construct her choice as “rational” in implicit opposition to the “stupid” fact of acting in contradictory ways (i will return to this below). yet the story is about a sudden realisation, an event, the passing of a “threshold” (deleuze and guattari 2014, 62) that is first of all affective: it depends on her body being involved in proximities with cats and their animal intensities. open to these encounters, eleonore is involved in processes of “becoming-animal” (deleuze and guattari 2014, esp. 271-360) that de-stabilise both the socially codified distinction between eleonore-human and cat-animal and the categorisations of the animal world in pets for loving cows for eating. in this, the very divide between humans and non-humans starts to crumble in favour of suppler distinctions, responsive to the affective continuity that threads through proximate living beings. similarly, laura talks about a life-long commitment to, and love for, animals. after realising that meat was not necessary to her subsistence, she was able to better respond to this very sensitivity through the adoption of a plant-based diet. and although mark was rather indifferent to animals before meeting eleonore, his transition too can be seen as an affective one, for it was guided in the first instance by his attraction for eleonore, his desire to please her and the will to “be a good person” like she was in his eyes. 4.2. spilling over: veganism, information technologies and ecology in all three cases, as non-human animals enter the same collective as human ones, they are granted dignity of existence per se and not as functional to human feeding and/or entertainment. this opens territories of http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ desiring ethics 241 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ experience beyond anthropocentrism. importantly, these non-anthropocentric lines of assembly also expand beyond animal relationalities and towards a generalised respect for planetary ecosystems, informed by new knowledge that veganism introduces in daily life. becoming vegans means completely changing food habits, tastes and norms about what is “good” to eat or not; it implies an opening up of novel problems, avenues of reflection and research. information is looked for (especially via the internet and social media) as my participants seek to develop a wider knowledge around the body (human and non-human), ethics, moralities and the discourses circulating around food, meat eating and “alternative” diets. through this process of information-gathering laura, mark and eleonore become aware of the gravity of the planetary ecological situation, climate change, resource depletion, excessive land use and global energy-food injustices. these are, in fact, increasingly linked to industrial farming and fishing, especially in vegan blogs and posts. through these searches they also come to recognise that climate change, pollution and other kinds of ecosystem damage are more generally related to the unsustainability of western everyday habits and lifestyle. in the face of this, and already lead towards a respectful opening to other beings’ lives, the three begin to modify many of their everyday practices as a means to reduce ecological impact, especially in terms of energy consumption from non-renewables. they all try to commute by bike and train, reduce heating in the house, cut their purchase of clothes and appliances, reuse, recycle and sometimes self-produce everyday necessaries like detergents. this change in energy use is well encapsulated by eleonore: e: well it’s surely changed. i mean i am careful with everything now. if i leave a room i switch off the light, i get angry with my mum if she doesn’t … things like that. also the central heating. before, i would always stand close to it whereas now i have understood that if i am cold i need to wear more clothes! i should not just switch on the heating whenever i am a bit cold! i mean it’s a matter of being a bit  … if i am cold i put long socks on instead of having the air that keeps coming in! eheh. […] because i gained consciousness of all the issues! i mean before i was  … how old was i …? i did not use to think much about these things. i didn’t even have doubts, i didn’t ask questions. then, becoming vegan, i found out many things and so … i mean, a consciousness regarding these themes has grown … a: so it was the fact of becoming vegan that brought about this … this change? e: precisely. yes, definitely. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ alice dal gobbo 242 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ changing diet means changing “consciousness”, but also relations with other people (the mum, who is pushed to save energy), with one’s own body and sense-perceptions around being cold, warm, comfortable or at ease within the house. for eleonore, but also mark and laura, passing the threshold of veganism means destabilising the mindless repetition of taken for granted ways of thinking, doing and sensing. instead, they are situated in novel affective assemblages of energy, built through and around discourses (being parsimonious, not wasting) and material arrangements (long socks, one more sweater, colder rooms) of interrelationality and care between human and non-human nature. 4.3. everybody should become vegan! the awareness of the impacts of farming and fishing on climate change and other ecological issues functions in turn to reinforce the three participants’ endorsement of plant-based diets. the latter, in fact, start to appear as not only commendable because they spare animals from suffering, but also necessary to the very survival of life on the planet as we know it. mark repeatedly affirms that “we know” that animal farming is responsible for 51% of the total ghg emissions. from this assumption 4 flows that there is no more suitable measure to “save the planet” than the whole humanity becoming vegan. thus constructed, veganism stops being a personal choice and becomes a moral duty for all people who care about future generations, plants, animals and, more generally, life on earth: a universal moral imperative that applies to all and irrespective of contingent situations. in turn, such a construction of veganism leads the three to downplay the desiring and affective dimensions of their “choice”: these are dismissed as characteristics of embodied human beings, situated, partial and therefore imperfect and fallible. following the typically western-modern dualism of mind and body, only the impartiality of a rational and disembodied choice can be universally ethical and therefore right. hence, the three emphasise a purportedly “rational” and deontological character of veganism. 4 not itself uncontested since official measures regarding ghg emissions deriving from animal farming range from 14.5% to 51% of the total (twine 2017, 193). http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ desiring ethics 243 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 4.4. veganism as will to power: possible dangers the issue with this is two-fold. first, at a closer look, the situated and power-laden nature of this same rationality becomes evident. as i provocatively ask laura why should we respect non-human nature at all she replies: l: because we are part of nature so, apart from being wrong, it is extremely stupid not to respect nature! […] then, it’s wrong but first of--first of all it’s stupid, i think. just because of that: ’cause it’s a bit like … i mean, our life is based on nature. so … for this reason is wrong, i think. […] if i live in a house, i would never get myself into … into destroying its foundations  … casually! ’cause the roof would collapse … and i would die. a person who does not do that, and stays in it and lives, it’s not a good person! […] i mean it seems almost absurd, to me, to think of my stance as an “ethical” one – as if it were something positive. while it’s other people who are wrong. i mean, to me it looks like i am … i am behaving just normally! in this extract, the duty to respect nature is firstly framed around an imperative of self-preservation that risks to found sustainable transitions on self-affirmation: not to get extinguished as human beings. far from being a decidedly eco-centric statement, this extract seems to oscillate towards that same anthropocentric will-to-power that foregrounds humans’ exploitation of nature. furthermore, although the primacy and naturalness of the drive towards self-preservation can be seen as a sociocultural construction (especially associated with modern capitalism), it is naturalised as “normal”. in turn, what is natural is also believed to be rational and, finally, morally right: it is stupid to destroy one’s own house, therefore one who does it is wrong. this culturally specific self-preserving rationality becomes a crypto-morality that nonetheless dictates an abstract imperative: everybody ought to become vegan. here, i believe, start the possible dangers of certain assemblages emerging around veganism. for, from positing one single way of living as “right” it follows that anything that does not conform to this abstract ideal is dispelled as “wrong”. and not only other people’s, but also one’s own, desires are condemned in as far as they do not conform to what is (rationally) right. following nietzsche (1984; deleuze 2002), we might see this dynamic as nihilistic, for it implies the denial of life as such on the basis of transcendent imperatives, unresponsive to its being and becoming. and precisely in line with the nietzschean argument, nihilism co-emerges with an ascetic logic that, as we have seen, downplays lived, embodied and immanent experiences of the world. these are critihttp://www.ledonline.it/relations/ alice dal gobbo 244 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ cised as mere matters of desire and contrasted with what is rational and therefore morally elevated. for instance, the “information” that animals and their derivatives are not necessary to human subsistence and are ecologically and energetically very impacting implies that desiring a piece of meat is not rational and, as a consequence, wrong – a selfish indulgence into the fleshy intensity of the bloody and salty taste of meat. as mark reports saying to his father: “don’t you realise that you killed an animal just because you felt like it?”. to be doubly sure, i am not proposing that a plant-based diet goes against a “natural” desire for meat. quite the contrary, i do believe that a diet which does not procure unnecessary suffering to animals can be life-affirmative and conducive to novel trans-human alliances. nor am i proposing that embodied pushes should be followed without them being subjected to an evaluation of their character and consequences. what i am nonetheless pointing to is the danger of imposing moral imperatives to recalcitrant bodies; furthermore, i suggest the need for these evaluations to be sensitive to the contextual and contingent character of life assemblages. differently, the danger is that veganism remains blind and deaf to desire, sacrificed in the face of a truth that specifies “from above” what is “right” – as this extract makes quite evident: m: in the end, all of our discussions end up on vegans because the vegans are – being vegan: being vegan is the cause if you will, the big cause of all it’s happening. […] [but] if it came … god, if jesus christ came and told me: “i i swear, look: i am jesus christ and i tell you that reality is like this and this and that …” – thanks, jesus christ, i didn’t know it …! so just give me some time to settle back again […] if it came out that eating meat is just good for the animal, that he [sic] wants to be killed, that animals actually absorb co 2 and release oxygen in the air [eleonore and i laugh] … if you’d tell me: all these things are true and meat is good for your health, and i found out that all is the other way around … i would not feel defeated, quite the contrary! i am happy to eat a cotoletta [fried pork cutlet], do you understand? a: mh m: i mean i don’t do it for bothering other people. i do what i think is the right thing to do, fuck aaaargh! […] interestingly, nietzsche (1984) relates the nihilism of the ascetic in particular to christianity – and it is remarkable how, in the passage above, the language is characterised by so much religious rhetoric despite mark, laura and eleonore being self-proclaimed atheist. like the christian ascetic, who sacrifices his/her desire on earth in the interest of a life after death, mark sacrifices the cotoletta in favour of a higher truth, the big http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ desiring ethics 245 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ cause: that veganism is the only way to save the planet (and ourselves). he would happily eat meat, but he does not do it because he believes it is wrong. indeed, mark, laura and eleonore often admit it is “difficult” to be vegans in a society full of meat and dairy temptations – “and how can you not surrender?!”. not surrendering, for them, implies a high degree of self-control and effort. this appears, in turn, to generate precisely the ressentiment that nietzsche (1984) identified as the side-effect of the denial of life in favour of religious ideals. this manifests in a generalised annoyance and hatred against all who do not sacrifice in the same way: m: we need to concentrate towards not hating people: “come on mark, keep calm: they don’t know things either, you should see what they’d do in case things were explained to them in the right way. keep calm, mark! keep calm …”. both non-vegans and vegans who are not as active in communicating “the cause” (as they believe one should do) become the target of a latent and ready-to-burst rage. at this point, what they define as a “super-respectful diet” starts to twist towards a divisive and sorrowful denial of life that looks rather un-respectful to all of its non-conformant manifestations. this is even truer as sacrifice is libidinally compensated for by claiming a moral superiority that sometimes takes on the connotations, again, of a violent will-to-power, a desire to emerge and demonstrate one’s superiority over other people: m: i mean if a girl [mala ala] who’s like 20-year-old – i think, won the nobel for peace … i mean, if she won one, i should get fifty nobel for peace, for what i am doing. because she fights for the rights for the females. you can fight as much as you want for the rights of the females, but in thirty years, when we’ll no longer have any food and any water, when as they are forecasting there will be three hundred millions environmental refugees … climate refugees – i dunno how to say it exactly – because there will be desertification everywhere, there will be an increased level of water--the level of the sea raised by seven meters and it will have submerged the bigger cities, all this … are you still fighting for the rights of the females?! you’re an asshole! […] it seems obvious to me that the females should have the rights, but i’m sorry this is not our priority now. this is not the person to which one should give the nobel: i should get the nobel, fuck! yesterday when i was at the university i was talking to a former class mate. i explained to her why she should become vegan as well […] i got to the class 15 minutes late just because i took my time to thoroughly explain to her ho--… and she’s stayed there for the whole time looking at me wide-eyed, asking questions … i managed to make her superinterested! she also felt guilty!! that … i mean, of course i should http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ alice dal gobbo 246 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ not make people feel guilty because i get the opposite effect – they feel accused. i mean, i ha--i managed to make her feel involved in what i was saying! she reflected on what i said. i got to the class a quarter of hour late just for this! i didn’t think about myself, i didn’t think “oh there will be exams soon, it’s better you arrive in time for the class”; i thought: “this is the moment for change. i need to explain to this person immediately, right now – because i won’t see her again! […] this is the right moment to educate her! i don’t give a fuck of the class! i rather not going, in case! i talk to her!”. to me they should give the nobel!!! right! because this is … this is it, now. these are the things now--but not not to me in sense … to the people like me. because, okay, i do these things and i save--i mean, i sacrifice the class for explaining to her these things that are extremely important. of this notable passage, some key points are worth unpacking. first, there is the affective quality and intensity of mark’s long talk and argument. he is truly upset and truly excited, pointing to the fact that there is more than a rational acknowledgement of our “priorities” to his talk. instead, we almost perceive a libidinal intensity in the perspective of winning a nobel prize and have his position universally recognised as right and good. this further substantiates what has been suggested above, that veganism as an “ideology” (as he calls it) and life choice is far more than the rational, moral and disinterested (or other-oriented) choice that mark, laura and eleonore purport it to be. secondly, the language of sacrifice (missing 15 minutes from the class) and guilt opens some caveats in the recently supported view of veganism as a mainly positive opening of life to more wealth, richness and variety of experience. if this is certainly the case for my participants, extracts like the ones above also suggest that self-denial might be at work in the transition to a plant-based diet, in turn accompanied by a resentment and bitterness that appears less than constructive for a wider transition towards sustainability. 4.5. veganism and the (im)political time and again my participants recount how their efforts of turning other people vegan, or imposing vegan food in their presence, are frustrated – often with outrage and accusations of being “extremist” or “talibans”, which foment their resentment itself. these episodes start to suggest that whenever a certain energy ethics is imposed as a transcendent morality, it is resisted by non-aligned desires that feel crushed, denied the right to existence and for this reason angry. my participants’ rage and contempt http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ desiring ethics 247 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ towards otherness forecloses alliances and contact with different epistemologies and systems of values, preventing them from connecting and communicating with subjects who might not straightforwardly accept their endorsement of veganism. such a divisive attitude is politically disempowering for it does not allow larger alliances around collective ecological emancipatory projects, but vegan ones. relatedly, in search for a universal truth to invoke in order to support their universalistic claims, the three tend to silence the ethical and political debate around the contents of this truth. this was already evident in the long extract above: mark desires god to come and tell him the truth about reality and, as a consequence, illuminate him around what is morally “right” to do. yet, this can amount to the capitulation of critique and contestation about what reality is, how it is constructed by existent systems of power and how it might be different. this is extremely problematic, for it opens the way to the determination of what is real, rational and good (in terms of environmental politics) by others in their stead. in particular, the danger is that the unequal and exploitative economic mode of production and consumption that is responsible for our current ecologic crises remains unchallenged in defining the ends, means and directions of the politics of the environment. as mark tells me at the dinner table, “the priority is giving up doing certain things. and thinking about the system where this happens is secondary […] i mean, for fuck’s sake, what’s the point in thinking about the economy?!”. 5. conclusion: evaluating dangers and opportunities of veganism as energy ethics beyond anthropocentrism in this brief article i have tried to throw a few provocations, more than conclusions, to start thinking about veganism as energy ethics beyond anthropocentrism and as an occasion for the transition to more sustainable lifestyles. one of the aims was to contribute to the nascent literature on veganism and sustainable energy transitions; furthermore, i was interested in assessing what energy transformations are traversing everyday life and with what effects. drawing on empirical data, i have sought to evaluate social, cultural but also libidinal and desiring dynamics characterising some vegan transitions. although i do not claim my observations to fit every case of adoption of plant-based diets, i hope some of my remarks might be relevant in highlighting their complexities, opportunities and dangers. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ alice dal gobbo 248 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ i have made a strong point in favour of veganism as an affective-desiring process of destabilisation of given cultural categories that separate human beings from other animals. as such, i have argued, it is promising for a movement beyond anthropocentrism and towards more respectful relations to the rest of nature. in this sense, becoming vegan might be a springboard for novel, eco-centric and more sustainable energy ethics. all the more so as this “choice” tends to “spill-out” and reshape energy assemblages beyond food – e.g. domestic heating and lighting, water use, commuting, dressing, disposing of waste, etc. nonetheless, i put a warning through. in the moment veganism stops being lived and felt as a desiring, situated and perfectible – “human, all too human” – ethics, to become an abstractly moral system that claims to embody a superior truth; in this moment we are faced with a few dangers. these are, in part, existential – for the self-sacrifice that this “ideology” requires becomes the source of a bitter ressentiment towards life. even more significantly, there is a danger of depoliticising ecology to turn it into a matter of management of resources, land and co2 emissions – not the creative and desiring political project of constituting different, fairer, livelier and more inclusive trans-human collectives. but in what ways can an experience-near, immanent, approach to energy transitions contribute to produce more widespread, and at the same time more life-affirmative, ecological change? as psychosocial researchers, we inquire into the affective texturing of everyday energy assemblages. yet, we should always remember that they arise as part of social and collective patterns of organisation that can be more or less ecologically damaging. i believe one of our tasks is to show how everyday desires can be made part of an ecologically-sound, life-affirmative, energy transition: they point to needs of emancipation and simultaneously suggest what pathways might be more or less feasible. that many people are now embracing plants-based diets suggests a desiring pull towards less damaging trans-human energy assemblages. the fact that being vegan is sometimes “difficult” and produces sorrowful affects therefore might have very little to do with the bare abstinence from animal products. rather, we can say it is the result of a social context in which meat and meat-eaters are systematically promoted as superior to plant-based food and vegan people – who become almost lesser and minor social subjects in need to justify “deviant” food assemblages and sometimes react by imposing their own morality as better or superior. the vegan/omnivorous hierarchical binary that is thus established (irrespectively of which of the terms is positioned as superior) can thus become less than helpful in terms of a collective transition to sustainhttp://www.ledonline.it/relations/ desiring ethics 249 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ability. as those who do wish to transition to plants-based diets find it difficult to joyfully embrace them, the divide between the two sensitivities widens instead of shrinking: as such, it becomes more and more difficult to jointly experiment collective energy assemblages that are at once sustainable and responsive to diverse lines of desire. building new alliances in this sense seems to require that we avoid reducing life to a play of abstractly defined categories of right/wrong, inferior/superior and instead evaluate it in a way that is immanently ethical: responsive to the singularity and contingency of all those trans-human assemblages that can move us beyond anthropocentrism. references adams, c. 2015. the sexual politics of meat: a feminist-vegetarian critical theory. new york: bloomsbury. alier, j.m. 2002. the environmentalism of the poor: a study of ecological conflicts and valuation. cheltenham: edward elgar. bennett, j. 2004. “the force of things: steps towards an ecology of matter”. political theory 32 (3): 347-72. bennett, j. 2010. vibrant matter: a political ecology of things. durham, nc: duke university press. bennett, j. 2015. “‘snowed in!’: offbeat rhythms and belonging as everyday practice”. sociology 49 (5): 955-69. blühdorn, i. 2007. “sustaining the unsustainable: symbolic politics and the politics of simulation”. environmental politics 16 (2): 251-75. braidotti, r. 2006a. “affirming the affirmative: on nomadic affectivity”. rhizomes: cultural studies in emerging knowledge 11 (12): 12. braidotti, r. 2006b. “the ethics of becoming imperceptible”. in c. boundas, deleuze and philosophy, 133-59. edinburgh: edinburgh university press. butler, c. 2010. “morality and climate change: is leaving your tv on standby a risky behaviour?”. environmental values 19 (2): 169-92. cole, m. 2008. “asceticism and hedonism in research discourses of veg*anism”. british food journal 110 (7): 706-16. coole, d., and s. frost. 2010. “introducing the new materialisms”. in new materialisms: ontology, agency, and politics, edited by d. coole and s.  frost, chapter 1. durham: duke university press. deleuze, g. 1991. empiricism and subjectivity. new york: columbia university press. deleuze, g. 2002. nietzsche e la filosofia e altri testi. torino: einaudi. deleuze, g., and f. guattari. (1987) 2014. a thousand plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia. london: bloomsbury academic. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ alice dal gobbo 250 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ frigo, g. 2017. “energy ethics, homogenization, and hegemony: a reflection on the traditional energy paradigm”. energy research & social science 30: 7-17. georgescu-roegen, n. 2003. bioeconomia. verso un’altra economia ecologicamente e socialmente sostenibile. torino: bollati boringhieri. gorz, a. 1980. ecology as politics. london: pluto press. groves, c., k. henwood, f. shirani, g. thomas, and n. pidgeon. 2017. “why mundane energy use matters: energy biographies, attachment and identity”. energy research & social science 28: 1-10. guihan, v.j. 2008. “becoming animal: the animal as a discursive figure in and beyond a thousand plateaus”. in an [un]likely alliance: thinking environment[s] with deleuze|guattari, edited by b. herzogenrath. newcastle upon tyne: cambridge scholars publishing. haraway, d. 2015. “anthropocene, capitalocene, plantationocene, chthulucene: making kin”. environmental humanities 6: 159-65. henwood, k., c. groves, and f. shirani. 2015. “relationality, entangled practices, and psychosocial exploration of intergenerational dynamics in sustainable energy studies”. family, relationships and society 5 (3): 393-410. kemmerer, l. 2014. eating earth: environmental ethics and dietary choice. new york: oxford university press. lather, p., and e.a. st. pierre. 2013. “post-qualitative research”. international journal of qualitative studies in education 26 (6): 629-33. latouche, s. 2010. la fine del sogno occidentale. saggio sull’americanizzazione del mon do. como: elèuthera. nietzsche, f. 1984. genealogia della morale. uno scritto polemico. milano: adelphi. pellizzoni, l. 2015. ontological politics in a disposable world: the new mastery of nature. farnham: ashgate publishing ltd. regan, t. 2004. the case for animal rights. berkeley: university of california press. shove, e. 2010. “beyond the abc: climate change policies and theories of social change”. environment and planning a 42 (6): 1273-85. shove, e., and g. walker. 2007. “caution! transitions ahead: politics, practice, and sustainable transition management”. environment and planning a 39 (4), 763-70. singer, p. 2015. animal liberation. london: penguin. smith, j., and m.m. high. 2017. “exploring the anthropology of energy: ethnography, energy and ethics”. energy research and social science 30: 1-6. twine, r. (2017). “a practice theory framework for understanding vegan transition”. animal studies journal 6 (2): 192-224. vinnari, m., and e. vinnari. 2014. “a framework for sustainability transition: the case of plant-based diets”. journal of agriculture, environment & ethics 27: 369-96. williams, r. 2013. the long revolution. cardigan: parthian. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ energy ethics: a literature review 173 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ is sn 2 2 8 0 -9 9 5 3 beyond anthropocentrism 1 • january 2013 inside the emotional lives of non-human animals a minding animals international utrecht 2012 pre-conference event special issue (genoa, italy, 12-13 may, 2012) edited by m. andreozzi, r. bennison, a. massaro, s. tonutti capabilities approach and animal bioethics • michele panzera animals and our emotions. how to approach the study of an interspecific community? • sabrina tonutti advocacy and animal rights • kim stallwood the emotional lives of animals: a christian perspective • alma massaro – gianfranco nicora animalia: ontology and ethics in weak antispeciesism • leonardo caffo the contemporary debate on experimentation • susanna penco – rosagemma ciliberti non-human animals and genetic engineering • arianna ferrari the relationship between humans and other animals in european animal welfare legislation • paola sobbrio human’s best friends? • matteo andreozzi elationsre l a t io n s . b e y o n d a n t h r o p o c e n t r is m 1 • 2 0 1 3 r 6.2 november 2018 energy ethics: emerging perspectives in a time of transition special issue edited by giovanni frigo part ii studies and research contributions energy ethics: a literature review 177 giovanni frigo contesting the radical monopoly: a critical view on the motorized 215 culture from a cyclonaut perspective damien delorme desiring ethics: reflections on veganism from an observational 233 study of transitions in everyday energy use alice dal gobbo ethical risk and energy 251 bertrand andre rossert coal feeds my family: subsistence, energy, and industry in central 269 appalachia m. joseph aloi human energy: philosophical-anthropological presuppositions 287 of anthropogenic energy, movement, and activity and their implications for well-being roman meinhold http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ relations. beyond anthropocentrism 174 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ comments, debates, reports and interviews energy ethics outside the box: carl mitcham in conversation 301 with giovanni frigo carl mitcham giovanni frigo energy equality and the challenges of population growth 313 andrea natan feltrin the energy of ethics / the ethics of energy: a dialog with irigaray, 321 varela and jullien federico battistutta reviews alex epstein, a review of the moral case for fossil fuels (2014) 331 adam briggle author guidelines 335 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 177 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ energy ethics a literature review giovanni frigo department of philosophy, northern michigan university, marquette, mi usa * doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2018-002-frig giovanni.frigo@nmu.edu abstract this article is intended as a broad review of contributions from the humanities and social sciences to the theme of energy ethics. although not exahustive and (unfortunately) limited to the english-speaking world, it surveys, describes and discusses several past and recent books and articles as well as interdisicplinary projects and conferences that are relevant to energy ethics broadly construed. the primary goals of this literature review are to provide some orientation to the readers of this special issue (vol. 6.1 and 6.2) and to stimulate more dialog, creativity and intellectual engagements concerning the emerging field of energy ethics. keywords: energy ethics; philosophy of energy; energy; literature review; anthropology of energy; energy ethnography; energy humanities; energy studies; petroculture; religion. but the humanistic project of reframing energy as a social or human question has not advanced very far. currently, new energy inputs such as wind power, solar power, biofuels, and so on are posited as the end game of the transition, but fundamental commitment to values, to satisfying social relations, and to our collective imaginaries are, at best, left to the margins of the discussion, if not erased from the conversation. petrocultures research group, after oil 1 * the majority of the work for this article was done while the author was still phd candidate in the environmental ethics doctoral program at the university of north texas (unt), in denton, tx, usa. 1 petrocultures research group 2016, 14. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ http://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2018-002-frig mailto:giovanni.frigo@nmu.edu giovanni frigo 178 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 1. introduction in the editorial to the first volume of this special issue (6.1), i was honored to introduce all the contributions of this collective project. for this reason, i invite the readers interested in understanding the motivation and the goals of this si as well as how the different pieces fit together to refer to that opening article (frigo 2018a). this article presents examples of energy scholarship from five main areas, all of which relate to the overarching theme of energy ethics: social sciences such as anthropology and ethnography of energy, the emergent field of energy humanities, christian religious studies, and ethics and philosophy of energy. in the final section, it will also mention some conferences and interdisciplinary projects related to energy ethics. the most important aspect to remember to fully appreciate the novelty and provocative character of many of these works is considering the fact that for more than two hundred years the study of energy has been the domain of the natural sciences and engineering. however, over the past three decades scholars, writers, and poets have gradually but persistently developed alternative narratives to explore the nuances of energy. books and journals, policy work, international conferences, and interdisciplinary research projects have also expanded the scope and enlarged the audience that can benefit from these alternative accounts. the development of energy ethics (or broadly speaking, the philosophy of energy) depends on, and is indebted to many of these alternative accounts of energy. the overall goal of this literature review is to bridge the scientific modern energy paradigm (frigo 2017) to the perspectives of social sciences and humanities. this integration attains a more holistic understanding of energy which has the potential, in turn, to positively influence practical ethics and public policies concerning the energy transition. the engagement of humanities scholars and social scientists with energy issues has been primarily required by two facts. first, a growing awareness that concrete energy issues do not happen only theoretically or in the scientists’ labs, but are practically entangled with ethical, economic and socio-political dimensions. what has slowly grown over the past decade or so is the recognition that energy plays a great role and impacts human life in a myriad of ways, many of which remain unsurprisingly outside of the approach of the physical sciences. for quite some time psychological, behavioral, ethical, and socio-political aspects of energy have been, for instance, ignored, dismissed, or not seriously taken into account. of course, here i am particularly interested in philosophical and ethical dimensions, such as the moral values surrounding http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ energy ethics: a literature review 179 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ personal and social issues and, more generally, concerning the energy transition. second, and related, over the past three or four decades, scholars in the social sciences and humanities have been challenging the monopoly of natural sciences in studying energy. therefore, the key idea behind this review is to propose studies that are based on the methods and analyses of different scholarly traditions as well as non-academic practices, thus emphasizing alternative paths of inquiry through, at least to some extent, different media and outlets. yet, what is remarkable is that most if not all the intellectuals i will mention here have also assumed the notion or concept of energy elaborated by the natural sciences. given that i just mentioned that these other disciplines have challenged the monopoly of natural sciences and engineering, this affirmation may sound confusing. but the fact is that even the sect of “heretical” intellectuals who challenged high-energy societies, the entanglement of technoscience and modern society, or the illusion and dangers of perpetual growth have, overall, assumed the ontology or paradigmatic outlook provided by technoscience. to put it differently, the novelty in their thinking lays in the normative side. these authors have indeed proposed alternative ways of envisioning the moral and political dimensions of the human-energy-nature relationship by suggesting, for instance, ideas of degrowth or frugality. but the point is that most social scientists, artists, and philosophers have implicitly adopted (knowingly or not) the descriptive account that i called the traditional energy paradigm (frigo 2017). to my knowledge, the exceptions are, on the one hand and generally speaking, cultural anthropologists (because they often frame their studies within cultural relativism) and, on the other hand, a few intellectuals with a keen philosophical attitude. a formidable example of the latter group is croatian-austrian philosopher and sharp cultural critic ivan illich. in fact, illich understood that, ontologically, the pre-modern meaning of energy differed from the scientific one: to get at the matter i must review briefly the core meanings of “energy”, how it was transmogrified from human vigor to nature’s capital. in greek, the word “energy” is both frequent and strong. it might best be rendered in english as “being on the make”, with all the shades this expression carries. in its latin version, in actu, the term is of central importance in medieval philosophy, meaning form, perfection, act, in contrast to mere possibility. in ordinary english, the word first appears in the sixteenth century. for elizabethans, energy means the vigor of an utterance, the force of an expression, always the quality of a personal presence. a hundred years later the word can qualify an impersonal impact: the power http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ giovanni frigo 180 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ of an argument or the ability of church music to generate an effect in the soul. the term is still used exclusively for psychic effects, although only for those engendered by either a person or a thing. during the seventeenth century, the attempt got underway to quantify nature’s forces. (2013, 108) despite this and a few other exceptions that i will reference below, there has not been a systematic attempt to challenge the metaphysical and ontological assumptions of the concept of energy developed by the natural sciences and applied through engineering. therefore, a major implication of this literature review is to suggest that there is a need to conceptualize energy in more interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary ways. in the context of western civilization, the beginning of concerted public moral concern for the broader implications of energy, and implicitly for the environment, sprang from events such as the manhattan project and the following discharge of the atomic bombs during wwii (briggle and mitcham 2012), the growing consciousness of aggravating environmental problems such as the detrimental effects of ddt (carson 1962), and the multiple energy crises of the 1970s (runyon 1973; garrison 1987). there are many textbooks that describe the evolution of energy use by humans, present analyses, and future prospects (mcelroy 2010; fay and golomb 2012). there have also been attempts to write an entire cultural history of humankind based on the relationship of humans to energy (smil 2017). a little known example of the latter is, for example, the book man and energy by chemical engineer alfred r. ubbelohde, who proposed a history of energy sources linked to the study of thermodynamics, suggesting a political arrangement à la bacon (new atlantis) in which most of the work is done by inanimate energy slaves (ubbelohde 1955). in the initial chapter, emphatically entitled “dominion over matter through energy” ubbelohde describes the intricate and fascinating human dependency on energy throughout history, underlining also the fact that thermodynamic laws constitute physical limits, and may represent also ethical boundaries for humans. this and similar publications by scholars such as vaclav smil (1994; 1999; 2004; 2010c; 2014; 2017) explore the cultural history of humankind in connection to energy, resources, and civilization. this kind of work is surely interesting for this special issue because it advances the notion that human evolution is intrinsically linked to the use of different resources over time (price 1995). however, in this article i will focus primarily on energy scholarship that has dealt with the theme of energy not only historically, but also somewhat philosophically. the following review shows that the present discussion about the philosophy of energy is not http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ energy ethics: a literature review 181 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ taking place in the void but comes after more than five decades of work, a legacy on which also many of the contributions featured in this two volume special issue stand. 2. social sciences i: anthropology and ethnography of energy in the english-speaking world, an explicit engagement of social sciences 2 with energy studies started in the 1940s, with the publication of leslie a. white’s energy and the evolution of culture (1943). although his cultural evolutionist position was later criticized, his famous article is one of the corner stones of anthropology of energy. according to white, “we see, on all levels of reality, that phenomena lend themselves to description and interpretation in terms of energy […] the whole cultural structure depends upon the material, mechanical means with which man articulates himself with the earth”. from this assumption, white derives what he calls “the law of cultural evolution: culture develops when the amount of energy harnessed by man per capita per year is increased; or as the efficiency of the technological means of putting this energy to work is increased; or, as both factors are simultaneously increased” (338; italics in the original). white, however, does not derive any explicit moral consequence from his study of cultural evolution. even though he mentions different stages of development, and social structural organization dependent on amounts of energies and type of technological advancement, his interest remains mostly on the descriptive and analytical sides. over the past decades, anthropologists and ethnographers of energy have been stressing a bottom-up approach aimed at making the different understandings of energy, sustainability, and nature produced in different cultural contexts visible. other aspects that have been studied, that are important but will not be extensively considered here concern psychological, behavioral (allcott and mullainathan 2010), sociological (mazur 2017), gendered (gaard 2001; winner 2003), economic (georgescu-roegen 1971, 1976) and political (hughes and lipscy 1979; leggett 1991, 2014; shaffer 2009; verbeek 2011; vanderheiden 2013; burke and stephens 2017; do et al. 2018) dimensions of energy issues. to understand the reasons why the perspectives of social sciences can benefit energy studies we can refer to a guest editorial of anthropology 2 here, social sciences are intended in a narrow sense, essentially anthropology, ethnography, and sociology. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ giovanni frigo 182 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ today. in his “why energy needs anthropology” (2005) anthropologist harold wilhite asks why there is not such a thing as energy anthropology and makes the case for its implementation. he writes: there is hardly a place anywhere where consumption of energy is not straining the economic or environmental limitations of energy resources, as well as the economic and technical capacity to convert resources into usable energy. given the centrality of energy in daily life everywhere around the world, and its significance in some of the more contested political debates of our times, one would expect it to be an important emerging subject for anthropology. […] energy exists in many physical forms, and the ways of converting it into something useful have rightly been seen as the domain of engineering, physics and the other natural sciences. however, energy is of little use in and of itself. it must pass through a sociotechnological system in order to reach the site of its intended use. (1) since energy “begins its social life as a limited resource requiring management”, and given that over the 1990s and 2000s there was “a massive worldwide shift toward the market, through the privatization or deregulation” there is a need for a reflection about the “biography of energy” that goes beyond social sciences based on economics. aware that climate change has been the springboard of much energy debate, wilhite suggests that “new ways of thinking are called for, drawing on the bread and butter of anthropology, for example in understanding the ways in which family relations (kinship), gender, relations of production, meaning and morals are all mutually implicated in the uses of energy. this could also provide new thinking in energy policy” (2). after several calls to action such as this, since around 2010 there has been a boom of social sciences scholarship concerning energy. some of the most important venues have been both specific journals such as energy research & social science (established in 2014) as well as multiple edited volumes. many of the contributions in the anthropology of energy have focused specifically on “oil” (love 2008; reyna and behrends 2008; hitchcock 2010; buell 2012; huber 2012, 2013; rogers 2015) and aspire to study energy systems as energy cultures (pfister et al. 2017). several scholars have also explored other important aspects of the human-energy-nature relationship, thus providing an interesting bridge to both energy justice and energy humanities discussed below. consider some examples and four main collections of studies. cesare marchetti (2003), for example, offers a historical perspective of human evolution through the lens of energy systems and according to the corresponding type of resource extracted from nature. moving from the concern of energy crisis, lynton k. caldwell (1976) presents the links http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ energy ethics: a literature review 183 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ between energy and the structure of modern social institutions that promoted a characteristic type of economic growth: the institutions of modern industrial society have been better adapted to promote this growth than to control or direct it. even in societies where mechanisms of state planning should, in theory, enable government to deal rationally with the growth problem, ideological commitments to general growth have, in effect, prevented the problem from being addressed. (31) another interdisciplinary collaboration is that of sociologist santander cabrera and biologist vicente fuster who, in their “energy and sociality in human populations” (2002) attempt to characterize and define human populations from a thermodynamic point of view. these and other studies, such as the rich collection edited by mogens rüdiger (2008) show the potential of social sciences to offer alternative, non-dominant views about energy. anthropology and ethnography of energy are certainly in tune with the methods of other social sciences. however, they are typically characterized by a qualitative approach to research, rather than quantitative. in practice, this means that they favor data collection based on smaller groups samples and through techniques such as interviews and participative observation, utilizing “a long-time perspective in which context is crucial” (nader et al. 2010). laura nader was one of the first intellectuals to stimulate the discussion about energy and anthropology. for instance, she proposed novel ideas regarding the interwoven realities of power and democracy presenting “four views of the future involving widely varying levels of energy consumption and life-styles” (nader 1980). more recently, she edited with leticia cesarino and chris hebdon the riveting collection the energy reader (2010) which collects examples of anthropology of energy written by “physicists, philosophers, economists, engineers, businesspeople, historians, and more”. in the introduction, the editors write: while lawrence summers once said that the third world is “underpolluted”, a more ecological perspective would stress the planet as interlinked; we’re all in this together. furthermore, as the united states transitions from present sources of energy to future possibilities, paradigm shifts will occur. (1) interestingly, here the authors use the term paradigm too, indirectly endorsing the idea i indicated elsewhere (frigo 2018b), namely that an ecological understanding of energy would constitute a sort of paradigm shift. the greatest merit of this collection is probably its interdisciplinarity, because it gathers http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ giovanni frigo 184 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ paradigmatic points of view more colloquially called “mind-sets”, found everywhere, whether in business, science, economics, technologies, or anthropology. when people refer to thinking in or out of a box they are referring to mind-sets or paradigms. quite commonly, people discover their mind-sets when they come into contact with others at interdisciplinary meetings, leading to either frustration or expressions of “ah-ha”. (2) for the sake of this review, the most provocative chapters are those found in part ii: mind-sets – a critical perspective. in chapter twelve therein, which is derived from another paper (nader 1981) also entitled “barriers to thinking new about energy”, laura nader recalls her experience at an interdisciplinary nasa conference in monterey, california, where she was invited as “the anthropologist”. the idea behind the gathering was to “think freely” about different future energy scenario, but nader noticed that it became quite clear that there were already boundaries around those scenarios. you were to think freely – within those boundaries. when you went beyond them, someone would tell you, “you’re off the track”. finally, i told one fellow that we didn’t know where the track was; that was why we were there. (9) nader recalls that all the interactions she had during this and other events were mostly with white males, either scientists and engineers. she also highlights a number of “taboos” that were not discussed (e.g. public safety always assumed within the design and never really debated) as well as other “basic” but essential assumptions that were worth discussing such as that “breeder reactors is the only way to go”. a striking point for nader occurred when she was asked to work in the synthesis panel to describe what life would be like in 2010: i was intrigued by how people were working on the project. in the first place, i’d never done any work with the future. as i’ve said, anthropologists study the past and the present; we don’t study societies that don’t exist, nor do we invent them. i soon learned that our humility was probably misplaced in this project, because economists don’t mind inventing all kind of societies. when what they invent often happens, invention becomes self-fulfilling prophecy […]. (10) then, nader challenged her team to think about a scenario that did not involve an increase in energy demand but would still maintain the same level of amenities, a hypothesis that sounded impossible to several members. but the point of the conversation is that the incredulous fellows concluded that it was impossible because they were assuming growth models only, thus begging the question: “what do people think is possible?” nader concludes by suggesting that, indeed, the 70-to-70 quads http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ energy ethics: a literature review 185 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ energy scenario she and few others suggested “is fairly easy to carry out, with little disruption in people’s lives. essentially what we focused on was technical efficiency. cars get more miles to the gallon, refrigerators give the same service but use less electricity […] a lot of little things that added to a fair amount of saving with very little change”. similarly, in chapter 14, “energy as it relates to the quality and style of life”, nader and stephen beckerman challenge the idea (also introduced by illich and smil) that increased energy consumption equals increased quality of life, concluding that one does not necessarily follow from the other. in the end, the interdisciplinary experience of this anthropologist shows that specific energy ethics (or philosophies of energy) depend on the cultural assumptions and disciplinarian attitudes underlying the conversation. it is in this sense that anthropology of energy is mostly concerned with what different actors think and experience regarding energy in different geographical, socio-economic and cultural contexts, also in relation to the benefits and burdens of energy projects, namely energy justice. however, the perspectives brought in by anthropologists are rarely normative, although they can of course provide the descriptive basis for those. rather, the attempt is to look underneath the surface of contemporary energy debates, to gain a complex, hard look at the ideas and values which are fueling different peoples’ understanding of energy and the environment. an important assumption is that how humans think about energy has an impact on the built environment and on their countless relationships with nature. nevertheless, anthropologist do talk about ethics, just not as philosophers do. anthropology of ethics challenges the disciplinary idea that ethics is most of all a theoretical study of morality, an approach strenuously defended for decades in academia. scholars such as jarrett zigon and michael lambek have shown that morality can be successfully studied from the bottom up, as ordinary ethics (zigon 2008; lambek 2010) instead of top-down systems of ethics. energy ethnographies present concrete lived energy experiences, clarifying the meaning of energy justice and sustainable energy in practice. the inclusion of more diverse understandings of energy is an important step to improve our thinking about what energy is for different groups of people and in the ecosphere. in their introduction to a recent special issue entitled exploring the anthropology of energy: ethnography, energy and ethics jessica smith and mette high write that given this conceptual orientation of anthropology, our calling for attention to energy ethics does not involve the scholar making a priori assumptions about what constitutes a good life, a good community, a moral person and the like. this is not an exercise in which scholars impose their own moral http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ giovanni frigo 186 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ views on to those we study. rather, it is a call for us to be cognizant of the moral aspects of social life as it pertains to matters of energy. (2017, 4) in the same collection feature several articles on the anthropology of energy, addressing topics as diverse as decolonization (lennon 2017), aesthetics of electric transmission (wuebben 2017), bacteria and bioenergy (chatti et al. 2017; mcleod et al. 2017), blackouts (kesselring 2017), off-grid living (forde 2017), radioactive waste (richter 2017), in contexts as different as united states, zambia, india, or wales. sara strauss et al. edited another seminal collection of anthropological studies entitled cultures of energy: power, practices, technologies (2013). the editors clearly summarize why anthropology can provide a fruitful outlook for a more inclusive study of energy: energy is an area ripe for anthropological investigation in at least three ways: how people experience and utilize energies of various qualities (types), how we rely on its quantity (continued flow), and how we harness both qualities and quantities of energy to construct socially meaningful worlds. […] an anthropology of energy must shuttle back and forth among laws of physics, opportunities and constraints of ecological systems, and processes of culture; furthermore, these layers of reality are necessarily intertwined materially, rhetorically, and metaphorically. […] because of the necessity of institutions to manage energy flows, and because of the necessity of energy flows to individual agency, an anthropology of energy is necessarily political. (11-2) but it is the third reason stressed by the editors that really links to the philosophy of energy: […] although people realize at some level that “energy” drives our worlds, humans typically think about and experience energy according to what it does and how it enables our goals. as contributors to this volume demonstrate, energy never just “is”, existing as some unmediated potentiality; it flows through socionatural systems via the nodes and switches in the social circuitry of power and meaning-making. people make sense of energy in a plethora of ways, from animistic veneration of the sun, wind, or other natural forces to commodity or machine fetishism. an anthropology of energy must therefore also analyze multiple, contested meanings. (12) moreover, the anthology presents a series of case studies and conceptual essays that explore “cultural conceptions of energy as it is imagined, developed, utilized, and contested in everyday contexts around the globe” (10). moving from the work of appadurai (1990), the volume “offers analyses of ‘energyscapes’ at local, national, and transnational levels”. the conceptual threads of many of the contributions emphasize the ideas of “currents” and “flows” that are expressed, for instance, in http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ energy ethics: a literature review 187 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the metaphor of the “powerlines”. the other two key themes are “transformations” and the “blurry cultural boundary between technology and magic, highlighting the multiple and simultaneous interpretations of energy and energy technologies that people in diverse societies hold” (11). the two most interesting chapters for this review are stephanie rupp’s “considering energy: e = mc2 = (magic · culture)2”, and “multinatural resources: ontologies of energy and the politics of inevitability in alaska” by chelsea chapman. rupp moves from the hypothesis that new yorkers rarely stop to think about energy and yet they “experience energy as a force that is ubiquitous yet invisible, uncontrollable yet indispensable” thus bearing assumptions and expectations about energy. rupp argues “that lacking accessible technical knowledge for thinking about energy and its uses, new yorkers turn to multiple and hybrid images – magical, spiritual, corporeal, social, political, as well as technical – to explain the forces that enable their everyday lives” (79). for rupp, new yorkers’ discussions of energy reveal that city residents perceive energy through both formalist and substantivist models. formalist models refer to quantifiable energy systems that provide the technical infrastructure on which high-energy, high-technology, information-saturated city residents depend. substantivist models of energy are reflections on energy as a qualitative force that is socially embedded and mediated by people’s relationships with each other and with the conditions of their daily lives. […] applying these theoretical frameworks to contemporary understandings of energy in new york city reveal a multiplicity of concurrent models that together shape how urban residents perceive and manage energy, the forces necessary to get things done. these models of energy – quantitative, rational, formalist on the one hand; qualitative, relational, substantivist on the other – are distinct but are complementary rather than contradictory. (80-1) in chapter 14, chapman uses the term ontology “to signal the presence of alternative and indigenous epistemic spaces in such conflicts as it indicates ways of knowing and acting toward energy sources that, like water, land, and wildlife, are all too often considered neutral and static commodities” (96). she proposes a dual framework to understand energy perceptions. on the one hand, “natural resources” have been mostly conceptualized in multinational ways “extracted and circulated among countries, metrics, economies, and other sorts of petro-capital alliance”. on the other hand, indigenous alaskans seem to understand them as “multinatural” phenomena: […] they are also multinatural in the ways that they exist in many natures, diverse cosmologies of resources, society, and environment. in alaska, http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ giovanni frigo 188 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ such curious hybrids – especially oil and gas – have a long and storied presence as a recurring gold rush, as sources of phenomenal wealth and indigenous empowerment and/or dispossession, and as harbingers of ecological collapse. these mythic narratives are underpinned by historical conceptions of what energy is and fields of knowledge of how it works that hover uneasily around the interactions of corporations, state and federal regulatory groups, tribal governments, scientists […]. (96) therefore, these examples of anthropology of energy take the cosmologies elaborated in contexts as different as new york city and alaska seriously into account as possible path of inquiry to better understand how people make sense of energy in their situated experience. besides anthropology tout court, the most recent and promising avenues of research in the social sciences are probably energy justice (hall 2013; heffron and mccauley 2017; jenkins, mccauley, and forman 2017; sovacool et al. 2017; jenkins 2018), energy transitions (shaffer 2009), and energy democracy (meadows 1991; menser and hayduk 2014; morris and jungjohann 2016; fairchild and weinrub 2017; morris and jungjohann 2017; menser 2018). 3. social sciences ii: energy justice leaving aside for reasons of space energy transition and energy democracy literature, i briefly examine here only the conceptual matrix of energy justice and then explain how the concept differs, according to its founders, from both climate and environmental justice. in general, the relevance of this notion is demonstrated by the recent publication of two distinct journal special issues on it, energy research & social science, vol. 18, 2016 and energy policy, vol. 105, 2017. the scholarship on energy justice seems to have flourished especially in the united kingdom and europe where several scholars have been actively working to establish the notion, clarify the orientation, and spread its adoption. a strong advocate for energy justice is energy scholar benjamin sovacool whose numerous publications offer an overall idea of the intersectional trajectories of philosophically relevant social science research. in his energy & ethics: justice and the global energy challenge (2013) sovacool stresses the relationships between access to energy and resources, technologies, policies and the moral issue of justice. energy & ethics appears in dialog with another, more recent publication of sovacool and dworkin (2015) devoted to a comprehensive and comparative account of energy justice studies specifically. both publications attempt to engage social sciences with ethics on the pivotal issues of poverty and http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ energy ethics: a literature review 189 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ unbalanced access to energy and resources. they introduce the idea that energy injustices are so widespread that energy justice can become, by itself, an actual area of inquiry. two other recent articles compared in energy research & social science (jenkins et al. 2016; jenkins 2018) further expand on the theoretical foundations as well as on the “specialty” of energy justice. by drawing on the work of mccauley et al. (2013), jenkins et al. open their “energy justice: a conceptual review” with a definition of energy justice: [… it] evaluates (a) where injustices emerge, (b) which affected sections of society are ignored, (c) which processes exist for their remediation in order to (i) reveal, and (ii) reduce such injustices. (175) then, they present the three types of justice that constitute the so-called “triumvirate of tenets”: distributional, procedural, and recognition-based justices. distributional justice investigates the cases in which energy production and consumption raise justice concerns. recognition-based justice “moves researchers to consider which sections of society are ignored or misrepresented” and highlights cases of non-recognition and disrespect concerning, for instance, indigenous (whyte 2017; de onís 2018), aging, or disabled people. finally, procedural justice “inspires researchers to explore the ways in which decision-makers have sought to engage with communities” and suggests, for example, mechanisms for the inclusion of communities and individuals affected by energy projects. finally, jenkins (2018) clarifies what differentiates energy justice from both climate and environmental ones. she outlines “three points of departure, which [she] argues increase the opportunity of success for the energy justice concept: (1) ‘bounding out’ [of environmental and climate justice] (2) non-antiestablishment [non-activist] pasts and (3) methodological strength” (118). summarizing, jenkins concludes that energy justice is (1) more targeted in its topic of concern and systems focus, and therefore has increased potential for policy uptake, (2) unlike environmental and climate justice, is not the outcome of anti-establishment social movements, and (3) is backed by a strong methodological tradition which shows a range of both academic and policy-relevant applications. each of these factors increases its potential for widespread applications. by implication, there should be a continued and fervent increase in energy justice scholarship and application. (120) although it is debatable whether energy justice really constitutes a separated area of inquiry, it is worth recognizing that, at least there is a growing awareness of the fact that ethical concepts can be relevant in the discussion about energy. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ giovanni frigo 190 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 4. energy studies besides anthropology/ethnography and energy justice, the other key area of scholarship that contributed significantly to a more profound discussion about energy’s socio-political implications is what can be called “energy studies”. broadly construed, this field includes several scholars who are typically trained in the natural sciences, economics, environmental studies, geography, and energy policy. among them, i highlight here the contribution of vaclav smil, whose prolific and pioneering work deserves a special recognition. smil has devoted numerous articles and books to the theme of energy, contributing to the popularization of the topic (smil 2006; 2008), and linking it in innovative ways to issues of sustainability and energy transition (smil 2010b), resources availability and ecological footprint (smil 2002; 2012), and even meat production (smil 2013b). however, the two most interesting elements of smil’s scholarship may reside, first, in his attempt to deconstruct some “energy myths” and “soft energy illusions” (smil 2010a), or what he otherwise calls “the infatuation of global energy” (smil 2011) and, second, in his study of energy consumption thresholds related to quality of life. in energy at the crossroads (2003), for instance, he identifies specific amounts of annual per capita energy use in relation to key parameters that are significant to express minimal levels of human well-being. applying his research to the 57 most populous countries, smil begins by recognizing that all energy conversions undertaken by humans share the same raison d’être: they are just means toward a multitude of ends. all of the commonly used measures of energy use – be it conversion efficiencies, energy costs, per capita utilization levels, growth rates, consumption elasticities, or output ratios – are just helpful indicators of the performance and the dynamics of processes whose aim should not be merely to secure basic existential needs or to satisfy assorted consumerist urges but also to enrich intellectual lives and to make us more successful as a social and caring species. (97) smil is aware that the “assessment of average national quality of human life cannot rely on a single surrogate” and since “quality of life” is obviously a multidimensional concept, it embraces attributes of narrow physical well-being (these, in turn, reflect wider environmental and social settings) as well as the entire spectrum of human mental development and aspirations. foremost in the first category is the access to adequate nutrition and to health care, as well as the capacity to address effectively a large array of natural and man-made risks […]. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ energy ethics: a literature review 191 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the second key component of human well-being starts with the universal delivery of good-quality basic education and should obviously include the exercise of personal freedoms. (97) among several indicators, he suggests that “infant mortality and life expectancy are perhaps the two best indicators of the physical quality of life”. smil discusses several other indicators (civil rights or access to education, etc.) but overall concludes that annual per capita energy consumption of between 50-70 gj thus appears to be the minimum for any society where a general satisfaction of essential physical needs is combined with fairly widespread opportunities for intellectual advancement and with the respect for basic individual rights. [… and concludes that …] the quest for ever-higher energy use thus has no justification either in objective evaluations reviewed in this section, or in subjective self-assessments. (105) the important fact to consider here, is that countries such as the united states or canada consume almost three times the required minimal amount, with 285 gj (6800 koe) and 318 gj (7600 koe) annual per capita energy use respectively. although debatable because of the risk of imposing imperialistic and/or western standards of well-being, smil’s key point is that acceptable infant mortalities (below 30/1,000 live births) corresponded to annual per capita energy use of at least 30-40 gj. but fairly low infant mortalities (less than 20/1,000 live births) prevailed only in countries consuming at least 60 gj a year per capita, and the lowest rates (below 10) were not found in any country using less than about 110 gj (fig. 2.10) [see, fig. 1 below]. however, increased energy use beyond this point is not associated with any further declines of infant mortality, and the correlation for the entire data set of 57 countries. (98) following smil’s reasoning, i deliberately play devil’s advocate claiming that both the parameters he indicated (life expectancy and mortality at birth), but perhaps even more significantly the overall quality of life is definitely not increased by energy consumption above 110 gj/c/y. my home country of italy, for instance, remains at about 104 gj (2,400 koe) while maintaining an average life expectancy of 83.5 (us: 78.3) and infant mortality rate of 2.67 deaths per thousand live births (us: 5.58). of course, this does not represent a competition between nations’ wellbeing, but just a comparison between energy consumptions rates and the open-ended debate about quality of life as it relates to standards of living and other factors. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ giovanni frigo 192 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ in conclusion, smil’s observations have inspired others to take a hard look at the relationships between amounts of energy fluctuating in ecological and social systems (production, consumption, distribution, and waste) in relation to individual and social wellbeing. the contribution of energy studies can definitely enrich energy ethics by complexifying the debate and adding nuances to how energy is actually part of human and ecosystemic life. the following three sections: energy humanities, ethics and philosophy of energy, and interdisciplinary conferences and projects, further explore paths of inquiry similar to the anthropology of energy. 5. energy humanities writers, artists, and poets have been cultivating the innovative field of energy humanities especially over the past decade. among other things, scholars in energy humanities (similar to those of environmental humanities) explore energy through poetry, novels, and essays, but also experiment with other media such as photography and film. because they are both concerned with delving into the muddy waters of “energy cultures”, there are many connections between anthropology/ethnography of energy and energy humanities. even though there is no need to sharply figure 1. – comparison of infant mortality with average annual per capita use of commercial energy. plotted from data in undp (2001). source: smil 2003. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ energy ethics: a literature review 193 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ distinguish the two, energy humanities can be characterized as those contributions that do not necessarily employ specific scientific methods of inquiry. rather they utilize the tools of investigative journalism, the literary acumen of novelists, or the mesmerizing charm of poetry. at times, they change the game altogether by refusing the written format and embark on innovative experiments through audio-visual and performative arts. the novelty of energy humanities resides, perhaps, in these uncommon, original attempts to talk about energy. paula farca’s energy in literature (2015) is one of the richest collections of energy humanities. this recent anthology collects 20th and 21st century poems, critical essays, and photos which show the connections between energy, society, and environment from the unusual but rich perspective of the humanities. various contributions deal with different sources of energy, while others concentrate on issues of pollution, waste, or extractions. the most relevant essays tackle timely topics related to the interwoven dimensions of gender and ethnicity, or the ever-lasting (and debatable) tension between nature and culture. foundational work for the academic establishment of this field was done, among others, by dominic boyer and imre szeman (szeman and boyer 2017). boyer directs the center for energy and environmental research in the human sciences at rice university 3 and organizes with cymene howe and the scholars of the center an annual workshop called energy cultures (at its 7th edition in 2018). boyer and howe also produce a blog and a weekly podcast that features energy scholars and artists. the other “founding father”, szeman, is based at the university of alberta and is one of the leaders of the petrocultures research group 4. together, they edited the second anthology in the field after farca’s (szeman and boyer 2017). the volume collects almost fifty pieces ranging from classics of literature to contemporary stories. some contributions stand out in the third part, “energy in philosophy: ethics, politics, and being” for they connect to the development of a philosophy of energy. to get a further glimpse of energy humanities it can be useful to turn to the article “the charge against electricity” by mark anusas and tim ingold. here, the authors report a legal case in which electricity is charged with gross deception. this is the beginning: electricity has become such a ubiquitous feature of modern life that most of us would have no idea how to manage without it. interruptions in supply are experienced as unsustainable moments of crisis. the possibility that 3 http://culturesofenergy.com/. 4 http://petrocultures.com/. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ http://culturesofenergy.com/ http://petrocultures.com/ giovanni frigo 194 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the supply of electricity might eventually run dry is every government’s worst nightmare and underpins the global politics of energy. do we blame electricity for having brought us to this state of dependency? can we hold it responsible for the disempowerment of citizens, for the entrapment of their lives within a state-sponsored grid maintained by corporations? or does it, on the contrary, hold the potential for emancipation? is electricity guilty or not guilty? in what follows, we begin with the case for the prosecution. then we present the case for the defense. you, our readers, are the jury, and we leave the verdict for you to decide. (540) in this case, the authors wanted to create a fictional story that, nonetheless, implies some profound reflections on energy, from the commodious lifestyle afforded by an electrified built environment, to issues of public (dis)empowerment over energy production and distribution. my reading of the energy humanities literature suggests that a theme that has gained traction is that of oil cultures or “the socio-cultural complexities and contradictions of petrocultures” (petrocultures research group 2016). moving from the work of lemenager, farca, boyer, and szeman, several other authors have written about this, conjugating ethnographic experiences, travels, and sometimes philosophical reflections. the only problem with this trend, highlights christopher jones (2016), is that oil is currently over-represented in the energy humanities, a state of affairs jones describes as “petromyopia”. consider in this regard the online issue of august 2017 of technology’s stories – the online platform of the society for the history of technology – gathers several of these interesting narratives. for example, abby spinak oil encounters in west texas (2017) and sarah stanford-mcintyre’s latourian reflection “when oil was modern” (2017). 6. religious studies interestingly, the first (english) appearance of the expression “energy ethics” was in the title dieter t. hessel’s book energy ethics: a christian response (1979). even though it is difficult to determine whether hessel coined the term himself or not, this publication is an example of the contribution of religious thinking to the theme of energy ethics, a trend that has re-emerged more recently in the work of more contemporary scholars. hessel’s book was the result of the work of a committee appointed in 1974 by the national council of churches of christ (nccc) “to study the moral and religious issues in the use of plutonium as a commercial nuclear fuel”. even though it was intended as a “sourcebook for discushttp://www.ledonline.it/relations/ energy ethics: a literature review 195 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ sion in christian churches” it represents an early example of the interests for energy issues that emerged during the 1970s in the wake of the energy crisis. in this edited volume, hessel’s contribution is an “analysis of the justice of energy politics from a biblical perspective”. more recently, erin lothes biviano et al. (2016) focus on energy ethics from a religious standpoint, in the wake of hessel’s work. their catholic moral traditions and energy ethics for the twenty-first century aims at founding a catholic energy ethics that pays “attention to current energy realities with scientific and technological precision, and can offer unique clarity about the specifically moral character of the problem” (biviano et al. 2016, 1-2; see also biviano 2018 in vol 6.1 of this special issue). “clarity” for biviano depends on the special alliance that christian believers maintain they have with a god who gifted them the world as creation. from an environmental philosophy standpoint, this christian approach to energy ethics is interesting in that it provides a counterargument to the “accusatory” stance of scholars such as lynn white jr. who saw in the judeo-christian teleology and metaphysics the primary causes of the ecological crisis because, “especially in its western form, christianity is the most anthropocentric religion the world has seen”. white claimed that since both science and technology are blessed words in our contemporary vocabulary, we need to remember that both notions are culturally interlinked with religion and may perpetuate some of its teleological aims. first, historically, modern science is an extrapolation of natural theology and, second, modern technology is at least partly to be explained as an occidental, voluntarist realization of the christian dogma of man’s transcendence of, and rightful mastery over, nature 5. but, as we now recognize, somewhat over a century ago science and technology-hitherto quite separate activities-joined to give mankind powers which, to judge by many of the ecologic effects, are out of control. if so, christianity bears a huge burden of guilt. a final example of catholic engagement with environmental and energy issues came in 2014 with the publication of pope francis’ encyclical laudato si’ (2015), which constitutes both a call for action and a theological and ecological vision 6. but the strong positioning of the pontifex maximus was indeed anticipated and followed by several other activities 5 for a similar exploration of the teleological nature of supposedly post-christian ideologies, see the seminal work of philosopher of history karl löwith, meaning in history (lowith 1949). 6 franciscan perspectives on the human-nature relationship are also very relevant. see, for instance, mizzoni 2008. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ giovanni frigo 196 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ and events organized by the vatican. the antecedents go back as far as the week of study retreat held in vatican city on november 10th-15th, 1980, titled “mankind and energy: needs, resources, hopes” (pontifical academy of sciences 1982). a more recent example is the joint workshop organized on may 6th, 2014, by the pontifical academies of sciences and social sciences. this event produced a trilingual report on sustainable humanity. sustainable nature. our responsibility (2014) in which several intellectuals presented their research and agreed on a final joint statement entitled “stabilizing the climate and giving energy access to all with an inclusive economy”. in it, for instance, the participants state that perhaps the greatest challenge lies in the sphere of human values. […] we need, above all, to change our convictions and attitudes, and combat the globalization of indifference with its culture of waste and idolatry of money. we should insist upon the preferential option for the poor; strengthen the family and community; and honor and protect creation as humanity’s imperative responsibility to future generations. we have the innovative and technological capability to be good stewards of creation. humanity needs urgently to redirect our relationship with nature by adopting the sustainable development goals so as to promote a sustainable pattern of economic development and social inclusion. a human ecology that is healthy in terms of ethical virtues contributes to the achievement of sustainable nature and a balanced environment. today we need a relationship of mutual benefit: true values should permeate the economy and respect for creation should promote human dignity and wellbeing. (23) but the encyclical also explicitly and repeatedly mentions “energy” in connection to its efficiency, conservation, equal distribution and access, and toward non-polluting forms. for example, in paragraph 26 francis (2015) links climate change and energy issues by writing: there is an urgent need to develop policies so that, in the next few years, the emission of carbon dioxide and other highly polluting gases can be drastically reduced, for example, substituting for fossil fuels and developing sources of renewable energy. worldwide there is minimal access to clean and renewable energy. there is still a need to develop adequate storage technologies. some countries have made considerable progress, although it is far from constituting a significant proportion. investments have also been made in means of production and transportation which consume less energy and require fewer raw materials, as well as in methods of construction and renovating buildings which improve their energy efficiency. but these good practices are still far from widespread. (24) finally, in the year following laudato si’, the pontifical council for justice and peace published the book energy, justice, and peace: a reflection http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ energy ethics: a literature review 197 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ on energy in the current context of development and environmental protection (2016) which adds an ulterior clarification of the links between the topic of energy and those of justice and peace. unfortunately, i have not found literature from other religious traditions such as islam or hinduism engaged with the concept of energy. but again, this might be a further confirmation that energy itself is a rather contextualized concept. in any case, the christian tradition has, on the one hand, assumed the traditional energy paradigm but, on the other, thought about the ethical implications of energy. christian intellectuals have prioritized, understandably, the discussion of a more just redistribution of god-given resources rather than embarking on the development of an ecocentric outlook. 7. philosophy and ethics if we turn specifically to possible antecedents of a philosophy of energy, or more specifically to an ethics of energy, the examples become rarer and sometimes they are “under cover”. by this, i mean that sometimes the work that has the more philosophical significance is not called directly “philosophy” and is therefore hidden under other labels. but what is especially surprising is that there are very few metaphysical and ontological reflections explicitly devoted to energy, and even fewer that address the philosophy behind its conceptualization. the interest for this intersection appeared during the period of “energetics” studies at the turn of the 20th century. non-deterministic, non-mechanistic perspectives flourished during this period too. we can look at the history of math, geometry, statistics, and physics but also at the work of philosophers, psychologists, and psychiatrists. examples do not abound but can be found, for instance, in john g. hibben’s “the theory of energetics and its philosophical bearings” (1903), harold chapman’s “matter and energy” (1917), or henri bergson’s mind-energy (1920). another example is william james who, in his the energies of men (1907) grapples with the surprising resourcefulness of humans, not only in physical terms, but as “inner work” that allows men to move from higher to lower states and vice versa: writing is higher than walking, thinking is higher than writing, deciding higher than thinking, deciding “no” higher than deciding “yes” – at least the man who passes from one of these activities to another will usually say that each later one involves a greater element of inner work than the earlier ones, even though the total heat given out or the footpounds expended by http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ giovanni frigo 198 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the organism, may be less. just how to conceive this inner work physiologically is as yet impossible, but psychologically we all know what the word means. we need a particular spur or effort to start us upon inner work; it tires us to sustain it; and when long sustained, we know how easily we lapse. when i speak of “energizing”, and its rates and levels and sources, i mean therefore our inner as well as our outer work. […] the first point to agree upon […] is that as a rule men habitually use only a small part of the powers which they actually possess and which they might use under appropriate conditions. […] either some unusual stimulus fills them with emotional excitement, or some unusual idea of necessity induces them to make an extra effort of will. excitements, ideas, and efforts, in a word, are what carry us over the dam. (11-6) another very influential philosophical perspective that has tackled energy issues especially in relation to the logic of domination is that of ecofeminism. scholars such as vandana shiva and maria mies (mies and shiva 2014), karen warren (warren 1990; 1997), val plumwood (plumwood 1993; 2002), carolyn merchant (merchant 1980; 2005), or trish glazebrook (glazebrook 2004, 2005; glazebrook and kola-olusanya 2011) wrote extensively about how a patriarchal mode of understanding nature has shaped the way (some) humans relate to the natural world. moreover, ecofeminist scholars have extensively explored the interconnection between nature and motherhood (roach 1996; 2003), ethics, energy, and climate change (glazebrook 2011; gaard 2015), and the specific situation of women dealing with energy and water issues (gaard 2001). finally, a recurrent theme in ecofeminist scholarship that is worth mentioning here, although it is not separated from those above, is that of (in)justice and inequalities which are often framed in terms of planetary north-south imbalances (shiva 1988, 2003; gaard and gruen 2003; seppälä 2016). if we turn to ethics of energy, or energy ethics, the intellectual landscape becomes more nuanced. in this section, i mention some of the most relevant philosophical works and then offer some examples of a moral engagement with energy issues 7. on the more theoretical side, an example is psychiatrist stanley jacobs who, aware of the risk of raising some controversial points about linking ancient indian philosophy to the scientific study of energy, promotes in his “a philosophy of energy” (1989) a broadening of the definition of energy as 7 i owe to professor carl mitcham credit regarding the antecedents of an “energy ethics”, through his lais research award lecture titled, “from the ethics of energy to the energy of ethics” presented on november 28th, 2012. the works i refer to are those published and available in english. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ energy ethics: a literature review 199 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ that from which the whole manifest universe arises, causal, subtle and physical. it can be experienced through its manifestations. it can be measured precisely in the physical world by scientific instruments, and measured precisely in the worlds beyond the physical by a direct knowledge of measure itself. (96) jacobs agrees that “there is potential energy, by virtue of position, kinetic energy by virtue of movement, and inertial energy by virtue of mass”. but he argues that energy of inertia “that energy associated with the inertia of a body, by virtue of its mass, whether in a vacuum or resting on a surface – can also be thought of as the resistance of an object to movement, or to doing work”. since we know from experience that a “person who is self-motivated and ‘raring to go’ implies also that after intellectual work we have moved ideas around and in emotional work we have shifted certain feelings and attitudes around”. jacobs suggests a broader definition of energy that “includes both the capacity to do work, and the capacity to resist doing work”, thus proposing that “the physical phenomena of energy are, perhaps, reflections of the more subtle, psychological ones”. in this way, jacobs does not really challenge the energy paradigm, but expands it to include human emotional life. a second example of philosophy of energy is the provocative article of another psychiatrist, stanley w. jackson. in his “subjective experiences and the concept of energy” (1967), he aims at integrating the scientific conceptualization of energy. jackson proposes that yet another factor, “man’s subjective experience of effort, energy, or vigor, has also played a critical role in the origins and development of the concept of energy” (602; italics in the original). more recently, praiseworthy attempts have been made to delineate a philosophy of energy (geerts et al. 2016, 2017a; geerts 2017b, 2018). in “towards a philosophy of energy” geerts et al. (2016) attempt to establish the field of philosophy of energy by locating it amongst its theoretical neighbors and identifying its roots and ancestors. we compare and contrast the philosophy of energy to these fields, and defend the position that this indeed entails a distinct niche that comes with its own specific perspective that is not, and cannot be, adequately addressed by any other field. (107) the authors suggest that there are at least three philosophies of energy which, altogether, contribute to a “fully-fledge philosophy of energy”. first, the inquiry into the natural phenomenon of energy. second, a critique of the functioning of energy in society. and third, the philosophy of technology in its “empirical turn”. but referring to qualitative energy http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ giovanni frigo 200 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ paradigms is key because the authors affirm that it would be very relevant to determine whether an overarching philosophy of energy could reconnect “two apparently disjointed conceptions of energy”, that is the traditional energy paradigm and the “non-exact phenomenon of ‘life energy’”. in fact, the scientific understanding of energy has enabled society to plug into ever increasing amounts of energy in various forms, but it fails to say much about the effects of these developments on society. […] something similar holds for inquiries into life energy: they are silent on energy external to the body. however, while this is not problematic in itself, should we seek to gauge what is changing in energy transition, a static understanding of energy falls short of the mark. (110) after a dense discussion of the contributions of mumford, bataille, and heidegger, geerts et al. clarify the empirical turn that took place in philosophy of technology toward the end of the first decade of the 21st century (brey 2010; verbeek 2011): from grand critiques on technology in general, attention has shifted towards the ways in which particular technologies – say, pre-natal ultrasound or skype – lead to new moral problems, or new conceptions of proximity. this focus on artifacts has proved very useful in providing clarification and guidance in an increasingly complicated technological lifeworld. (118-9) furthermore, the researches of science, technology and society (sts) studies point out that science is not a value-free endeavor (douglas 2009) and that devices and systems (e.g. pipelines, dams, transmission lines, power plants) do not happen in the void but incorporate cultural and societal preferences and values, a “morality” of their own (winner 2003; verbeek 2011, 2013). nevertheless, the authors disagree with the use of such approach in relation to energy technologies because of “the way the energy aspects of our daily practices tend to get hidden from sight by the artifacts we adopt and use”. instead they propose a systemic view “because only at the systemic level can we fruitfully distinguish between different energy practices”. moving from this systemic perspective, they make a distinction between an understanding of energy as potentiality, which is static, and one as flux, characterized by its dynamicity, highlighting that the difference is crucial because it “revolves around whether or not humanity controls it”. finally, applying the twin concept of flux/ dynamic and potential/static to the electric grid, geerts et al. point out that the electricity is typically conceptualized as potentiality/static, where it is actually in flux. the conclusion, then, is that “the formerly unprobhttp://www.ledonline.it/relations/ energy ethics: a literature review 201 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ lematic misconception of electricity as potentiality becomes an issue when intermittent renewable sources become more significant in the energy mix”. in times of energy transition from fossil fuels (potential) to renewable sources (flux) “technological solutions can go a long way, but still need some help from consumers”. therefore, consumer awareness of the fluctuating nature of renewable energy becomes the key premise for their active participation and cooperation, thus showing “how a brief philosophical exploration of a rather specific issue to energy transition quickly leads onto fundamental questions regarding the functioning of energy in society”. another important contribution is that of philosopher mario bunge, who writes about the metaphysical dimensions of energy in his “energy: between physics and metaphysics” (2000). furthermore, at the crossroads of ethnography and philosophy of energy lies the article “vital energy” by stephen gudeman (2012) which offers a reflection on the concept of “vital energy” as a current of “strength” or “force”. this idea is central to the economies of panama and colombia and “connects all activities in the local economies and establishes relationships, from kin to strangers” (57). on a very different note, finnish philosophers tere vadén and antti salminen (2007) identify the connections between the nature of modernity, the addiction to fossil fuels, and the socio-political structure in which most humans are embedded: the fact that fossil energy is in a blind spot of social thought is in itself remarkable, as many of the experiential characteristics of modernity are directly connected to fossil fuels. the experience of speed and acceleration, celebrated by futurists and modernisers, fascists and communists alike, is derivative of the use of fossil fuels. many commentators have lauded an independence from or even a victory over nature. ironically, the impression of independence is made possible by a unique natural endowment, namely, amassed high quality hydrocarbons. this ironical twist gives modernity its characteristic epistemologically delusional nature. (51) in subsequent work, the same authors analyzed what human existence means in the neoliberal, capitalistic age of fossil fuels by offering an “experiential, phenomenological, and therefore politico-economical view on oil”, a “nafthology” capable of investigating both its material and theoretical dimensions (2015; see also vadén and salminen 2018). luckily, reflections that grapple explicitly with energy issues from a moral perspective are not as rare as those on the metaphysical and ontological aspects (mitcham and rolston 2013; sovacool 2013; briggle 2015; heckel 2015; meinhold 2016). most of the work has been devoted to energy in connection to the concept of equity (illich 1974), responsibility http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ giovanni frigo 202 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ (dernbach and brown 2009; shirani et al. 2013), the fundamental problem of obligations toward future generations (wenz 1983; parfit 2010; jamieson 2014), and the capability approach in relation to clean energy as one of the 17 sustainable development goals (hillerbrand 2018). all-around theorist ivan illich wrote about “energy and equity” stressing that a precise moral concern for higher energy consumption on a planet with limited resources arises in relation to incomparable privileges in the access of resources (illich 1974; 2013). probably also as a consequence of his religious background, illich was concerned with the actual practice of morally virtuous energy choices. in this sense, he was one of the first intellectuals to show that choices that are made regarding how we organize spaces and infrastructures, that is ultimately utilizing energy, depend on specific socio-historical and geographic assumptions, and may have morally relevant consequences. his famous discussion of “how energy is used to move people” proposes the comparison between bicycles and cars, and it represents an exemplary, provocative attempt to apply moral philosophy to energy issues. for instance, regarding traffic issues illich affirms that there are two roads from where we are to technological maturity: one is the road of liberation from affluence; the other is the road of liberation from dependence. both roads have the same destination: the social restructuring of space that offers to each person the constantly renewed experience that the centre of the world is where he stands, walks and lives. […] a concrete analysis of traffic betrays the truth underlying the energy crisis: the impact of industrially packaged quanta of energy on the social environment tends to be degrading, exhausting and enslaving, and these effects come into play even before those which threaten the pollution of the physical environment and the extinction of the race. the crucial point at which these effects can be reversed is not, however, a matter of deduction, but of decision. (75-6) if we turn to academic philosophy, we discover that professional ethicists have devoted very little space to the themes of energy and ethics, where most of the contributions come from the field of environmental ethics. rather than looking at energy in a technical sense or attempting to understand how nature ends up in built environments, traditional environmental philosophy and ethics have focused more on ideas and practices related to nature, environment, and resources. two interesting examples of this kind of approach are peter s. wenz’s paper “ethics, energy, policy, and future generations” (1983), which explores the intertemporal dimension of an ethical approach to energy policy and dale jamieson chapter “energy, ethics, and the transformation of nature” (2014). http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ energy ethics: a literature review 203 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ finally, a recent interdisciplinary example that summarizes the approaches of both anthropology and philosophy of technology to the theme of energy ethics can be found in the work of carl mitcham and jessica smith “energy constraints” (mitcham and rolston smith 2013). their article offers an overview of the area of energy ethics according to the perspectives of both anthropology of energy and philosophy of energy. in line with what i argued above, they also suggest that the historico-philosophical analysis of the concept of energy in the west from aristotle to einstein further suggests the need for much more careful analysis than is usually found in talk about energy policy and politics. aristotle’s energia or active reality is only remotely related to the energy of early modern natural philosophy and mechanics. (316) in the core of the article, mitcham and smith turn to ethics proposing “type i and type ii energy ethics as a framework for advancing public debate about energy” which, they claim, “can easily modify common productive, economic, environmental, and political attitudes toward energy”. type i energy ethics is based on the belief that there is a linear relation between energy and culture and “it necessarily assumes that energy production and use is a fundamental good”. further developing the reasoning of illich in his energy and equity (1974), the authors propose that “skepticism with regard to such a linear relationship is the foundation of a type ii framework”. the type ii energy ethics resembles both illich’s and smil’s approaches, in that it assumes that “beyond a threshold abstractly defined as that between enough and too much, energy production and consumption begins to undermine the abilities of people to lead their own lives” (317). interestingly, type ii energy ethics can adapt to different ethical theories: energy is argued to be at most a qualified rather than an unqualified good; as perhaps necessary, but only up to a point, beyond which it can in multiple ways become counterproductive. in the form of a consequentialist or utilitarian argument, after crossing a certain threshold, increasing energy production and use reduces the quality of life. in teleological terms, stabilized or balanced energy use by humans is more natural than unrestricted increases. from a deontological perspective, humans are rationally obligated to limit not only their utilizations of energy but its production as well. historically there are clearly questions to be raised about whether the grand narrative of human change can be characterized as simply one of progressive energy development. and surely there are instances in which energy is ugly – ugly even in its sublimity. (318) this seminal for the recent study of energy and ethics ends with three provocative questions which are also a call for ulterior engagements of both anthropology and philosophy: http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ giovanni frigo 204 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ could it not be that energy production and use, when examined from the limited perspectives of economics and politics, is itself a constraint on leading the good life? do not both anthropology and philosophy suggest that life is more than energy production and use? are there not other perspectives from history to art, poetry, psychology, and religion that could further de-constrain and enrich the way people think about energy? (318) in another article in this volume (6.2.), a recent interview with carl mitcham expands and offers an update on his ideas about energy and ethics (mitcham and frigo 2018). these are just some examples of the initial engagement of philosophy and ethics with the topic of energy. it can surely be affirmed that the work and insights of these intellectuals, among others, represent the basis for contemporary debates. what clearly emerges from these early works is the realization of the moral consequences of the finitude of resources, as well as a conceptual challenge to think energy in relation to justice, equality, equity, and responsibility, for both present and future generations. 8. conferences and interdisciplinary projects in this last section, i mention seven important public occasions in which the conversation about energy departed from a disciplinarian setting and opened up to favor a broader discussion. for example, philosophy of technology and science, technology and society (sts) studies have been discussing the theme of energy broadly, focusing mainly on engineering’s demand for ethics in its educational curricula. the following are instances of interdisciplinary work that began the dialog that this special issue aims to continue. first, from a more pedagogical standpoint, philosopher douglas maclean created in 1982 a “model course” entitled “ethics and energy” at the center for philosophy and public policy at the university of maryland which was the first university class aimed at merging ethics and energy issues (maclean 1982). more recently, two mit scholars, nathan lee and lucas stanczyk, promoted a course entitled “the ethics of energy policy”, started in fall 2015. 8 the second contribution is unesco’s world commission on the ethics of scientific knowledge and technology (comest). the head of this organization, james peter kimmins, edited in 2001 a study entitled 8 http://energy.mit.edu/news/morals-matter-new-class-explores-energy-and-ethics/. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ http://energy.mit.edu/news/morals-matter-new-class-explores-energy-and-ethics/ energy ethics: a literature review 205 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the ethics of energy: a framework for action which was the result of the work of the comest sub-commission on the ethics of energy that gathered in paris in november 2000 (kimmins 2001). comest’s contribution to energy ethics can be found in the central, formidable section entitled the ethical challenge of energy: linking ethics inextricably to energy requires this type of universal vision, one that seeks to arrive at practical action that is responsive, flexible and participatory. the complexity of energy issues […] shows that all potential solutions to individual energy questions involve a social cost, an ethical dilemma and an impact on the way other problems are resolved. thus, they can only be looked at within a broader consideration of the functioning of the world system of which energy is but one intimately woven component. […] ethics play an important role in issues of development for the future by clarifying values at stake in policy decisions and giving moral reasons for alternative courses of action. environmental and development questions are loaded with moral implications that need to be understood and carefully weighed before intelligent choices are made. this should help resolve value conflicts that thwart ecological conservation and development projects. (33-5) kimmins also writes that “with the help of ethics, a new social paradigm should evolve that would promote sustainable development with the maintenance of cultural diversity, social justice and equity” thus also highlighting the fact that a change of mentality is overdue. third, the conference ethics, energy and the future: technology for a sustainable society organized in june 2010 by s. matthew liao at delft university of technology in the netherlands was probably the first institutionally organized event that explored the links between ethics and energy in the field of sts. the goal of this gathering was to develop guidelines for a “sustainable ethics for future energy systems”. this conference was part of an overall project pursued at the 3.tu.centre for sustainable energy technologies (now 4.tu.) aimed at “(i) the analysis of the notion of sustainability in the context of the discussion of future energy systems, (ii) the development of a normative framework (a sustainable ethics) for the moral evaluation of sustainable energy systems, and (iii) recommendations for the use of such an assessment framework in r&d processes” 9. a fourth example is energy ethics in science and engineering education, a cutting-edge project that the national academy of engineering 9 http://ethicsandtechnology.eu/research-projects/a_sustainable_ethics_for_ future_energy_systems/. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ http://ethicsandtechnology.eu/research-projects/a_sustainable_ethics_for_future_energy_systems/ http://ethicsandtechnology.eu/research-projects/a_sustainable_ethics_for_future_energy_systems/ giovanni frigo 206 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ and arizona state university developed between 2011 and 2014. according to nae’s outcomes report, the project’s findings indicate that choices to develop or reorient energy technologies entail ethical and societal commitments that go beyond those that can be captured in cost-benefit analyses. they involve issues of justice as well as community life, so the choices should attend to questions of public participation and engagement, particularly how to include those persons and groups who are less influential. design decisions that scientists and engineers make, and alternative energy pathways that can be selected, will influence the answers to these social and ethical questions so they need to be accounted for in these decisions. these findings influenced the educational framework and materials developed in the project. the project introduces energy systems as complex socio-technological systems and introduces ethical approaches to the analysis of these systems and system transitions. 10 fifth, the first conference explicitly entitled energy ethics – although particularly from an anthropological perspective – was organized on march 17th-18th, 2016, by mette high and jessica smith at the university of st. andrews, scotland 11. during april 2nd-5th, 2017, publishing company elsevier organized the first international conference on energy research and social science energy for society in melia sitges, spain 12. the sixth example is a personal one because at the public philosophy network (ppn) conference held in boulder, co in february 2018 i myself organized a workshop on the philosophical and ethical contributions to the sustainable energy discourse (frigo 2018b). finally, on september 12th-13th, 2018, the conference energy justice and the capability approach – interdisciplinary perspectives, held at malmö university, sweden and organized by anders melin, gathered renowned scholars such as r. day, s. gardiner, r. hillerbrand, g. walker, k. jenkins and b. taebi who explored the potential of the capability approach for conceptualizing and studying issues of energy justice. in conclusion, these and other writings, courses, conferences, workshops, and projects aim at expanding the interdisciplinarity of the energy discourse and have been instrumental in both enlarging the audience interested in energy issues and stimulating alternative ways of thinking about energy. 10 https://www.nae.edu/energyethics.aspx. 11 http://energyethics.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/. 12 https://www.elsevier.com/events/conferences/international-conference-onenergy-research-and-social-science. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ https://www.nae.edu/energyethics.aspx http://energyethics.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/ https://www.elsevier.com/events/conferences/international-conference-on-energy-research-and-social-science https://www.elsevier.com/events/conferences/international-conference-on-energy-research-and-social-science energy ethics: a literature review 207 relations – 6.2 november 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ references appadurai, arjun. 1990. “disjuncture and difference in the global cultural economy”. public culture 2 (2): 1-24. bergson, henri. 1920. mind-energy: lectures and essays. westport, ct london: greenwood press. biviano, erin lothes. 2018. “catholic energy ethics: 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matthew.burke2@mail.mcgill.ca abstract recognizing the present mass extinction of species and populations worldwide, considerable effort is underway to resolve tensions between achieving high levels of renewable energy development and protecting ecosystems and biodiversity. moving beyond common mitigation measures designed to avoid or minimize adverse impacts, this paper takes a relational view of energy futures to explore the opportunities and implications of rethinking renewable energy systems as processes for restoration and healing of human-nature relationships. in a relational view, avoiding or minimizing harm is necessary but insufficient for establishing healthy, enduring relationships based on mutual benefit between humans and nonhuman nature. the primary aim of the paper is to identify a set of practices for renewable energy technologies that support ecological enhancement through their deployment and use, as discovered through recent research and practice. the paper first presents the case for mutual benefit as a crucial principle for guiding renewable energy developments due to reasons of practice, ecology, and ethics, and goes on to provide examples of mutually-beneficial energy development across a range of technologies. the study reveals options for renewable energy systems as a whole to be assembled, operated, and repurposed for the co-benefit of humans and nonhuman nature. keywords: biodiversity; co-benefits; conservation; ecosystems; energy and environment; energy ethics; energy landscapes; mutual benefit; renewable energy transition; restoration. 1. introduction despite widespread commitments to renewable energy, conflicts with ecological conservation goals, such as proposed siting in ecologically-sensitive areas, threaten to slow or reduce deployment. in response, advocates of renewables commonly assert that, while all renewable energy systems can http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ http://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2018-001-burk mailto:matthew.burke2@mail.mcgill.ca matthew j. burke 88 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ negatively impact ecosystems and biodiversity (acar and dincer 2017; gasparatos et al. 2017; gibson, wilman, and laurance 2017), their net benefits for environment and society exceed the growing net costs associated with the continued use of fossil fuels (azzellino et al. 2013; allison, root, and frumhoff 2014). this net-benefit narrative increasingly serves to coalesce diverse interests and social groups while inspiring a proliferation of research initiatives, standards, guidelines, tools, practices and collaborations over the last decade (e.g., blm 2009; birdlife europe 2011; usfws 2012; science for environment policy 2015; van der winden et al. 2015; khalil 2016; rspb 2016; wwf-canada 2016; awwi 2017; tnc 2017; bri 2018; mmc 2018). such efforts are seen to address the potential, yet not insurmountable, tensions between achieving high levels of renewable energy while also protecting life on land and in the world’s ocean, as articulated in the united nations’ sustainable development goals (unep 2016). this paper begins from a precautionary assumption that these important efforts will not fundamentally shift present trends of large-scale biological loss. conventional efforts to reduce or minimize impacts of development, while making important contributions in specific cases, have not worked to change the basic pattern of mass extinction and loss of nonhuman life in the aggregate (ceballos, ehrlich, and dirzo 2017; wagler 2018). increasing the development of renewable energy systems at the scale and pace envisioned while simultaneously reversing the present crisis of biodiversity compels a careful appraisal of how these global imperatives can be successfully integrated. moving beyond common measures to mitigate biological loss, this paper takes a relational view of energy futures, emphasizing and shifting attention toward the role of nonhuman elements of renewable energy systems, to explore opportunities for rethinking renewable energy systems as processes for restoration and healing of human-nature relationships. the necessity for expanding renewable energy while also protecting the biosphere suggests that efforts to transition to renewables fundamentally address the crisis of nonhuman species and communities from the outset. bringing together these two large-scale, ambitious, and overlapping global priorities requires an approach to the development of renewable energy systems that results in measurable improvements to ecosystems and biodiversity at the site level as well as in the aggregate. this relational approach opens toward a fundamental repurposing of renewable energy development, seeking not only new ways of converting energy for human use, but also new opportunities for ecological enhancements (birdlife europe 2011), meaning enduring benefits for nonhuhttp://www.ledonline.it/relations/ mutually-beneficial renewable energy systems 89 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ man life. a shift in the orientation of renewable energy development is proposed, from that of doing “less bad” to one of creating “more good” (mcdonough 2017) for human and nonhuman communities alike. attention to enhancements and co-benefits through renewable energy is neither new (goetzberger and zastrow 1982; stremke and koh 2010) nor assured; yet, with increasing adoption of policies, development, and ensuing conflicts, the relevance of these approaches will likely increase over the coming decades. this research aims to identify a set of strategies for ecological enhancement through deployment and use of renewable energy technologies. more broadly, the research explores ecological and technological implications of the normative position taken here, thus encouraging an alternative to a dominant energy paradigm, renewable and otherwise, that views nonhuman natures as passive reserves and resources for human exploitation (frigo 2017). supporting the objectives of this special issue, the concept of mutual benefit enables rethinking, redefining, and renegotiating renewable energy conversions as shared processes among human and nonhuman participants for producing mutual wellbeing. the following section presents a rationale for this mutually-beneficial approach, supported for reasons of practice, ecology, and ethics. the focus on practice demonstrates the salience of the question of energy-ecology interactions in the context of these broader goals and trends, while ecology and ethics provide a foundation for this approach, emphasizing human understanding and acceptance of, as well as responsibility for, inter-relatedness with all of life. section 3 presents the results of a review of academic literature, grey literature and reports, and websites, demonstrating that technologies and practices are presently available to support this approach. this review extends the work of gasparatos et al. (2017), santangeli et al. (2016), and others by drawing together multiple fields of study including geographies of energy (bridge et al. 2013; huber 2015; calvert 2016), conservation sciences (noss et al. 2012; martin, maris, and simberloff 2016), ecological restoration, planning, and design (mcharg 1969; anker 2010; higgs 2012), sustainable and multifunctional energy landscapes (stremke and koh 2011; howard et al. 2013; de waal and stremke 2014; lokman 2017; pasqualetti and stremke 2017), natural infrastructure (bennett, cassin, and carroll 2016), and techno-ecological synergies (bakshi, ziv, and lepech 2015; hanes, gopalakrishnan, and bakshi 2017). technologies were selected from those that convert energy sources continuously replenished by the sun or other natural cycles into modern forms of energy, including solar and wind power, hydroelectricity, bioenergy and ocean energy (ellabban, abu-rub, and blaabjerg 2014). initially http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ matthew j. burke 90 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ included, geothermal energy technologies were ultimately removed from the set of stand-alone technologies due to the relatively few concerns for ecosystems and biodiversity stemming from their small footprint, and the limited opportunities identified for ecological enhancements beyond conservation of surrounding areas. section 4 discusses key findings, implications, and risks, before closing in section 5 with a summary and suggestions for further research. 2. renewable energy and the natural world: relevance, relationships, and responsibility when viewed in their overlapping spatial and temporal contexts, the global imperatives of renewable energy transition and biodiversity and ecosystem conservation and restoration raise several considerations for their simultaneous achievement. in a manner not seen since the pre-industrial era (hornborg 2013), harvesting energy sources at the earth’s surface on a global scale implies a deep restructuring of physical space (smil 2015; huber and mccarthy 2017), exacerbating tensions around existing and future use of lands and oceans (gasparatos et al. 2017; huber and mccarthy 2017). although continued use of nonrenewable energy sources requires ongoing expansion (allred et al. 2015), compared to these conventional systems, renewable energy technologies require more physical space to deliver the same amount of power (i.e., lower rate of energy flow per unit of surface area) (mackay 2010; smil 2015; capellán-pérez, de castro, and arto 2017). power densities of efficient petroleum and coal sources vary from around 1000-10,000 we/m2, while renewables generally range from highs for hydroelectricity of around 0.5-200 we/m2, to lower power densities for solar and wind around 0.5-10 and less than 1 we/m2 for biomass and biofuels (smil 2015; capellán-pérez, de castro, and arto 2017). these systems may additionally require new transmissions and inputs of raw materials, including fossil fuels systems during transition, collectively extending spatial demands (heinberg and fridley 2016; capellán-pérez, de castro, and arto 2017; huber and mccarthy 2017). while only a small fraction of total available planetary surface area (jacobson and delucchi 2011), in relative terms these new energy infrastructures may require areas 1 to 3 orders of magnitude larger than existing systems worldwide (smil 2015), exceeding available land area for many highly industrialized regions (capellán-pérez, de castro, and arto 2017). this new pressure comes at a time when conservation sciences indicate that many regions require 25 to 75 percent of the http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ mutually-beneficial renewable energy systems 91 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ area to be managed with conservation as a primary objective (noss et al. 2012; dinerstein et al. 2017). the potential for energy sprawl further compels an account of qualitative changes to diverse ecosystems and the living beings inhabiting them (labussière and nadaï 2017). temporally, many renewable systems will require upgrading, decommissioning, and disposal within a period of approximately 30 years (gasparatos et al. 2017), implying an ongoing process of negotiation of competing spatial requirements within these emerging energy landand seascapes (pasqualetti and stremke 2017). all these issues are exacerbated by high levels of energy use among industrialized nations (heinberg and fridley 2016). these various tensions and possibilities of sprawling renewable energy systems demonstrate the salience of the question of energy-ecology interactions in the context of broader trends and aspirations. given their increasing practical relevance, a relational perspective provides an important basis for addressing these interactions. drawing especially from ecology and science, technology, and society, the idea and insight most meaningful here concerns the interrelatedness of human and nonhuman systems, in this case, human technological systems and the ecological communities and larger biosphere in which these systems are embedded. renewable energy systems bridge social and ecological systems, serving as both technology and physical structure, and transferring throughputs of materials, energy and information (marten 2001; johnson 2015). from the perspective of nonhuman members of the biotic communities, there may be little distinction made between these technological artifacts and other physical features of ecosystems (jørgensen 2014). this relational approach views human technologies for converting and making use of renewable flows of energy as embedded within and co-produced through their engagement with the nonhuman world, meaning that these energy systems emerge through collective practices of inter-related human and nonhuman participants within broader social, political, ecological, and technical assemblages (chilvers and pallett 2018). nonhuman actors, namely diverse species and ecosystems are at least as critical to the resulting technological system as human agents in government, business, research, finance, local communities and so on (fatimah and arora 2016). for renewable energy transitions, this way of representing inter-related social, natural and technological systems becomes embodied within practical, material and organizational forms (jasanoff 2004), raising the question, what kind of energy system is consistent with living inside a living being (kelly 2012, 102)? this understanding broadens ethical concerns and urges renewable energy practices that anticipate and take responsibility for these humanhttp://www.ledonline.it/relations/ matthew j. burke 92 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ nature interrelationships (de la bellacasa 2011; donovan 2014; chilvers and pallett 2018). the physical qualities of renewable energy, including their proximity and visibility, also make it less likely for people to avoid responsibilities of human energy use (pasqualetti 2000). from this relational perspective avoiding or minimizing harm is necessary but insufficient for establishing healthy, enduring relationships based on mutual benefit among humans and nonhuman nature. over the coming decades, we aspire to produce measurable improvements in both advancing renewable energy and protecting nonhuman ecosystems and biodiversity. the need here is not only to recognize and accept their interrelatedness, but to also take responsibility for their improvement. new scientific concepts are needed to reflect this redefinition of human-nature relations in the context of technological development (larson 2011). as a form of symbiosis, the concept of mutualism offers a starting point for understanding and emphasizing opportunities for longterm cooperation and enduring co-benefits across human and nonhuman communities (bronstein 2015). in ecological terms, mutualisms involve direct and indirect interactions between two species that result in benefits to both (boucher, james, and keeler 1982; bronstein 2015). while the perspective here is informed by the ecological concept of mutualism, the term mutual benefit is preferred, reserving mutualism for its ecological usage (west, griffin, and gardner 2007) until a greater consensus can develop regarding its implications as a novel metaphor (larson 2011). as inspired by berry (1999) and other ecocentric perspectives (washington et al. 2017), the transition to renewable energy would involve shifting sharply from outdated perspectives of human mastery over nature toward worldviews that value mutually-enhancing human-nature relations. mutual benefit is based on the view that human beings are neither the center nor the unique subjects in nature but rather one among many participants and members in inter-related processes, all deserving of moral respect (berry 1999; martin, maris, and simberloff 2016; jakobsen 2017). although this view may be insufficiently represented in energy and climate policy and research at present (mcshane 2016; sovacool et al. 2017), an emphasis on mutual benefit can help reinforce these not-only-anthropocentric values by making more transparent the belief in some degree of intrinsic value of nonhuman nature (batavia and nelson 2017). in contrast to one-sided approaches that consider nonhuman needs secondarily to the conversion of energy for human use, mutually-beneficial renewable energy refers to an approach to planning, developing, implementing and adapting these technologies to produce ongoing benefits to humans (in the form of renewable energy) and nonhumans (in the form of http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ mutually-beneficial renewable energy systems 93 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ biological diversity and ecosystem structure and function). in this sense, mutual benefit draws from deeper etymological roots, in which “mutual” suggests reciprocal relationships and sharing and holding in common, while “benefit” means an act of kindness, in service to another, and producing effects that promote wellbeing. the value of this conceptual framing lies in the way it draws attention to the sociotechnical and ecological dimensions and their interrelationships as integrated measures of achievement. as a practice informed by this relational view, mutually-beneficial renewable energy would seek to demonstrate ongoing, cumulative improvements in both direct and indirect ecological outcomes, such as increased community diversity and restored biodiversity and ecosystem functions. elements of this approach are already evident in efforts such as “wildlifefriendly renewable energy” and “renewables for nature” (cbd 2015; wwf-canada 2016). while mutual benefit also involves net benefits, in that there can also exist costs that are outweighed by the positive effects (bronstein 2015), the key difference from the current trend of net-benefit thinking is that mutual benefit seeks positive effects in both direct, local and indirect, global relations. mutual benefit offers a unique form of energy ethics and energy justice that accounts for the needs of inter-related human and nonhuman members (frigo 2017, 9-10; sovacool et al. 2017, 680-682), urging human responsibility for flourishing species and ecological communities. this practical, ecological and ethical framing provides a basis for advancing the development of renewable energy systems in a manner that ensures measurable improvements to ecosystems and biodiversity locally and globally, year after year, representing a fundamental shift from present trends. the following section demonstrates how this can be initiated using existing renewable energy technologies. 3. examples across technologies and scales 3.1. solar solar photovoltaics (pv) and concentrating solar power (csp) use sunlight to generate electricity while solar thermal uses sunlight to provide heat and hot water (ellabban, abu-rub, and blaabjerg 2014; gasparatos et al. 2017). common mitigation measures for solar energy include selecting areas of low conservation value and implementing biodiversity-friendly http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ matthew j. burke 94 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ operating procedures (gasparatos et al. 2017). mutually-beneficial opportunities for solar energy broadly involve flexible siting options, supporting use of degraded lands and water bodies, co-location with other uses and technologies, restoration of ecosystem functions and habitats within and adjacent to installations, and integration within built environments (stoms, dashiell, and davis 2013; hernandez et al. 2014; hoffacker, allen, and hernandez 2017; moore-o’leary et al. 2017). conversion of degraded lands may include converting cultivated lands to prairies and meadows, or making use of brownfields, abandoned mining lands, salt-contaminated lands, or existing transportation and transmission corridors (birdlife europe 2011; northmore 2014; hernandez et al. 2015; hoffacker, allen, and hernandez 2017; ucs 2017). integration within built environments can take increasingly diverse forms, from common rooftop solar systems (moore-o’leary et al. 2017; ucs 2017) to building-integrated pv (cannavale et al. 2017; moore-o’leary et al. 2017; jakica 2018), green roofs (gasparatos et al. 2017), clear window modules (hoffacker, allen, and hernandez 2017), various construction components (uyterlinde et al. 2017), noise barriers (hoffacker, allen, and hernandez 2017), solar road panels (northmore 2014), and solar pv sculptures and solar trees for public art and education (ferry, monoian, and koh 2012; hyder, sudhakar, and mamat 2018). ecological land management can be used across the lifespan of solar technologies. during site preparation, practices include conserving original vegetation (macknick, beatty, and hill 2013) and installing arrays without grading (beatty et al. 2017). during operations, solar energy accommodates native vegetation under and around panels; modified height and spacing of pv panels to allow rough pasture, prairie, meadow and grassland habitats to flourish; pollinator-friendly habitat and planting of wild bird seed, nectar mixes or cover crops between rows; nest boxes and roosting, perching and hibernating structures within control buildings; wildlife-friendly hedges for fencing; and management for nutrient cycling and erosion control (birdlife europe 2011; macknick, beatty, and hill 2013; montag, parker, and clarkson 2016; beatty et al. 2017; benage 2017; hoffacker, allen, and hernandez 2017; moore-o’leary et al. 2017). solar energy may support restoration of wetland habitats in former agricultural and industrial areas through purification of groundwater (pevzner 2015). once decommissioned, solar infrastructure may be retrofitted, or deconstructed and recycled, to repurpose or restore sites (ali et al. 2016; moore-o’leary et al. 2017; ucs 2017). siting within agriculture areas and on the surface of water bodies, i.e., agrivoltaics and floatovoltaics, has received increasing interest. for agrihttp://www.ledonline.it/relations/ mutually-beneficial renewable energy systems 95 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ voltaics, modified panel height and spacing can support sun-loving and shade-tolerant crops or allow conservation grazing by sheep, goats, poultry, and cattle, while providing shade and cover and reducing maintenance and soil erosion (birdlife europe 2011; macknick, beatty, and hill 2013; bre 2014; hernandez et al. 2014; hernandez et al. 2015, 13582-13583; montag, parker, and clarkson 2016; ravi et al. 2016; hagen and depillis 2017; fraunhofer ise 2018). agrivoltaics also make use of farm structures including greenhouses and barns, underutilized spaces such as distribution areas and parking lots, and agriculture lands of lower soil quality (macknick, beatty, and hill 2013; hernandez et al. 2014; hagen and depillis 2017; moore-o’leary et al. 2017). for floatovoltaics, floating arrays deployed in reservoirs, dam impoundments, irrigation canals, lakes, ponds, and former mining pits adapt to changing water levels while improving panel conversion efficiency and reducing evaporation (hernandez et al. 2014; hanley 2017; hoffacker, allen, and hernandez 2017; moore-o’leary et al. 2017). when combined with aquaculture (aquavoltaics), floating pv systems support food production, provide artificial fish habitat and oxygenate surface waters (pringle, handler, and pearce 2017). 3.2. wind wind energy is generated kinetically from moving air converted to mechanical then electrical energy through rotating blades of turbines (ellabban, abu-rub, and blaabjerg 2014; gasparatos et al. 2017). common mitigation measures include siting outside migratory pathways, minimizing overall footprints and implementing operating procedures to reduce collisions with bird and bat species (gasparatos et al. 2017). while much of the literature on wind energy emphasizes strategies for avoiding or minimizing impacts, this review finds various practices for ecological enhancements that generally using the space between turbines to create or extend marine and terrestrial habitats and ecosystems (birdlife europe 2011; ucs 2017; uyterlinde et al. 2017). onshore and offshore installations provide opportunities for creating or extending habitat zones by selecting sites with little existing biodiversity, such as abandoned industrial areas, transportation corridors or areas near existing development (gasparatos et al. 2017; ucs 2017), or conversely, strategically selecting areas with significant wildlife habitat such as upland or coastal areas and marine locations of high conservation value. because footprints of wind turbines are proportionally small, wind projects can restrict other forms of development and traffic within the project (birdlife europe 2011). http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ matthew j. burke 96 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ managed enhancements involve controlling erosion and invasive species, restoring habitat, and protecting nesting, breeding or spawning areas for fish and terrestrial prey species. for offshore sites, enhancements include the creation of artificial reefs and shelters for marine life to increase populations of fish and benthic species and provide substrate for marine communities (birdlife europe 2011; gasparatos et al. 2017; ucs 2017). with careful planning, these artificial habitats can extend existing marine reserves and protected areas, connect with important coastal habitats (birdlife europe 2011; oma 2008) or provide new habitats for benthic species when using floating offshore wind farms anchored in deeper waters (gasparatos et al. 2017). with an appropriate number and configuration of turbines, the space surrounding turbines can allow multiple functions including conservation grazing, sustainable agriculture, outdoor recreation, aquaculture, and seaweed cultivation (birdlife europe 2011; uyterlinde et al. 2017). 3.3. hydroelectricity hydroelectricity, converted by turbines from the flow of falling water, includes conventional dams and run-of-river systems of varying scales (ellabban, abu-rub, and blaabjerg 2014; gasparatos et al. 2017). relative to other renewable energy technologies, the effects of hydroelectricity on biodiversity are well established. these projects have significantly and permanently altered habitats, created fragmentation, and displaced human and nonhuman communities. common mitigation measures include the use of technologies such as upstream fish ladders, downstream fish-friendly turbines and bypass flows, and site-selection to reduce the size of reservoirs (gasparatos et al. 2017; ucs 2017). opportunities for ecological enhancement broadly relate to supporting or restoring ecological flow patterns and non-flow habitats and retrofitting or replacing existing facilities (van der winden et al. 2015; sale, hall, and keil 2016; unep 2016; ucs 2017). restoring ecological flow regimes involves practices that mimic natural flow cycles through management of flow releases, including enhanced quantity, quality and timing of flows and periodic releases from large reservoirs. non-flow practices work to protect and restore watersheds using shoreline buffers, streambank restoration, native vegetation on adjacent lands, protection of threatened and endangered species, and adaptive management and monitoring programs (van der winden et al. 2015; sale, hall, and keil 2016; ucs 2017). given their legacy, successful implementation may require that certain dams be retrofitted or replaced with improved technologies. retrofitting http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ mutually-beneficial renewable energy systems 97 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ dams with artificial fish passageways upstream and downstream can reconnect fragmented rivers within the watershed while improving and restoring fish migration patterns and riparian habitats (van der winden et al. 2015; sale, hall, and keil 2016; ucs 2017). use of run-of-river technologies increases the possibility for enhancements, supporting natural flow patterns, reducing land area, and allowing for flexible and distributed installations that may limit the need for transmission (ebenhack and martinez 2014; sale, hall, and keil 2016; ucs 2017). 3.4. bioenergy modern bioenergy chemically converts diverse sources of organic matter, including wood, crop residues, livestock waste, and biodegradable municipal waste into bioheat, liquid biofuels and biomass power (ellabban, abu-rub, and blaabjerg 2014; gasparatos et al. 2017; malinauskaite et al. 2017). mitigation generally includes implementing ecologically-sensitive agricultural and forestry practices, siting on degraded or marginal lands, and carefully collecting, transporting, handling, converting and disposing waste resources (gasparatos et al. 2017; moya et al. 2017). bioenergy systems present a complicated and contested set of prospects for ecological enhancement, involving persistent debates on their use for modern energy rather than for non-energy uses such as food production and soil health (breeze 2018; malinauskaite et al. 2017). a hierarchy of uses of bio-based materials prioritizes prevention, reuse and recycling of waste materials prior or in addition to the conversion of energy from waste (european commission 2017). combustion or landfilling of waste is low on this hierarchy (breeze 2018). opportunities for ecological enhancement using bioenergy are limited here to practices that make use of residual organic waste streams produced through ecologically-enhancing land and water management or that produce energy as a byproduct of site restoration. 1 such practices are best implemented within broader strategies for circular economies that prevent, reuse and recycle biodegradable and non-biodegradable materials, including waste management systems that producing energy to support materials cycling (european commission 2017; moya et al. 2017). the vast majority of organic, biodegradable waste, including food and vegetative waste, livestock manure, and human sewage, could be turned into 1 energy from site restoration is technically not renewable since, yet the legacy of waste sites worldwide compels its inclusion here. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ matthew j. burke 98 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ compost and other fertilizers and returned to the soil (breeze 2018), while energy may be produced as a by-product. aerobic composting can provide a reliable supply of heat, well-suited for use in buildings (irvine, lamont, and antizar-ladislao 2010; walther et al. 2017). manures may not be sufficiently compostable, and in such cases, anaerobic digestion can be used to produce biogas as well as fertilizers for soil amendments (ucs 2012; european commission 2017). similarly, non-compostable oils and fats may be available for transport biofuels. some woody residuals may not be compostable, and if not buried (breeze 2018), may be available for biomass energy production (ucs 2012). these woody residuals include post-consumer wood waste that has already gone through a reuse and recycling stage, unusable residues from wood industry operations that do not involve additional harvesting, and possibly forest residues that would otherwise rapidly decay (brack 2017; european commission 2017), reserving combustion as a last resort. to support ecological enhancement, agricultural and forestry methods would include various practices such as tree patches, riparian buffers, habitat corridors, conservation areas, native vegetation, perennial and mixed cropping, short rotation coppice systems, hedgerows, rotational or strip harvesting, crop rotations, and agroforestry (van der winden et al. 2015; baumber 2017; gasparatos et al. 2017). restoration of degraded land, water or waste sites may also support collection of energy as a byproduct, by producing crops on degraded or contaminated sites to increase biodiversity, reverse soil erosion, desertification and high salinity, increase soil carbon, and improve water quality (baumber 2016; gasparatos et al. 2017), or by using algal turf scrubbers on degraded surface waters to produce biofuels and recover phosphorus (adey, kangas, and mulbry 2011; roy 2017). restoration of existing waste sites may use technologies such as anaerobic digestion, pyrolysis, landfill gas utilization and biorefineries (seltenrich 2016; moya et al. 2017) within the context of broader restorative efforts and waste hierarchies. 3.5. ocean energy ocean energy technologies convert diverse oceanic processes including tides and currents, surface waves, and thermal and pressure gradients into electricity (ellabban, abu-rub, and blaabjerg 2014; gasparatos et al. 2017; hammar et al. 2017). little is known regarding the long-term ecological impacts of ocean energy (ucs 2017), thus mitigation measures remain relatively untested. suggestions include adjusting rotor speeds of conversion devices, minimizing disturbance to marine habitats and sea bottoms during http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ mutually-beneficial renewable energy systems 99 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ construction, and designing beneficial elements for tidal barrages (dams) including fish-passes (liu 2015; gasparatos et al. 2017). potential ecological enhancements include creating artificial reefs, habitats, and shelter for marine and coastal species, and designating new or extended marine reserves and protected areas. at the level of individual installations, marine renewable energy systems may be used to limit fishing and recreation, increase the surrounding density of some fish species, and provide fish aggregations devices, new spawning grounds and nursery areas (inger et al. 2009; birdlife europe 2011; copping et al. 2016). ocean energy facilities can be integrated within broader marine planning efforts to support marine ecosystems and biodiversity (copping et al. 2016; hammar et al. 2017). designating marine and coastal areas around connected facilities as marine protected areas or otherwise restricting fishing and other maritime activities can protect fish stocks, spawning areas, seabird breeding colonies and migrating birds (birdlife europe 2011; gasparatos et al. 2017). 3.6. integrated technologies and plans co-locating complementary technologies provides additional opportunities for ecological enhancement, including solar with wind power (hernandez et al. 2014), aquavoltaics with hydroelectricity (pringle, handler, and pearce 2017), and aerobic composting and solar hot water (walther et al. 2017). integration can smooth daily or seasonal variability, provide additional functions such as water conservation and food production, and reduce overall area required. similarly, co-locating battery and pumped hydropower storage supports optimization of variable energy technologies, extends facility lifespans, reduces land area, and makes use of degraded sites in proximity to new or existing installations (pevzner 2015; hoffacker, allen, and hernandez 2017; immendoerfer et al. 2017). transmission systems provide opportunities beyond conventional mitigation strategies (e.g., buried lines, insulated cables, single-level arrangements (birdlife europe 2011; unep 2016), such as restoring landscapes beneath and around power lines, integrating habitat and perching, roosting and nesting sites for bird species not at risk of collision, and co-locating solar pv (birdlife europe 2011; uyterlinde et al. 2017). beyond individual projects, practices for linking ecological conservation and renewable energy planning broadly involve integrating within and around urban areas (stremke and koh 2010; lokman 2017) and deploying renewable systems and grid interconnection as elements of large-scale conservation and restoration efforts. cities and regions provide specific http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ matthew j. burke 100 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ contexts for visioning, learning and demonstration across spatial scales (späth and rohracher 2012). opportunities are found in co-designing industrial ecologies including renewable energy within eco-industrial parks and renewable energy corridors. these initiatives involve the cycling and sharing of material and energetic inputs and outputs (e.g., waste water, district heating) supported by technologies such as solar, wind and geothermal energy, to re-introduce ecological dimensions within former industrial zones (subhadra 2011; iabr 2014; leung pah hang et al. 2016). integrating rural and urban areas supports a shift beyond local projects toward hybrid, multi-scalar and dynamic infrastructures of human and non-human systems (lokman 2017). this approach takes advantage of the opportunities to position renewable technologies such as solar pv within and across an ecologically degraded urban-agricultural landscape and in proximity to existing infrastructure (stoms, dashiell, and davis 2013). thinking in terms of broader landand seascapes then points to opportunities for supporting regional and global ecological connectivity, positioning renewable energy systems as subsystems within conserved and restored ecological systems (sørensen 2017). this approach requires the integration of planning and development processes from the beginning, accounting for unique technological and ecological qualities, and emphasizing interconnection across large spatial scales, to advance rather than conflict with the scientifically-grounded pursuit of large-scale conservation and restoration of ecosystems and connectivity (noss et al. 2012). additional benefits include the use of diverse energy sources and technologies to minimize variability of electricity generation and the potential for increasing collaboration across neighboring regions (ucs 2017). depending on energy sources and technologies, integrating energy development within patterns of ecological conservation might involve solar pv within landscape-scale ecological networks (birdlife europe 2011), basinor watershed-scale development strategies (sale, hall, and keil 2016), interconnections of offshore wind projects (uyterlinde et al. 2017) cross-jurisdictional marine planning and infrastructure (oma 2008; hammar et al. 2017), and repurposing of hydro “legacy landscapes” to develop networks of pumped hydro-storage projects (pevzner 2015). for electrification, transmission infrastructure can serve as ecological energy networks (iabr 2014) while seeking to minimize the need for transmission as much as possible (capellán-pérez, de castro, and arto 2017). existing transmission systems may be re-routed or combined with ecological habitat and recreation (uyterlinde et al. 2017) and new transmission corridors may be planned to reverse fragmentation and support widespread regional connectivity (stoms, dashiell, and davis 2013; pevzner 2015). http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ mutually-beneficial renewable energy systems 101 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 4. discussion the set of practices reviewed here are offered in a context of increasing calls to advance renewable energy while reversing the loss of biodiversity and ecosystems worldwide over the coming decades. present trends suggest both projects risk failure, compelling an integrated approach that creates renewable energy systems in a manner complementary to the biosphere and resulting in measurable improvements to human and nonhuman life. mutually-beneficial renewable energy systems are proposed due to their practical relevance, the inter-relatedness of technological and ecological dimensions of these systems, and the broadened set of ethical concerns that these relations inspire. this review finds a set of practices and outcomes of renewable energy systems beneficial for ecosystems and biodiversity (see tab. 1). beneficial practices are generally supported by integrating plans for habitat and ecosystems from the outset, identifying sites and technologies in addition to or in advance of resource potential. these practices can be combined with conventional practices that avoid and minimize impacts to sensitive areas and wildlife habitat, account for impacts of technological life cycles, engage diverse publics through robust procedures and ownership models, and reduce overall use of energy. solar energy systems demonstrate promise in terms of their integration within developed and degraded landscapes and their potential for co-location and layered functions. onshore and offshore wind and ocean energy offer potential to extend and create new protected areas and habitat zones, while run-of-river hydro can support riparian and watershed restoration. bioenergy sources present challenges that require critical assessment, but if well-implemented, may support ecological and restorative practices while providing energy as an addition. combining technologies and infrastructures offers further potential for benefits. taking this approach to scale points to greater deployment in urban and peri-urban areas and degraded landscapes and suggests a view of renewable energy systems as subsets of large-scale conservation and restoration efforts. these examples collectively seek to improve connectivity and extend ecosystem structure and function as a primary objective of renewable energy development. various practical and theoretical implications follow. technologically, the approach proposed here is likely best implemented using diverse technologies to correspond with the diversity of places where these technologies are used and to vary the types of impacts (ebenhack and martinez 2014; hussain, arif, and aslam 2017), suggestive of a new, ecological form of responsible innovation (owen, bessant, and heintz 2013; chilvers and kearnes 2015). http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ table 1. – beneficial practices of renewable energy systems for ecosystems and biodiversity renewable energy system beneficial practices selected sources solar • conversion of degraded areas • integration in the built environment • restorative land management and site repurposing • co-location with vegetation and habitat • agrivoltaics • floatovoltaics macknick, beatty, and hill 2013 hernandez et al. 2014 beatty et al. 2017 hoffacker, allen, and hernandez 2017 moore-o’leary et al. 2017 hyder, sudhakar, and mamat 2018 wind • new and extended protected areas • artificial reefs and sea life shelter • floating offshore wind farms • multifunctional use of space surrounding turbines oma 2008 birdlife europe 2011 ucs 2017 uyterlinde et al. 2017 hydro • ecological flow patterns • non-flow habitat protection and restoration • dam retrofitting or removal • artificial fish passageways • run-of-river systems van der winden et al. 2015 sale, hall, and keil 2016 ucs 2017 bioenergy • reuse and recycling of residual waste • ecological/multifunctional agriculture and forestry • co-production with restoration of degraded sites van der winden et al. 2015 baumber 2016 brack 2017 european commission 2017 gasparatos et al. 2017 walther et al. 2017 breeze 2018 ocean • new and extended protected areas • artificial reefs and sea life shelter inger et al. 2009 copping et al. 2016 hammar et al. 2017 complementary technologies • hybrid renewable energy systems • storage in degraded sites • combined transmissiongeneration-restoration hernandez et al. 2015 pevzner 2015 immendoerfer et al. 2017 pringle, handler, and pearce 2017 integrated ecological-energy systems • urban and peri-urban development • regional and global connectivity stremke and koh 2011 noss et al. 2012 pevzner 2015 santangeli, toivonen, et al. 2016 lokman 2017 sørensen 2017 mutually-beneficial renewable energy systems 103 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ technological permanence and the degree to which impacts during construction or operation are reversible should be considered, to establish improved conditions following the end of the project (pasqualetti and stremke 2017). this process would allow nonhuman nature to redirect or resist human intention over space and time (fatimah and arora 2016). accordingly, protecting wildlife would be accounted for similarly to other natural processes influencing measures of resource potential. spatially, the review points to prioritization of sites that require restoration, accommodate shared uses, integrate within urban and periurban landscapes, and/or support greater connectivity across fragmented ecosystems, while avoiding minimally-disturbed ecological habitats even when well-designed. previously disturbed or degraded sites including brownfields, mine pits, landfills and agricultural fields, would be selected, using projects to clean up contamination. site selection would also minimize distances between energy generation and end use to limit the need for additional transmission systems, likely favoring decentralized energy systems (ucs 2009; birdlife europe 2011; lieberman, lyons, and tucker 2014; cbd 2015). renewable energy systems would expand “inward” while ecosystems expand “outward” in a manner that extends ecological spaces into humanized spaces (martin, maris, and simberloff 2016) and connects discrete installations (braham et al. 2015; labussière and nadaï 2017). this implies an opening for analysis and experimentation beyond suitability of each facility to include assessment and broader planning for biodiversity and ecosystem function. temporally, planning will demand greater engagement across stages of technological lifecycles. if renewable energy systems are to endure as the name would imply, then long periods of coevolution of sociotechnicalecological systems should be expected. practices may include assessments of reversibility and restoration of projects, repowering of existing facilities with improved technologies, and removal of poorly-sited facilities upon decommissioning. the pace of renewable energy development may slow or, as advocates assert, this combined approach may reduce conflict and facilitate development. in either case, the complexity and sense of urgency of problems of transition do not eliminate the responsibility of humans for nonhuman life any more than they would for marginalized human groups (mcshane 2016). this integration of energy and ecology implies the need for supporting systems of governance that link relevant international goals and timelines for achieving renewable energy and biodiversity at all levels. ecological improvement may also be well served through cross-scalar coordination, siting facilities for the greatest benefit to biodiversity, human health and http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ matthew j. burke 104 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ energy access (santangeli, di minin, et al. 2016; santangeli, toivonen, et al. 2016; dinerstein et al. 2017). such efforts require broadened political and financial commitments and increased participation of diverse stakeholders (birdlife europe 2011). to achieve broad benefit, integrated ecological-energy systems at larger scales imply that both publiclyand privately-owned areas deserve assessment for compatibility, recognizing for example that areas most in need of restoration are often under private control (stoms, dashiell, and davis 2013). understanding and assessing benefits requires responsive governance (chilvers and pallett 2018) including ongoing monitoring of actual effects and publicly-available data on beneficial practices (lintott et al. 2016; rspb 2016; moore-o’leary et al. 2017). various policies hold promise, including standards, certifications, limited licensing terms, community benefit agreements, and funds for ecosystem enhancements (science for environment policy 2015; gasparatos et al. 2017). these efforts would provide a foundation for learning over time, an essential quality of enduring mutualistic behaviors. establishing a clear voice for nonhuman interests at site and regional levels would further ensure that conservation objectives remain paramount (fatimah and arora 2016). several specific cultural practices are likely important to enroll within a mutually-beneficial approach. formal and informal education can be engaged beginning at a young age, potentially promoting pro-environmental behaviors (noss et al. 2012, ellabban, abu-rub, and blaabjerg 2014; quinn, castéra, and clément 2016). planning and mapping procedures can serve to structure our knowledge of nonhuman nature (jørgensen 2014). the increased inclusion of conservationist and ecologists in renewable energy development (birdlife europe 2011) can provide cultural legitimacy to this approach. integrating art, technology and ecological sciences, including more thoughtful and creative approaches to engaging with the unique visual properties of renewable energy technologies (apostal et al. 2017), can reinvigorate historical traditions and relationships of people to technologies (anker 2010; ndubisi 2014). over time, renewables may develop into culturally meaningful landmarks and sites of local identity (uyterlinde et al. 2017). these and innumerable other practices can give cultural expression to the practical, ecological and ethical dimensions of mutually-beneficial renewable energy systems. this approach is not without risks, including poor implementation, and cooptation, for example, praising localized benefit while downplaying lifecycle or cumulative impacts (ferrario and castiglioni 2017). more fundamentally, this approach may be interpreted as an opportunity to advance technomodernism (brinkman and hirsh 2017) and a techno-scihttp://www.ledonline.it/relations/ mutually-beneficial renewable energy systems 105 relations – 6.1 june 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ entific energy paradigm (frigo 2017, 13). if taken as technocratic or hyperintentional design, a remaking of nonhuman nature may result, wherein historically-informed restoration is subsumed to conscious reinvention, domestication and simplification of ecosystems, overly constraining nonhuman agency and dissolving nonhuman nature within techno-economic systems (higgs 2012; keulartz 2012; crist and kopnina 2014; kidner 2014; h. washington 2018). an emphasis on ecological conservation may also be used to depoliticize energy transition, consolidate ownership, or facilitate further growth and capital accumulation. these risks deserve serious consideration to prevent justification of the status quo and to promote technologies of humility rather than hubris (jasanoff 2018). 5. conclusion as a novel contribution to scholarship and practice of renewable energy transition, this research positions the renewable energy systems as opportunities for broadly applied conservation and restoration, connects human-nature relational perspectives to practices of renewable energy, draws together established and emerging beneficial practices for a range of renewable energy systems, and proposes a unique energy transition pathway during a time of early and increasing deployment. this work can be extended by defining and assessing available degraded areas; improving measures of outcomes; studying particular interactions between species and ecosystems and technologies; implementing, monitoring and sharing results of projects and plans across a variety of systems, locations and time periods; and developing institutions to integrate efforts for renewable energy and biodiversity conservation at all levels of governance. aknowledgements the author wishes to thank the editor of this special issue and the two reviewers for detailed and insightful comments and suggestions, as well as professor peter g. brown and the economics for 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http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ http://renewables4nature.wwf.ca/ the challenges of technoscience for critical animal studies the challenges of technoscience for critical animal studies a report on the 3rd european conference for critical animal studies, university of karlsruhe, karlsruhe, germany, november 28th-30th, 2013 marcel sebastian phd student, university of hamburg doi: 10.7358/rela-2014-001-seba marcel.sebastian@posteo.de from the 28th to 30th of november, the 3rd european conference for critical animal studies was held at the karlsruhe institute of technology and the institute for technology assessment and systems analysis. the thematic focus of this year’s conference was on the analysis of the concept of “technosciences”. the term critical animal studies describes a young, interdisciplinary research field that deals with the relationship of humans to animals. the focus of critical animal studies is on the critique of human-animal relationships, so research on topics such as justice, violence and exploitation, sustainability, consumption and production of animal products or on proposals of alternative human-animal relations dominated the conference. the icas conferences claim, moreover, to build bridges between science and engaged civil society. the claim of interdisciplinarity could be only partially fulfilled. particularly well represented were researchers from the social sciences, philosophy and the cultural, literary, and media studies. the academic contributions were complemented by an exhibition of the artist hartmut kiewert as well as the screening of the documentary maximum tolerated dose with a subsequent skype discussion with filmmaker karol orzechowski. underrepresented, if not entirely absent, were the natural sciences and economics. the conference program included keynote speeches by critical educationalist dr. helena pedersen, who reported on her experiences with the training of veterinarians, as well as by anat pick, who talked about the representation of animals, their bodies, and their vulnerability in movies. she http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ marcel sebastian 120 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ also talked about early pioneering work, such as that of thomas edison, who filmed the electrical execution of an elephant – but primarily to demonstrate strength and potential of electricity. further highlights were the two panel discussions. for the discussion on animal experiments, which was moderated by kathrin hermann, the panelists tereza vandrovcová, dr. martin balluch, claudio pomo and conference organizer dr. arianne ferrari were invited. the podium was supplemented by a video message from dr. andrew knight from the caribbean. unfortunately, most debaters failed to comply with the prescribed time for their statements, so the discussion was opened to the public immediately at the end of the sometimes extensive statements. the plenary discussion dealt with, inter alia, the question of how many political compromises in the concrete demands for an end to animal testing should be accepted. especially the position of balluch martin, who demanded a list of criteria to distinguish between useful/legitimate and useless/illegitimate animal experiments, provided a basis for an unfortunately much too brief discussion. the second panel discussion attempted to start a discussion between different positions on the politics of nature. a controversial discussion arose between dr. rita wing and dr. elisa aaltola on the role of intuition as a theoretical basis for the question of moral inclusion or exclusion of animals. the third discussant, dr. john sonbanmatsu, delivered a political plea for a socially critical perspective on the human-animal relationship, which also includes a critique of capitalism. although the second panel discussion at first gave the impression to not be thematically focused enough, there was a quite interesting discussion, which was continued in the hallways and at lunch. also controversial was a discussion about the status quo and perspectives of critical animal studies, which was scheduled as a group discussion. this was triggered, among other things, by differing views about which scientific and political criteria individual scientists must comply with in order to be counted among scholars of critical animal studies. in addition, the conference program included a variety of thematically ordered streams, where predominantly younger scientists could present their papers and projects . presentations were held on very different topics, such as literary critical animal studies, critical ethology, or technosciences, science, and power. streams on topics such as military uses [of animals], meat or experiment also dealt specifically with the use of animals, as well as with acts of violence on animals. the contents of the different streams stand quite representative of the wide range of topics that are covered by the field of critical animal the challenges of technoscience for critical animal studies 121 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ studies. similarly, however, it shows that sometimes the common content between the individual work was hardly visible, so that a future question to be addressed is the extent to which a common research interest, a common methodology, and common research practice are needed for the legitimation of critical animal studies as an independent, interdisciplinary discipline of its own. it also became partly clear that within critical animal studies, there are very different scientific standards. while many presentations corresponded to high standards in terms of content and form, some contributions lacked structure, clear research questions, comprehensible methodology, and a coherent argumentation. this reveals a typical “childhood disease” of young sciences, which critical animal studies should overcome as quickly as possible. in conclusion, it can be said that the 3rd european conference for critical animal studies was an important step both for the exchange within the scientific community as well as for the further establishment of research into the human-animal relationship in general. the organization of the conference was successful, which is why the gratitude to the main organizer arianna ferrari and her team at the end of the conference was more than justified. the spontaneous horse. understanding how to look at the horse without expectations the spontaneous horse understanding how to look at the horse without expectations francesco de giorgio jose schoorl learning horse, institute for zooanthropology doi: 10.7358/rela-2014-001-degi thelearninghorse@gmail.com sparta.formazione@gmail.com as horses are often seen as anxious, unpredictable animals, the fear to let them express themselves, convinced that this might be dangerous and hurt themselves, or human involved, in unknown situations, actually makes them anxious and unpredictable animals. which is a strange vicious circle. for example, the fear off being bitten by a horse makes us push away their head every time they try to understand us by smelling us from close by or exploring us with their lips. the pushing or even harsher actions transform that same intention for understanding into a more tensed situation of misunderstanding from the horse’s point of view. for the same reason we often deny them their social behaviour. in our society horses live too often in social isolation, so they can’t express themselves through social behaviour and this is something that by now we all know (even if most horses continue to live that way). they learn to live a life in which they wait for human commands, forgetting that they have their own true intention and unique interests. but even when they live with other horses, the groups are often not permanent, not familiar or familiar-like. with a lot of changing dynamics in the group, their interaction is often focused on defensive behaviour and not exactly social, instead of finding trust in their herd companions to express themselves in their natural cognitive way, for example by showing affiliative behaviour, moving as a herd, taking each other into account in a proactive way. what humans often see are the reactive behaviours as for example dominance/leadership dynamics, which in family or family-like groups actually happen only in rare cases, not in random daily routine. social behaviours are subtle, small gestures and often not much visible behaviours that have an important cohesive function for a herd. it is much more then mutual grooming, which http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ francesco de giorgio jose schoorl 112 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ is an expressing that can also be part of an attempt to reduce tension. it is, for example, observing each other and the herd dynamics, looking from a distance while eating grass, pre-conflict behaviour to avoid tension, smelling each other to better understand a certain situation. another very important group of spontaneous behaviours is investigative/explorative behaviour. fundamental for the correct development of cognitive functions. in fact, people often use techniques, methods and tools that deprive the horse of the opportunity to explore his reference context, other horses, the human and himself. for example when we ask the horse to pay attention to us, while we are actually distracting the horse from the situation the horse self was focussed on. also some grooming approaches as clipping the horse’s vibrissae (whiskers), depriving the horse to explore in appropriate way, as they are important for the sensory receptors, using his spontaneous behaviours and so inducing stress factors, in the same time reducing welfare. spontaneous behaviours are important for the horse in order to develop a cognitive dialogue. horses that are used to reactive/defensive behaviour (often to suppression of spontaneous behaviours) show tension in their behaviour, even in very small gestures, give us, human, a tensed feeling. a feeling we are not always aware of in a conscious way. the reduction of the spontaneous behaviour often happens already during the initial training of young horses. in these moments the horses lives a strong reduction of their natural spontaneous behaviours to improve behaviour functional for human anthropocentric desires. operant conditioning applied during these moments (with negative or positive reinforcement) drastically reduce spontaneous behaviours and with that reduce equine welfare. the reactive behaviours that are trained instead are too often mistaken for free choice behaviour in the human interaction. for example, running towards a person in a paddock with food-expectations is not a free choice. following a human being in a join up, and other command based behaviours, are not free choices. the horse displays macro behaviours that please us from an anthropocentric point of view, but at the same time show micro signals of internal conflict. in the work as facilitator, working on and being aware of an authentic relationship is very important to further develop relationship and facilitator skills, so people can life a pure and sound interaction. in the zooanthropologic approach, especially when working as a facilitator in the horse-human interaction, it is fundamental to give the horse the possibility to express his own world and spontaneous behaviour. when we, as human, pay attention to the horse and create room for his expressiveness we start an inter-species relationship. learning to be curious and open towards the expression of the the spontaneous horse 113 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ other, without losing yourself, but understanding how to become agile in connecting to the world and connecting with yourself is fundamental for sound social-emotional experiences in a society where focus is more on performance then on relationships. both human and horse should have to room to understand their internal motivation, rather than responding to desired behaviour from the context we are living in. in a different way, the zooanthropologic approach gives the opportunity to a horse to create their own mental map as social map, learning map, the human-horse relationship map, using their own mental and physical capacities, without being conditioned, as behaviour is an expression of a state of mind and not the result of direct automatic external or internal stimuli. attention, awareness, relaxation, contact and social interaction are keywords in a spontaneous interaction. the inspiring journey of siua through animal lives: a report on the animal mind conference, italy, 2013 the inspiring journey of siua through animal lives a report on the animal mind conference, italy, 2013 eleonora adorni independent scholar, member of the centre of posthuman philosophy doi: 10.7358/rela-2014-002-ador eleonora.adorni@gmail.com the event animal mind (mente animale) organized by siua across italy in 2013 registered a great success of audience. siua, the school of humananimal interaction founded and directed by roberto marchesini – the well-known cognitive ethologist who is also considered worldwide a leading figure within the field of human-animal interaction – planned in fact several conferences open to everyone who may be interested or intrigued by nonhuman animals lives. the major italian cities touched by the event throughout the entire year were turin, milan, rome, verona, trieste and bologna. the events hosted scholars, animal rights activists and stakeholders who are in different ways involved in the animal issue in order to spread largely a new way and culture to think about nonhuman animal worlds. the model proposed by siua derives from roberto marchesini’s approach, carried out in twenty years of ongoing research in cognitive ethology, and it is aimed to shift the focus of the cognitive model from a thought understood as having self-awareness and consciousness of external world to the behavior, that is what is effectively observable. as a matter of fact, marchesini proposes to throw aside the three traditional explanatory paradigms still in use to interpret animal behavior – behaviorism, classical ethology and cognitivism – in favor of a single model which combines the mentalistic and cognitive-relational approaches able to explain any behavior, from the simplest to the most complex one. the main difference in this outclassed schema lies in considering true a behavior if it arises from an informational elaborative process and not from a mere reflex or feedback. according to this interpretation, the cognitive model does not reject the innate dimension but explains it as an “elaborative innate schema” that is, in other words, a particular software capable to lead a dog to process inforhttp://www.ledonline.it/relations/ eleonora adorni 130 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ mation in a different way from a cat or a human being, for example. in this sense, the cognitive model suggested by marchesini replaces the stimulusresponse-reinforcement chain with the goal-comprehension-solution one. what does it change? by making this sample change of perspective, the landscape of the animal mind appears absolutely overturned. at this point, three main aspects come to light. first of all, to look at animal behavior through this interpretative lens means that the subject needs a goal in order to learn. the first movens of this process lies into him/her and it does not belong to the external world: nonhuman animals play an active role in the stage of evolution and they are the owners of their destiny living in a “here and now” moment. secondly, with the aim to learn the subject does not accidentally react to something that happened, but he/she searches useful solutive keys that we may call heuristics and with these analyzes carefully the situation. lastly, the learning process generates knowledge not necessarily conscious, that is to say, the subject has got a proper equipment that he/se will use in the future in order to solve other kinds of problems (not imperatively connected with the one which generated it). following jean piaget’s idea of accommodation and assimilation in the cognitive theory, it occurred a redefinition of the subject’s inner resources to reorganize himself in relation to new “checkmate” conditions or goals. furthermore, marchesini’s cognitive model is not anthropomorphic, that is it considers each animal species as owner of expressive and learning tools and the subject constructs new forms of knowledge from the evolution of these tools. doing so, he poses himself in the nutshell of learning acts (especially in its unconscious sides), while the behaviorist model theorizes the environment with a subject as a mere expositive being. therefore, the behaviorist and the cognitive approaches are in opposition as, quoting marchesini, the copernicus and geocentric models: the difference lies in interpreting not the exceptional nature of the behavior but its daily banality. according to marchesini, the cognitive model induces a much richer dialectics while the behaviorist approach remains close to expressive causality and reinforcement. hence, through this perspective nonhuman animals are not machines and their behavior cannot be interpreted through automatism, as descartes’ followers would do. concepts such as “instinct” and “conditioning” must be overcome because any animal expression is the outcome of a state of mind. the event mente animale by siua was characterized by several interesting presentations of scholars who have embraced this way of reading nonhuman behavior. as well as marchesini was present during all the events, each city hosted different speakers. the famous italian astronomer and writer margherita hack gave a talk in trieste just before she died a the inspiring journey of siua through animal lives 131 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ few weeks after. she shared a beautiful and emotional interpretation of her personal relationship with her beloved cats. always in trieste, the posthuman artist massimo deganutti, alias degas, the author of the post-species art manifesto, has depicted his idea of art as the result of hybridization with nonhuman alterities who, under a non-anthropocentric light, become protagonists and not secondary characters of the paintings. the young philosophers leonardo caffo and matteo andreozzi gave a talk respectively in turin and milan. caffo traced the major phases of continental philosophy dealing with the animal question and inside that he sketched out his proposal for a “weak antispeciesism” that is generating a lot of debate in italy. andreozzi instead delved into deep the roots of anthropocentrism and our idea of “animal mind” – too often flawed by our anthropomorphic projections and desires about animals. important italian journalists as antonella mariotti, paola d’amico, medical vets as paola fossati and sergio canello, animal right activists as davide majocchi and denis colombo and various exponents of many institutions contributed with their participation to enrich the proposal of the event with different perspectives. in conclusion, what is worth in marchesini’s idea about the cognitive lecture of animal behavior and what arises from siua tour, is a mind which expresses better qualities in uncertain moments where to be animals means to limp along within the proper species dimension, vulnerable and maladjusted, able but in a different way. making a difference on behalf of animals living in the wild: interview with jeff mcmahan making a difference on behalf of animals living in the wild interview with jeff mcmahan catia faria phd candidate, pompeu fabra university doi: 10.7358/rela-2015-001-fari catiaxfaria@gmail.com jeff mcmahan currently holds the prestigious white’s chair of moral philosophy at oxford university. he has previously been a professor of philosophy at rutgers university (usa). he has written extensively about theoretical and applied ethics, two of his most notable contributions being the ethics of killing: problems at the margins of life and killing in war. professor mcmahan is also known for his work in animal ethics, being one the first major philosophers to seriously address the situation of animals in nature. in his new york times article the meat eaters he defends the view that if the suffering of nonhuman animals is morally relevant, then we should also be concerned with the suffering of animals living in the wild. in this way, he concludes that we should intervene for their benefit whenever it is in our power to do so. cf: a number of ethicists (as well as political philosophers) work in their discipline out of a theoretical interest, because they find the problems of practical philosophy thrilling. however, you belong to another group of theorists who work with the aim of making the world a better place. in which ways do you think academic work can benefit nonhuman animals? jm: well, the primary purpose of the kind of philosophy that i do is to understand morality better. but i think that is an essential precondition of trying to make the world better – to make sure you do it the right way, make sure that you are not making a mistake, as a lot of people do. i think that philosophy has already benefited animals very considerably just by bringing the arguments into popular discussion and making people more aware of the challenges. and i think that will continue. that as more argument is done, more considerations are discussed, the deeper people go into the arguments, i think what we are going to find is that the arguments for mailto:catiaxfaria@gmail.com http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 catia faria 82 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ vegetarianism are conclusive. and, eventually, the public discussions that have been prompted in large measure by philosophy are going to succeed and turn more and more people away from eating meat and harming animals in unjustifiable ways. cf: in your work you have addressed several issues that had been neglected in moral philosophy. what has led you to work on the issue of wild animal suffering? jm: well, if you want to know the real answer to that question, it was discussions with oscar horta. oscar raised the issue with me, we discussed it some. it seemed to me to be a really important issue and i had an opportunity to write a piece on some issue having to do with animals for a blog that was being run by some people in “the research triangle” in north caro lina. and so, prompted and inspired by the discussions with oscar, i tried to think as carefully as i could about this issue of wild animal suffering for this blog. and as it turned out, the blog piece i wrote for the website at “the research triangle” in north carolina was also picked up by the new york times, which got it more circulation. but that is really the explanation. cf: in your new york times paper the meat eaters you pointed out the need to take seriously not only the harm suffered by animals eaten by human beings, but also the harm suffered due to natural causes by animals living in the wild. can you briefly explain your argument there? jm: really, it just seems to me very obvious that if we have moral reasons not to cause suffering to animals through our practices … which is the basis of one of the arguments against meat-eating, particularly in cultures in which most of the meat that people eat comes from factory farms – namely, that the rearing of animals in conditions that are optimally economic from the point of view of the producers, the producers cause enormous suffering to the animals. and i think increasingly people recognize that factory farming is a highly morally problematic practice. even most meat-eaters, if forced to confront the conditions in which the animals they eat are raised, will acknowledge that the suffering that those animals experience is of moral concern. even if they continue to eat them. so, it is pretty widely accepted, then, that animal suffering matters, and that we have a reason not to cause it. but, if animal suffering matters and that is the basis of our reason not to cause animal suffering, then it seems that animal suffering that is caused not by us but by other conditions is also bad and there must, therefore, also be a reason why it should be prevented if at all possible. it just seems to me a quite clear inference. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 making a difference on behalf of animals living in the wild 83 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ cf: while in your work on wild animal suffering you have focused on the question of predation, these animals suffer also from many other causes, such as disease, starvation, weather conditions, parasitism, etc. the idea that we should help animals suffering from these causes may be more acceptable to the public. do you think this could be a reason to tackle them instead of the harder question of predation, or do you think that it is the task of philosophers to address less popular problems as well? jm: i think to the extent that it would be more feasible to prevent large amounts of animal suffering through addressing problems such as disease and starvation, there would be fewer objections from people to that kind of intervention in the natural world. though some people would think that even those kinds of interventions would be wrong because they would be intervening in what they think of as natural cycles that we have no business intervening in. that seems to me to be a mistaken view if, on balance, an intervention would work to the benefit of the sentient beings in that particular area. so, yes, maybe it is a strategic or tactical mistake to focus on predation rather than disease, hunger – other causes of suffering for animals in the wild. cf: since the question of animal ethics started to be studied by moral philosophers and other academics in the 70s, the interest in this topic has grown and an increasing number of theorists have been working on this. however, this issue is still not taken seriously by most philosophers. in what way do you think this situation could change, and what could we do to bring about this change? jm: i do not know of anything that can be done, really, except go on the way we are going now. i do think that, as more and more philosophers become aware of the powerful arguments for vegetarianism and as more and more philosophers become openly vegetarian, this will exert additional pressure on others to join and become vegetarians themselves. and it may well be the case that, before too terribly long, a majority of philosophers will be vegetarians, and that could be a very powerful statement, socially and politically. or it might not be, it depends on whether people have much respect for the views of philosophers – which in a country like the united states is not much. that is, in the united states most philosophers, by far the vast majority of philosophers are atheists, but i think religious believers are not bothered by that fact at all. they just think philosophers do not have any common sense and do not have any particular wisdom. they are weird people who deal with esoteric and arcane problems and do not have any real sense of reality, and that kind of thing. also true in politics – an overwhelming majority of philosophers in the united states are http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 catia faria 84 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ very left-wing. that does not seem to trouble conservatives much, either. so maybe if most philosophers were vegetarians, it would not say much to many people, though. but i think it does help when philosophers teach classes on practical ethics in which they discuss the moral status of animals, which has been increasingly the case over the past few decades. courses on the human treatment of animals are taught in all the major universities now and people are forced to think about this. and they are forced to think about this by philosophers, and that can only be good. cf: what would you recommend to people trying to build their career in the academic world who want to make a difference in favor of animals living in the wild? jm: well, the obvious thing to say is: think about the problem, write phd dissertations on it, publish articles on this issue. this is a very underdiscussed issue in philosophy as elsewhere. and i suppose that is one of the problems. the problem of the suffering of animals in the wild is one that has received just almost no discussion from anybody, and that makes it easier for people to ignore it. to the extent that it becomes a controversial issue, that in itself forces people to think about it and take it seriously. and it can eventually become a real issue in public discussion that people ca not just laugh off and say, you know: “nobody could possibly think that this is a problem”; “this is silly, this is trivial”; “we need to deal with problems about human beings first” … and so on and so far. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 we are made of meat: an interview with matthew calarco we are made of meat an interview with matthew calarco leonardo caffo phd student in philosophy at university of turin, italy doi: 10.7358/rela-2013-002-caff leonardo.caffo@unito.it lc: why do you think is important to employ continental philosophy for the animal question? mc: i think there are several ways into the animal question, via law, literature, art, film, science, and so on. philosophy represents another important approach for helping us to think through animals; and, to date, philosophical approaches to animals have been dominated by so-called angloamerican analytic philosophy (especially the branch of ethical theory that has developed out of that tradition). i don’t dispute the importance of the work done by thinkers in this tradition (and here i have in mind everyone from peter singer and tom regan to paola cavalieri and mark rowlands), but i think it’s important to note that their general approach is but one avenue and path of thought among many. in addition, it is important to underscore that there are certain intractable lacunas and dilemmas that follow from this body of work in analytic animal ethics, some of which i have examined in my published work. let me briefly touch on just one of these dilemmas. one of the main problems that arises in the context of analytic approaches to thinking about animals is that these approaches tend to install a certain conception of the human subject at the center of ethical reflection and then extend outward from that center to include nonhuman animals. in other words, within most of these frameworks, animals are included within the scope of ethical consideration inasmuch as they are like ‘us’ in ethically relevant ways; and animals and other beings who do not resemble us in relevant ways are typically left outside the scope of attention and consideration. now, such arguments by analogy (e.g., this given group of animals is analogous to paradigm case humans in ethically relevant ways and should be given the same ethical consideration) are undoubtedly important at certain levels and in certain http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ leonardo caffo 86 relations – 1.2 november 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ situations, but they come at a serious cost to all beings who do not resemble ‘us’ in ethically relevant ways. one of the major trends within continental philosophy that i find useful for pushing back against this questionable tendency of analytic approaches is the critical analysis of ‘the human’ that we find in such thinkers as nietzsche, heidegger, derrida, deleuze, irigaray, braidotti, and others. this approach to philosophy takes as its point of departure the notion that traditional notions of human nature (based on unified subjectivity, full self-presence, sovereign agency, and so forth) are no longer tenable (and they arrive at this position through a long chain of argumentation that i can’t reconstruct here). if we follow the line of thought opened up by these philosophers, then we have to rethink in a fundamental way what it means to be human. and as we undertake this kind of analysis, we can see straight away that all of the traditional marks of human propriety that are now in question have been used repeatedly throughout the history of thought, culture, law, economics, and so on, to differentiate human beings from animals. so, if we can no longer trust in those markers of human propriety to tell us who we are, we can also no longer be sure of who or what animals are and what our relation to them might be (both ontologically and ethically). in short, we also have to rethink in a fundamental way what it means to be animal. continental philosophy – if pursued in the direction i’m outlining here – would have our thinking about animals begin from a site of aporia, of confusion and tumult, about who humans are and who animals are. this starting point asks us to construct alternative concepts and alternative ways of thinking that no longer trust uncritically the categories and distinctions that have structured the dominant culture’s ways of thinking and living up to this point. this is a much more modest approach to thinking about animals, and it is one that proceeds with a keen awareness of the pitfalls of creating clean and distinct ontological and ethical lines between human beings and animals. lc: in one of your recent papers, you maintain that the best approach to thinking about animals is ‘indistinction’. i can understand this position philosophically, but might it not be dangerous from a political point of view? mc: yes, there are certain dangers in this approach, and so it has to be spelled out very carefully. let me try to do that as best as i am able to here. following the line of thought i just outlined in the previous question, ‘indistinction’ names the space of aporia in which we find ourselves when we are made of meat 87 relations – 1.2 november 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ thinking about animals and human beings. if the sharp distinctions that have typically been drawn between humans and animals fall by the wayside, humans and animals fall into a shared space in which they become deeply indistinct from one another. indistinct does not mean superficial identity – which is to say, it does not mean that they (animals) are now seen to be like us (humans), or vice versa; rather, it means that both what we call human and what we call animals fall into an altogether different zone of profound and deep identity that requires us to use alternative, nontraditional concepts and ideas if we wish to speak about it. in other words, indistinction means that we have ethical and ontological work to do. it throws a question in our faces: how might (what we call) humans and animals relate, ethically and ontologically, otherwise? we know the old answer to the question of how humans and animals should relate (ontologically, humans are separated from animals by an abyss; and ethically, humans have more value than animals do). but if ‘the human’ is dead, along with ‘the animal’, then we don’t know who we and they might become, what kinds of affects and relations we and they might encounter, what kinds of worlds we and they might constitute and inhabit. in other words, viewing humans and animals as indistinct entails seeing all of us as caught up in a shared space of ontological and ethical experimentation. now, where this line of thought might get politically dangerous is with the suspicion that it seems to undercut many progressive movements for human social justice. traditionally, many marginalized groups have been denied full standing as human beings on the grounds that they were not fully human, that they were ‘like animals’. many of these marginalized groups have had to fight for their humanity, that is, for recognition of their full standing as human beings – and here i am, seemingly trying to undercut the concept of the human altogether! but i hope it is clear that i am entirely on the side of these progressive movements for social justice. i am fully and painfully aware of how rhetorics of animality have been used to marginalize human beings the world over, and i am deeply aware of how important being recognized as fully human can often be for such peoples. but it has to be noted that there have also been radical movements for change throughout the years that have sought change on other grounds and through other avenues. many different queer struggles, feminist groups, indigenous peoples, anti-racism and decolonization struggles, alter-globalization activists, radical environmentalists, and so on, have argued that radical movements for social justice should not be about who is human and who isn’t human, about who should be granted access to the status quo economy/law/culture associated with ‘man’ and who shouldn’t. their goal has been to push back against and ultimately leave behind that allleonardo caffo 88 relations – 1.2 november 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ too-human world and construct a world in which many worlds are possible and for beings of all sorts. rather than playing the old game of determining human propriety and then stretching it to include or exclude this being or that being, these groups are asking us to push back against that game and eventually exit it altogether. i place my work within, alongside, and in support of those struggles. so, my work is not aimed at undercutting the humanist progressive struggles for social justice that i mentioned above; instead, it is aimed at deepening and radicalizing them in the name of those who continue to be marginalized by the established anthropocentric order. lc: besides being a philosopher, you call yourself an activist? have you become vegan? do you think it is important to become vegan, despite all the problems with it? mc: i have been involved with animal activism of various sorts and at various levels for many years. and, yes, veganism is to my mind one important aspect of pushing back against the established anthropocentric order. veganism is not for me an attempt at being pure and making sure that i consume no animals or animal products or that i cause animals no harm. given the world we live in (which is deeply caught up in violence toward animals at every conceivable level), and given the more general logic of consumption (which is inherently violent), pure veganism is impossible to attain – and i know that, despite my best efforts (i am a strict vegan by most people’s standards), i indirectly consume animals and cause them harm in innumerable ways. but that doesn’t mean one simply gives up and eats just anything one feels like. instead the question becomes: how can i, or better, how can we consume (and be consumed, because consumption runs both ways!) as respectfully as possible? veganism is the name i give to that practice of respectful eating when it is undertaken in view of animals. for me, veganism is one of the ways of putting the notion of indistinction into practice. animals and human beings are deeply and profoundly indistinct in the fact that we are, all of us, potentially meat. this is one of the most important lessons of artists like francis bacon (a point that is made well by deleuze in his reading of bacon), feminist theorists like val plumwood, as well as several indigenous peoples and traditions that have influenced my work. counter to some animal ethicists who view animals and humans as being fundamentally inedible and who build their veganism on a kind of absolute prohibition of consumption, this alternative way of seeing humans and animals as sharing a zone of indistinct, meaty, consumable embodiment gives rise to another kind of veganism. vegans of this sort, among which i would count myself, avoid eating meat as much we are made of meat 89 relations – 1.2 november 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ as possible not because animals should not be seen as meat. animals are potentially meat; they (and we!) can be eaten, are eaten, and will be eaten. but what we know – we fellow meaty, embodied beings who practice this sort of veganism – what we know is that animal bodies can be much more than ‘mere’ meat. modern factory farms and animal industries try to reduce animals to ‘mere’ meat (the scare quotation marks are there because nothing is ‘mere’ to my mind, not even processed meat), to make us think that their bodies are capable of nothing more than ending up as beef, pork, or various byproducts on our plates or on our bodies. so, yes, animals are potentially meat to be eaten – but they are potentially more than that as well. veganism is an attempt to release animals into these additional potentials, into these other possibilities. it is an effort to release them from a world and an established order that has blocked them from constituting their own worlds, their own relations, their own becomings, joys, and passions. as such, veganism of this sort is not a hatred or disgust of meat or of embodiment, but a profound identification with and passion for meaty bodies and their wide range of potentials. moreover, veganism of this sort is also an effort to release ourselves into other possibilities, potentials, and passions. who knows what we might become when we try eating more thoughtfully, more respectfully? who knows what we might become when rethink who we are and who animals are? i should also stress that this is why veganism cannot be limited to an individual ethical stance if it is to be seriously pursued. the established order that seeks to reduce animals to ‘mere’ meat is extraordinarily powerful and is constituted by a series of economic, legal, ontological, and other innumerable systems and institutions that cannot be taken down (or even seriously reformed) through individual or collective acts of vegan eating. veganism of the sort i am talking about here needs to go well beyond a change in eating habits and must extend to a reflection on and radical transformation of everything from transportation (think of the massive death, suffering, and habitat fragmentation associated with roadkill, railkill, and airkill), to energy usage (every step of the process of extraction, processing, and end use of fossil fuels and even ‘renewables’ is fraught with harm to animal lives and habitats, not to mention the innumerable harms caused to animals through climate change), to architecture (our cities, towns, and general infrastructures for living are built with very little to no consideration of animal well being) to waste, to our collective use of and impact on water, soil, air, and other aspects of the material world that compose animals’ environments. it is enormously challenging to think through animal issues on this kind of complicated terrain, but there are leonardo caffo 90 relations – 1.2 november 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ numerous and promising possibilities here as well for forming important linkages with other movements for radical change (including, of course, all of the groups i mentioned above who seek to build a world in which many worlds are possible for all sorts of beings). the wager of my work is that serious transformation of the established order will come, if it comes at all, through these kinds of alliances and solidarities. introduction. the emotional lives of animals: a comparison between researchers and disciplines 17 relations – 1.i june 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the emotional lives of animals: a comparison between researchers and disciplines introduction alma massaro 1 sabrina tonutti 2 1 phd candidate in philosophy at university of genoa, italy 2 phd, lecturer and researcher in cultural anthropology at the university of udine, italy almamassaro@gmail.com tonuttis@gmail.com ‘emotions’ is the key concept around which the essays collected in this first volume of relations revolve. animals’ emotions, as investigated and described by marc bekoff in his the emotional lives of animals (2007), constitute the starting point for the authors. they set out to explore a series of aspects related to the relationships between humans and nonhuman animals: the phenomena of companion animals, animal experimentation, animal husbandry, animal advocacy, and so forth, paying attention to their philosophical, anthropological, theological, political, medical, and jurisprudential interpretations. the essays offer examples of the intersection of scientific attitudes and ethical concerns toward nonhuman animals. in the emotional lives of animals, marc bekoff advocates for good science in which both scientific rigor and compassion coexist and proceed hand in hand. “in my own field i know that solid science can easily be done with ethics and compassion. […] science and the ethical treatment of animals aren’t incompatible. we can do solid science with an open mind and a big heart”, he writes (bekoff and goodall 2007, 24). the aim of this first volume of relations is to provide an answer to bekoff’s call. it is to contribute to academic debate around nonhuman animal-related issues, which fosters ethical concern towards nonhumans and their plight. as for the contents of this volume, in the first issue the authors define the consequences of the recognition of animal lives on laws and policies. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ alma massaro sabrina tonutti 18 relations – 1.i june 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ in his essay, sickness and abnormal behaviors as indicators of animal suffering, michele panzera concentrates on the recognition of animals’ emotional lives and its consequences on animal husbandry. moving from the ability of animals to perceive the states that reflect their welfare condition, he affirms they are alive, conscious, and sentient. as a consequence, the notion of good welfare inside animal husbandry is what could guarantee “animal integrity” – that is the possibility for animals to manifest their full “capacity”, “not only those capacities that are ‘convenient’ for humans”. paola sobbrio offers both a complementary historical explanation and a critique of the eu legislation regarding animal welfare. in her work, the relationship between humans and other animals in european animal welfare legislation, she notes that, even if animals are formally recognized as sentient beings, the legislation that follows this recognition is still human centered. “while the rhetoric of these laws seems to endorse the protection and welfare of animals as sentient beings, they actually allow for their enslavement and objectification”, she writes. in fact, european animal welfare regulations allow very cruel practices that are completely in contrast with the recognition of their sentience. staying with the focus on advocacy, kim stallwood, in his essay the politics of animal rights advocacy, proposes the animal rights movement as the real opposition to the contemporary animal industrial complex and its entrenchments with the current public policy. he urges animal rights activists to move from the moral crusader strategy – and its emphasis on personal lifestyle choice – to “a long-term strategy which advances animal issues as public policy”. for this reason, he proposes “a five-part evaluation process of social movements and use it to evaluate the modern animal rights movement” and advocates for a new strategy, operating on both the individual and social level. in the second issue, the authors concentrate on specific application of the idea of the emotional lives of animals. in her essay, on others’ emotions, and ours: a reflection on narratives, categories, and heuristic devices, sabrina tonutti analyses, from an anthropological perspective, how the use of categories in addressing people’s and nonhuman animals’ lives can bias our understanding of them. underlying the fact that categories “are not thirsty” and “do not suffer”, while individual beings do, she therefore calls for a constant cognitive tension which can allow us (common people and researchers) to focus on real biographies and individuals, rather than classifications and categories, when dealing with social phenomena and ethical issues. our relationship with animals is the subject of matteo andreozzi’s work. humans’ best friend? the ethical dilemma of pets is an attempt to a comparison between researchers and disciplines 19 relations – 1.i june 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ reassess the moral status of pets, not just for an epistemological purpose but also as a step toward the moral rethinking of human-animal relationships. he investigates the moral implications of pet-keeping, including the “ethical dilemma of pets” from human-centered ethics and animal (partialist and impartialist) ethics. refusing the former and accepting the latter, he suggests “the keeping of pets is not compatible with promoting the welfare of these (and other) animals”. in human relationship with animals: reading the book of tobit in the light of christian tradition, gianfranco nicora and alma massaro invite the reader to reflect upon the new model of companionship between a human being and a dog, as is represented in the apocrypha book of tobit. they argue the book constitutes a vision of a future era and that, even if still entrenched in the anthropocentric view particular to the ancient jewish culture, “the reading of this story in the light of jesus’ revelation confirms both that the union and brotherhood of humans and animals existed at the beginning of cosmic history and that it will come back in the new era”. susanna penco and rosella ciliberti’s essay, ethics for the living world: alternative methods and new strategies for the protection of nonhuman animals, takes part in the debate on the post mortem donation. in fact, as they show, animal experimentation is still controversial since it is not clear if nonhuman animals are good models for humans. for this reason, the authors promote this kind of donation for the capital importance it could have for both nonhuman and human living beings. the authors state “diseases need to be cured and not only treated” and advocate that this kind of new research could lead “to the discovery of the causes of unknown etiological pathologies”. the two issues provide not only studies and research contributions but also a debate between marc bekoff and italian ethologist and philosopher roberto marchesini as well as reports, interviews and reviews. in the section debate marc bekoff and roberto marchesini tackle the issue of anthropomorphism and science. in his essay, animal consciousness and science matter: anthropomorphism is not anti-science, bekoff argues in favor of a “biocentric anthropomorphism” to guide scientists in their approach to the animal word and help them in gaining rigorous results which, in turn, support animal protection. in line with bekoff’s ideas, roberto marchesini, in his writing a re-examination of epistemological paradigms describing animal behavior in 8 points, tries to delineate “a new paradigm, which avoids all forms of epistemological anthropocentrism”. in the section interviews we find theory, activism, and the other ways, a conversation between carol j. adams and adele tiengo about the intersection between activism and theory, and, we are made of meat, a alma massaro sabrina tonutti 20 relations – 1.i june 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ conversation between matthew calarco and leonardo caffo about what continental philosophy can add to the animal debate. in this volume of relations space is also given to the exhibition beauté animale (paris, france, march 21st july 16th, 2012) and to the second minding animals international conference (utrecht, the netherlands, july 3rd-6th, 2012), as summarized and commented respectively by eleonora adorni and by paola fossati and alma massaro. two reviews close the volume: eleonora adorni’s analysis of les animaux amoureux (a full-length documentary by laurent charbonnier) and alma massaro’s and paola sobbrio’s review of melanie joy’s book why we love dogs, eat pigs, and wear cows. as a whole, this first volume of relations invites people to reassess the emotional lives of animals from a interdisciplinary perspective. as the reader will notice, this volume does not illustrate only the negative side of our anthropocentrism, but also the richness of our cultures, which could be reread from an innovative point of view. rethinking the emotional lives of animals could, indeed, lead us to rethink our relations with them, but also with us and with the whole nature. always trying to proceed “with an open mind and a big heart”, as marc bekoff claims (bekoff and goodall 2007, 24). references bekoff, marc, and jane goodall. 2007. the emotional lives of animals: a leading scientist explores animal joy, sorrow, and empathy – and why they matter. novato, ca: new world press. skeptics and “the white stuff”: promotion of cows’ milk and other nonhuman animal products in the skeptic community as normative whiteness 73 relations – 5.1 june 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ skeptics and “the white stuff” promotion of cows’ milk and other nonhuman animal products in the skeptic community as normative whiteness corey lee wrenn lecturer of sociology and director of gender studies, monmouth university doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2017-001-wren corey.wrenn@gmail.com abstract this article discusses a dairy advertising campaign featuring skeptic derren brown. i explore the various health claims made in the ads as well as a report brown featured on his website that claimed consumption of cow’s milk is linked to longevity. i discuss how dairy consumption is largely linked to race and ethnicity. it is a practice enjoyed primarily by european whites as most nonwhites are lactose intolerant. lactose intolerance is a normal biological process associated with weaning, but it is medicalized and made deviant because it is not part of the white experience. i also mention comments made by sam harris and richard dawkins that normalize western diets with unsubstantiated claims. this article takes a critical look at skeptic leaders who have failed to address misleading information perpetuated by exploitative animal product industries. keywords: advertising, colonialism, dairy, food, health, lactose intolerance, race, science, skepticism, veganism. 1. introduction television personality derren brown is a british illusionist and skeptic known for divulging the secrets of magicians, psychics, and new age charlatans. brown also devotes considerable attention to debunking bogus scientific and medical claims. in one program, for instance, brown trained an amateur actor to impersonate a faith healer. he effectively convinced a texan community that the man had special divine powers to cure the ill (brown 2011). the danger with faith healers, of course, is that adults and children alike are encouraged (or forced) to forgo medical treatments http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/79 http://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2017-001-wren mailto:corey.wrenn%40gmail.com?subject= corey lee wrenn 74 relations – 5.1 june 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ in the expectation that their chosen deity will cure them. this has led to the premature or unnecessary death of quite a few individuals (brenneman 1990; peters 2008). this “healing” is often performed in congruence with fevered solicitations for donations. thus, projects like brown’s miracles for sale have fundamentally humanitarian intentions. however, brown appears unable to see through similarly exploitative and phony healing claims when it comes to more socially ingrained practices. brown appeared in a “healthy living” campaign for cows’ milk, or, “the white stuff”. the promotion was funded by the scottish dairy marketing company in association with the milk development council. his advertisements state that the nutrients found in cows’ milk (many of which are added during processing) (gerdes 2009) are good for skin, teeth, hair, bones, and energy. cows’ milk is labeled as “powerful stuff” (milk development council n.d.a) necessary for an active body to “unlock the power within” (milk development council n.d.b). inundated with appeals to vitality and healthfulness, we are encouraged to disregard reason and critical thought: “with facts like these, do you really need anyone to persuade you that it’s good for you?”. 2. corporate influence on nutrition information hardly “facts” at all, these statements are concocted by the dairy industry to push potentially unhealthy and dangerous products onto unsuspecting and trusting consumers. make no mistake, the milk development council is not in the business of improving human health. rather, they aim to “improve farm profits” and increase “demand for milk supplied by profitable british dairy farmers” (milk development council 2008). the advertisements featuring brown and other celebrities are intended to improve dairy’s public image and market success. thus, the industry plays up the potential nutritional benefits of particular ingredients, distorts the healthfulness of cows’ milk, and diminishes the potential consequences of consuming the mammary fluids of another species. not surprisingly, dairy campaigns have been slammed with false advertising complaints, specifically for promoting cows’ milk as an aid in weight loss (physicians committee for responsible medicine 2007) and sports performance (napoli 2001), a product of higher animal welfare (weise 2002), and hormone-free (leong 2007) (hormones occur naturally in cows’ breast milk as it is intended for their growing calves). surely, brown participated in the ad campaign for the same reason many celebrities do: as a public service to benefit consumer health and http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/79 skeptics and “the white stuff” 75 relations – 5.1 june 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ promote national industry. unfortunately, these campaigns may help industry, but could be hurting others. on july 27, 2009, an administrator on brown’s website a published a blog post (abeodbart 2009) summarizing a university study that claimed the consumption of cows’ milk could lessen chances of death from heart disease and stroke by as much as 20% (elwood et al. 2010). this study turned out to be a meta-analysis of a scant eight reports, two of which lacked sufficient data for full analysis. this is a curiously small sample given that a search for “dairy” in the u.s. national institutes of health’s national library of medicine turned up thousands of results in peer-reviewed academic and medical journals. a closer look at the studies chosen gives greater reason for concern. 3. the bad science of dairy science the elwood et al. (2010) meta-analysis cited by brown’s public relations team comes to some rather surprising conclusions in favor of dairy consumption given the actual results reported by the studies included. one 1984 study included in the meta-analysis sampled 90 elderly participants and measured a multitude of fitness and food variables (which included dairy). rather than promoting cow’s milk, the study merely suggests that a high caloric diet and use of psychoactive drugs are associated with age-related cognitive deterioration in subjects (fraser, singh, and bennett 1996). another study included analyzed data from general health examinations of 2,605 dutch civil servants between 1953 and 1954. it finds “[…] an inverse association between calcium intake and cvd 1 and chd mortality, possibly mediated by blood pressure […]” (van der vijver et al. 1992). another looked at 29,017 post-menopausal iowan women and finds an, “[…] inverse associations of vegetable protein and legume food sources and positive associations of dairy and red meat food sources for chd morality when substituted in place of a carbohydrate” (kelemen et al. 2005). in fact, these researchers find that dairy consumption increases the risk as much as animal’s flesh does. a study of united kingdom “health conscious individuals” does find a positive correlation between dairy consumption and increased longevity – but, the participants were vegetarians and had therefore already reduced their risk of chd significantly by eschewing animals’ flesh (mann et al. 1997). an analysis of diets consumed by diabetic persons in greece suggests that an increased consumption of 1 cvd is an acronym for cardiovascular disease; chd is an acronym for coronary heart disease. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/79 corey lee wrenn 76 relations – 5.1 june 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ eggs and saturated fats (found in most dairy products) is strongly associated with increased mortality (trichopoulou et al. 2006). in fact, of the eight articles analyzed, only one (produced by the very same authors of the meta-analysis) clearly stated that dairy consumption was not risky (elwood et al. 2004). declaring that cows’ milk improves longevity seems a farfetched conclusion given the results of the very studies included in the elwood et al. meta-analysis. in most of these studies, the consumption of nonhuman animal products is included as only one of many variables. many of these variables (education, socioeconomic status, fitness levels, etc.) are likely interacting with one another or suppressing hidden variables. furthermore, some of the researchers were examining the impact of specific nutrients, such as calcium, which can come from a variety of non-animal sources. hence, some of the conclusions paraphrased by the meta-analysis do not necessarily imply that dairy products are preferable to other calcium-rich foods like dark leafy greens. another concern is generalizability: elwood et al. (2010) explored only a select handful of available studies that address dairy and human health. many of these studies focus on very specific or small populations (seventh day evangelists, dutch civil servants in the 1950s, and diabetic greeks for instance). more importantly, none of the sampled reports controlled for race or ethnicity. the race and ethnicity variable is important because studies like that of elwood et al. (2010) run the risk of eurocentrism in presuming that the consumption of cows’ milk is both necessary and normal. 4. framing milk: white normativity and lactose tolerance lactose intolerance occurs after weaning in all nonhuman animals and in many human populations (vesa, marteau, and korpela 2000). indeed, over 50% of south americans and africans are lactose intolerant. levels are closer to 100% in some asian countries – a reality that seems to be lost on canadian researchers who, in a 2012 study, suggest that asian women living in the west should conform to western dietary norms and increase their dairy consumption to obtain calcium and vitamin d (yu et al. 2012). importantly, another 2012 study of asian women conducted by vietnamese researchers found that a vegan diet does not have adverse effects on bones (ho-pham et al. 2012). in the united states, lactose intolerance is around 20% for whites. it is much higher in non-white populations, affecting over half of mexican americans, 75% of african americans, and approximately http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/79 skeptics and “the white stuff” 77 relations – 5.1 june 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 80% of native americans (scrimshaw and murray 1988). yet, in a society that privileges the white experience, this natural weaning process is medicalized as deviant (gaard 2013). weaned individuals, mistakenly believing that dairy is essential to human health, suffer immeasurably when they continue to consume those products. contrary to the elwood et al. findings, other research supports the benefits of a vegan diet (one that includes no products from other animals) (marsh, zeuschner, and saunders 2012). products made with nonhuman animal milk are significant sources of cholesterol and contain no fiber (usda n.d.). dairy (and other nonhuman animal products for that matter) has been linked to obesity, atherosclerosis, cancer, diabetes (robbins 1998; marsh et al. 2012) resistance to antibiotics (oliver, murinda, and jayarao 2011), and even osteoporosis and bone fractures (cumming and klineberg 1994; feskanich et al. 1997). the dubious health claims promoted in the milk development council’s advertisements, then, have successfully obscured this scientific debate. statements made by industries that exploit nonhuman animals are often legitimized when they are promoted by those state, medical, and educational institutions that are regularly bombarded by political pressure, free “educational” material, and funding from these immensely wealthy corporations (robbins 1998; nibert 2002). 5. short-sighted skepticism brown has built a career on dismantling the harmful and exploitative claimsmaking of religious leaders, mediums, and scam artists, so his collaboration with big dairy is an anomaly, but worrying nonetheless. unfortunately, it seems that skeptics often overlook the nonhuman animal industry’s blatant pursuit of profit that so often obscures consumer awareness and may be jeopardizing human safety. brown may as well be wearing a foamy brown coca-cola mustache, celebrating soda as “powerful stuff” – which is a real possibility given that coca-cola (2012) claims their soda products contribute to hydration and have marketed vitaminwater (a product containing 33 grams of sugar) as a “healthy” beverage (robbins 2010). again, brown is not the only skeptic overlooking the misrepresentation of nonhuman animal products as healthful and necessary. critical thinker sam harris stated in one interview that he supports extending moral consideration to other animals. in fact, he was once vegetarian, but he gave it up because he felt he “wasn’t getting enough protein”. this is an interesting problem given that much of the world’s population abstains from the flesh of other animals for cultural reasons or for lack of resources. i am unaware http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/79 corey lee wrenn 78 relations – 5.1 june 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ of any sound research that has located a correlation between hinduism and protein deficiency, for instance 2. however, research on the health of rural chinese poor, conducted before and after the westernization of their diet, does clearly indicate a correlation between veganism (or near-veganism) and reduced rates of diet-related diseases (campbell 2006). really, harris need not worry. protein is literally in just about everything from popcorn to pumpkin and from mushrooms to mustard greens. the beans, nuts, lentils, pasta, and grains comprising a large percentage of many vegan diets do not simply provide adequate protein, but are protein powerhouses. while it is true that certain vitamins and nutrients may require supplementation in the vegan diet, protein is not one of them (craig 2009). richard dawkins has also addressed the moral question of veganism in an interview with ethicist peter singer, though he ultimately chooses to remain a “reluctant” participant in nonhuman animal exploitation. granting moral consideration to nonhuman animals, dawkins postulates, is unrealistic given the pressure of societal norms (dawkins 2008). again, we must question whose society is being privileged in constituting that norm. many non-european cultures have nurtured vegetarian or vegan traditions for thousands of years until colonization efforts imposed western values and destroyed local cultures (harper 2010; wrenn 2011; gaard 2013). 6. conclusion it does seem strange that some leaders in the skeptic community can’t see through one of the greatest corporate-sponsored scams against humanity ever successfully conducted: the taken-for-granted notion that human animals require or otherwise greatly benefit from the dietary intake of the flesh or lactations of other animals. it is an even greater disappointment when influential skeptic leaders like sam harris and richard dawkins openly acknowledge the moral worth of other animals, but retreat into familiar ethnocentric (and speciesist) social schemas. brown’s collaboration with the milk development council and harris’s reference to a tired vegan-phobic stereotype suggests that science and rationality are ultimately embedded in prevailing social structures and dominant cultural norms. promoting nonhuman animal breast milk and casting doubt on the healthfulness or utility of veganism positions anthropocentric european white 2 interestingly, western colonizers did make this argument as a means of naturalizing british rule over indians, as physician and vegetarian advocate john harvey kellogg explores in his 1923 publication, the natural diet of man [sic]. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/79 skeptics and “the white stuff” 79 relations – 5.1 june 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ culture as the unexamined norm. the experiences of nonhuman animals, african americans, asian americans, mexican americans, native americans, and billions of people world-wide are generally ignored. “the white stuff” that industry is peddling is undeniably white stuff. references abeodbart. 2009. “milk drinkers live longer”. blog. http://derrenbrown.co.uk/ milk-drinkers-live-longer/. brenneman, richard. 1990. deadly blessings: faith healing on trial. amherst: prometheus books. brown, derren. 2011. miracles for sale [film]. united kingdom: channel 4. campbell, colin t. 2006. the china study: the most comprehensive study of nutrition ever conducted and the startling implications for diet, weight loss, and longterm health. dallas: benbella books. craig, winston j. 2009. “health effects of vegan diets”. american journal of clinical nutrition 89 (5): 1627-33. cumming, robert g., and robin j. klineberg. 1994. “case-control study of risk factors for hip fractures in the elderly”. american journal of epidemiology 139 (5): 493-503. dawkins, richard. 2008. “peter singer”. the genius of darwin [film]. united kingdom: channel 4. elwood, peter, janet pickering, ann fehily, janie hughes, and andy ness. 2004. “milk drinking, ischaemic heart disease and ischaemic stroke i: evidence from the caerphilly cohort”. european journal of clinical nutrition 58 (5): 711-7. elwood, peter, janet pickering, ian d. givens, and john e. gallacher. 2010. “the consumption of milk and dairy foods and the incidence of vascular disease and diabetes: an overview of the evidence”. lipids 45: 925-39. feskanich, diane, walter willett, meir stampfer, and graham colditz. 1997. “milk, dietary calcium, and bone fractures in women: a 12-year prospective study”. american journal of public health 87 (6): 992-7. fraser, gary, pramil singh, and hannelore bennett. 1996. “variables associated with cognitive function in elderly california seventh-day adventists”. american journal of epidemiology 143 (12): 1181-90. gaard, greta. 2013. “toward a feminist postcolonial milk studies”. american quarterly 65 (3): 595-618. gerdes, sharon. 2009. “fortification for milk and beverages”. dairy foods (february). harper, breeze. 2010. sistah vegan: black female vegans speak on food, identity, health, and society. brooklyn: lantern books. ho-pham, lan t., bq vu, thai q. lai, nd nguyen, and tuan v. nguyen. 2012. “vegetarianism, bone loss, fracture and vitamin d: a longitudinal study in http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/79 corey lee wrenn 80 relations – 5.1 june 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ asian vegans and non-vegans”. european journal of clinical nutrition 66 (1): 75-82. kelemen, linda, lawrence kushi, david jacobs jr., and james cerhan. 2005. “associations of dietary protein with disease and morality in a prospective study of postmenopausal women”. american journal of epidemiology 161 (3): 239-49. leong, grace. 2007. “hormone-free milk ad is false”. daily herald. http://www. heraldextra.com/news/hormone-free-milk-ad-is-false/article_98d1cf4d-2f375f5f-90ac-e632a0b5aec8.html. mann, jim, paul appleby, timothy key, and margaret thorogood. 1997. “dietary determinants of ischaemic heart disease in health conscious individuals”. heart 78: 450-5. marsh, kate, carol zeuschner, and angela saunders. 2012. “health implications of a vegetarian diet: a review”. american journal of lifestyle medicine 6 (3): 250-67. milk development council. 2008. annual report and accounts 2007/2008. london: crown. n.d.a. “powerful stuff”. healthyliving [image]. united kingdom: milk develoment council. n.d.b. “unlock the power within”. healthyliving [image]. united kingdom: milk development council. napoli, maryann. 2001. “false advertising complaints against ‘milk mustache’ and ‘got milk’? ads validated”. healthfacts 26 (10): 2. nibert, david. 2002. animal rights / human rights: entanglements of oppression and liberation. lanham: rowman & littlefield. oliver, stephen, sshelton murinda, and bhushan jayarao. 2011. “impact of antibiotic use in adult dairy cows on antimicrobial resistance of veterinary and human pathogens: a comprehensive review”. foodborne pathogens and disease 8 (3): 337-55. peters, shawn francis. 2008. when prayer fails: faith healing, children, and the law. new york: oxford university press. physicians committee for responsible medicine. 2007. “pcrm’s complaint halts misleading dairy advertisements”. good medicine 16 (3): 15. robbins, john. 2010. “the dark side of vitaminwater”. huffpost healthy living. http:// www.huffingtonpost.com/john-robbins/the-dark-side-of-vitaminw_b_669716. html. 1998. diet for a new america: how your food choices affect your health, happiness, and the future of life on earth. tiburon: h.j. kramer inc. scrimshaw, nevin, and edwina murray. 1988. “prevalence of lactose maldigestion”. american journal of clinical nutrition 48 (4): 1086-98. the coca-cola company. 2012. “beverages & health”. beverage institute for health & wellness. http://www.beverageinstitute.org/en_us/pages/ahl-beverageshealth.html. trichopoulou, antonia, theodora psaltopoulou, philippos orfanos, and dimitrios tri cho poulos. 2006. “diet and physical activity in relation to overall morhttp://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/79 http://www.heraldextra.com/news/hormone-free-milk-ad-is-false/article_98d1cf4d-2f37-5f5f-90ac-e632a0b5aec8.html http://www.heraldextra.com/news/hormone-free-milk-ad-is-false/article_98d1cf4d-2f37-5f5f-90ac-e632a0b5aec8.html http://www.heraldextra.com/news/hormone-free-milk-ad-is-false/article_98d1cf4d-2f37-5f5f-90ac-e632a0b5aec8.html skeptics and “the white stuff” 81 relations – 5.1 june 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ tality amongst adult diabetics in a general population cohort”. journal of international medicine 259 (9): 583-91. usda. n.d. “dairy and egg products”. national nutrient database for standard reference. http://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/search/list. van der vijver, lucy, marieke van der waal, karin weterings, jacqueline dekker, evert schouten, and frans kok. 1992. “calcium intake and 28-year cardiovascular and coronary heart disease mortality in dutch civil servants”. international journal of epidemiology 21 (1): 36-9. vesa, tuula, philippe marteau, and riitta korpela. 2000. “lactose intolerance”. journal of the american college of nutrition 19 (2): 1655-755. weise, elizabeth. 2002. “peta: ‘happy cows’ ad is a lie”. usa today. http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/health/2002-12-11-happy-cows_x.htm. yu, yan han, anna farmer, diana mager, and noreen willows. 2012. “dairy foods are an important source of calcium and vitamin d among canadian-born and asian-born chinese in edmonton, alberta”. nutritional research 32 (3): 177-84. wrenn, corey. 2011. “resisting the globalization of speciesism: vegan abolitionism as a site for consumer-based social change”. journal for critical animal studies 9 (3): 9-27. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/79 http://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/search/list http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/health/2002-12-11-happy-cows_x.htm on midgley and scruton: some limits of a too moderate animal ethics 5 is sn 2 2 8 0 -9 9 5 3 beyond anthropocentrism 1 • january 2013 inside the emotional lives of non-human animals a minding animals international utrecht 2012 pre-conference event special issue (genoa, italy, 12-13 may, 2012) edited by m. andreozzi, r. bennison, a. massaro, s. tonutti capabilities approach and animal bioethics • michele panzera animals and our emotions. how to approach the study of an interspecific community? • sabrina tonutti advocacy and animal rights • kim stallwood the emotional lives of animals: a christian perspective • alma massaro – gianfranco nicora animalia: ontology and ethics in weak antispeciesism • leonardo caffo the contemporary debate on experimentation • susanna penco – rosagemma ciliberti non-human animals and genetic engineering • arianna ferrari the relationship between humans and other animals in european animal welfare legislation • paola sobbrio human’s best friends? • matteo andreozzi elationsre l a t io n s . b e y o n d a n t h r o p o c e n t r is m 1 • 2 0 1 3 r 8.1-2 november 2020 finding agency in nonhumans special issue edited by anne aronsson, fynn holm, melissa kaul introduction finding agency in nonhumans 7 anne aronsson fynn holm melissa kaul studies and research contributions conceptualizing robotic agency: social robots in elder care 17 in contemporary japan anne aronsson fynn holm “its hand around my throat”: the social rendering of borrelia 37 ritti soncco distributed skills in camel herding: cooperation 57 in a human-animal relationship in somaliland raphael schwere a sea cow goes to court: extinction and animal agency 77 in a struggle against militarism marius palz is skrei a historical norwegian figure? the nomadic symbiosis 97 of fish and humans in the lofoten islands nafsika papacharalampous relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ relations. beyond anthropocentrism 6 “agents of description”: animals, affect, and care 115 in thalia field’s experimental animals: a reality fiction (2016) shannon lambert comments, debates, reports and interviews on midgley and scruton: some limits of a too moderate 137 animal ethics francesco allegri author guidelines 145 relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 137 on midgley and scruton some limits of a too moderate animal ethics francesco allegri università degli studi di siena doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2020-0102-alle allegri2@unisi.it in addition to tom regan, to whom relations has dedicated its 2019 special issue, recent years have seen the passing of at least two other important scholars in animal ethics: mary midgley (who died on october 10, 2018, at the age of 99 years) and roger scruton (who passed away on on january 12, 2020). they were two excellent thinkers, but their position about the moral status of animals is, in my opinion, too moderate, i.e. too weak. and this is what i would like to highlight briefly in the following pages, which want to remember midgley and scruton. let us start with mary midgley. one of the distinctive features of midgley’s reflection on animals is the introduction of a special obligation related to the belonging of species. i will limit my remarks on midgley to this aspect. like williams and nozick (williams 2006, 139; nozick 1983), midgley seems to think that we are justified in giving precedence to humans over non-humans on the basis of a peculiar obligation of species membership. although far from denying animals a relevant moral status, she criticizes singer on the notion of speciesism. according to midgley, singer is wrong to think that any preference for our species is nothing more than a prejudice comparable to racism. in her view, presenting speciesism in analogy with racism is a mistake because these are two extremely different concepts, whose similarity is only superficial: race in humans is not a significant grouping at all, but species in animals certainly is. it is never true that, in order to know how to treat a human being, you must first find out what race he belongs to. (cases where this might seem to matter always really turn on culture.) but with an animal, to know the species is absolutely essential. a zoo-keeper who is told to expect an animal, and get a place ready for it, cannot even begin to do this without far more detailed information. it might be a hyaena or a hippopotamus, a shark, an eagle, an armadillo, a python or a queen bee. (midgley [1983] 1998, 98-99) relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ francesco allegri 138 one cannot compare a trivial human grouping such as race to this enormous, inconceivably varied range of possibilities […]. overlooking somebody’s race is entirely sensible. overlooking their species is a supercilious insult. it is no privilege, but a misfortune, for a gorilla or a chimpanzee to be removed from its forest and its relatives and brought up alone among humans to be given what those humans regard as an education. if we ourselves were on another planet, among beings who considered themselves, and perhaps were, superior to us in intellect and other ways, we would have no doubt about rejecting such an offer for ourselves or our children. (ibid., 99) in fact if virtuous and highly intelligent extraterrestrials, the quongs from alfa centauri, offered to adopt human infants, their undoubted status as persons, as self-conscious and rational by hypotheses, would not be sufficient to make us accept the proposal, because we would still maintain considerable perplexities: the first think, i should guess, concerns emotional communication. do the quongs smile and laugh? do they understand smiles and laughter? do they cry or understand crying? do they ever lose their temper? does speech – or its equivalent – among them play the same sort of emotional part that it does in human life – for instance, do they greet, thank, scold, swear, converse, tell stories? how much time do they give to their own children? then – what about play? do they play with their young at all? if so, how? […] what singing, dancing or other such activities have they? what meaning do they attach to such words as love? without going any further, it seems clear that, unless they are the usual cheap substitute for alien beings which appear in films – that is, more or less people in makeup – we shall find that the answers to these questions give us some reasons to refuse their offer completely, even if reluctantly. and these reasons will be of the same kind that applied to the duckling. a human being needs a human life. (ibid., 106-107) according to midgley, these considerations justify our predilection for members of our own species, creating a special obligation towards them. in her opinion, speciesism should be rejected not so much because the species boundary does not identify a morally relevant difference, but only insofar as species membership is seen as the factor that marks the ultimate boundary of morality, the limit beyond which no living creature can have any importance for man (ibid., 101). midgley’s remarks appear acute and a reply that excludes any role for special obligations, giving moral theory entirely neutralistic connotarelations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ on midgley and scruton 139 tions, is not convincing 1. i therefore think that midgley is right in saying that a belief cannot be considered necessarily a prejudice simply because it points out some individuals, regardless of their merits and capacity, as objects of concern before others. the special interest which parents feel in their own children is not a prejudice, nor is the tendency which most of us would show to rescue, in a fire or other emergency, those closest to us sooner than strangers. these habits of thought and action are not unfair, though they can probably be called discriminatory. there is a good reason for such a preference. we are bond-forming creatures, not abstract intellects. (ibid., 101-102) but the decisive problem with regard to the issue we are dealing with is herself to pose it: “the question which people who want to use the notion of speciesism have to decide is, does the species barrier also give some ground for such a preference or not?” (ibid., 102). midgley responds positively to this question: “the natural preference for one’s own species does exist. it is not, like race-prejudice, a product of culture. it is found in all human cultures, and in cases of real competition it tends to operate very strongly” (ibid., 104). on this point, my position disagrees with her. midgley’s observations are interesting, but the thesis of a special obligation based on belonging to species does not convince me. let me be clear, the dimension of special obligations is irreplaceable for a moral theory. the question is, however, whether special obligations also include one that concerns belonging to a particular biological species. that is to say, the mere fact that an individual belongs to my species makes a preference in her favour justified or even obligatory. i do not think so. if, in a dilemmatic situation, i were faced with an extraterrestrial endowed with sensitivity, self-consciousness and rationality, and a human, and they were both unknown to me – i. e. without having any relationship of friendship, love, gratitude etc. towards them – i do not believe that i should give priority or would be justified in giving priority to the member of the species homo sapiens. indeed, if i had developed a relationship of gratitude with the extraterrestrial, this would justify my preference for him. of course, the extraterrestrial should be quite similar to us (midgley is right about this). she would have to be capable of affection, emotion, etc. if she were a cold entity, however intelligent, it would hardly have been possible to develop special relationships with her. special obligations to have moral 1 instead singer, in the first edition of practical ethics, seems to state that ethics requires that in our actions we evaluate the moral claims of those affected regardless (independently) of our feelings for them (singer 1979, 69). relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ francesco allegri 140 plausibility must be justified by moral principles, such as gratitude, fidelity, etc. 2. i cannot find a justification for species membership. moreover, even if it were true that species membership brings on the scene a further special obligation in addition to those we have towards persons bound to us by relationships of gratitude, love and friendship etc., this does not affect the question of moral status, as midgley seems to think. nor do the special relationships listed above, which seem to authorize us, in particular circumstances, to give precedence to certain subjects with whom we have ties of affection, but certainly not to diminish our obligations towards (or the rights of) those who do not enjoy these special relationships (degrazia 2002, 30). according to degrazia, midgley fails to grasp the difference between equal treatment and equal consideration, confusing the problem of “what interests members of a group have with the issue of how much weight their interests should receive” (degrazia 1996, 63). degrazia points out that “of course, species differences are important in understanding the various interests of animals. but if they are also important for determining the weight that their interests should receive, midgley has not shown us why” (ibid., 63). let us move on to roger scruton. he believes that we have obligations towards non-human animals, because there are sources of morality, such as virtue (which, however, seems to bring into play only indirect reasons), sympathy and respect, that require them. for example, “two of our sympathetic feelings are of great moral importance: pity towards those who suffer and pleasure in another’s joy. and these two feelings lie at the root of our moral duties towards animals” (scruton 2000, 36). in fact, pity and sympathetic joy extend naturally to other species. i know that the dog with a broken leg is suffering, in something like the way that i would suffer. i know that the same dog, hunting on a lively scent, feels a joy that has its equivalent in me. only a heartless person would feel no distress at the sight of such canine suffering or no pleasure at the sight of such joys. (ibid., 37-38) in animal ethics scruton exemplifies very well a moderate position, for which, to put it briefly, we have an obligation not to make animals suffer, but we do not have an obligation to keep them alive. in this perspective animals possess moral status, i.e. they are worthy of direct moral consideration, but it is not comparable (in any way) to that of humans, whose value is higher and whose interests are to be given greater importance. scruton rejects all those human practices that involve unjustified suffer 2 i argued along these lines in allegri 2005. relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ on midgley and scruton 141 ing directed at other sentient beings, the emblematic example is given by intensive rearing. but he does not believe that an early induced death constitutes a harm to beings without a sense of the future (or lacking a sense of the long-term future). or, if it is, it is not such as to render their killing unjustifiable. the ethics of scruton and of “conscientious” carnivores or omnivores, as singer calls them, is to refuse the logic of factory farming for the suffering it inflicts on animals. but contrasting it not so much with a vegetarian or vegan diet, which they reject, as with traditional farms, where chickens, pigs, cows, etc., before being killed, live a happy life, in accordance with the standards of their species. according to scruton, someone who was indifferent to the sight of pigs confined in batteries, who did not feel some instinctive need to pull down these walls and barriers and let in light and air, would have lost sight of what it is to be a living animal. his sense of the value of his own life would be to that extent impoverished by his indifference to the sight of life reduced to a stream of sensations. it seems to me, therefore, that a true morality of animal welfare ought to begin from the premise that this way of treating animals is wrong, even if legally permissible. (ibid., 102) instead, it is right to give herbivores the opportunity to roam out of doors on grass, in the herds and flocks which are their natural society; it is right to allow pigs to rootle and rummage in the open air, and chickens to peck and squawk in the farmyard, before meeting their end. but when that end should be is more a question of economics than of morals. (ibid., 104) scruton does not see anything wrong in killing, without causing suffering, cattle that have been reared in a traditional way, as they, unlike humans, do not have “an eye to the future” (they have no aspirations, plans, etc., and their life has a repetitive character). in his view, there is a real distinction, for a human being, between timely and untimely death. to be “cut short” before one’s time is a waste – even a tragedy […]. no such thoughts apply to domestic cattle. to be killed at thirty months is not intrinsically more tragic than to be killed at forty, fifty, or sixty. (scruton 2004, 88) 3 on this point, i believe that his reflection is not convincing. in fact, such a reasoning, even to accept it, certainly does not cover the entire animal world (and perhaps not even the area of farm animals). there are surely animals that are self-conscious and have “a look toward the future”: apes, 3 in similar terms, see scruton 2000, 142. relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ francesco allegri 142 dolphins, whales and so on. but even if it were true that all non-human species are devoid of a prospective view of reality, it cannot be said that they do not lose anything in dying before their time. also beings which are only sentient, without self-awareness and rationality, killed prematurely lose all those satisfactions conform to their own species which they would have enjoyed living longer: more food, more sex, more children to be raised, etc. (singer and mason 2006, 253). they do not need to have a sense of the remote future and/or a desire to continue living to undergo harm. the fact that a lizard – assuming it is a being without complex mental skills – cannot have an interest (in the sense of desire) to live, having no sense of the future, does not mean that it is not in its interest to avoid a premature death. that it is not – cannot be – interested in continuing its life does not mean that it is not in its interest to continue it. furthermore, scruton’s reasoning is challenged by the argument from marginal cases. as singer observes, scruton’s view could be reproposed by replacing the animals with atypical human beings (as suffering from relevant brain disabilities). that is, it could be said that there is a real distinction, for a cognitively normal human being, between timely and untimely death. to be “cut short” before one’s time is a waste – even a tragedy […]. no such thoughts apply to a being unable to make plans for the future. for such a being to be killed at an early age is not intrinsically more tragic than to die in old age. (singer 2009, 576) scruton’s argument therefore implies that “it would be permissible to kill humans who, because of profound intellectual disabilities, are not conscious of their lives as their own and do not look forward to future achievements”. but “those who find this conclusion too shocking to accept cannot defend the killing of animals for meat on the grounds that animals lack the higher mental abilities that make it wrong to kill normal humans” (singer and mason 2006, 253). if we are not disposed to support the morality of killing of an innocent human being – in broad terms – with severe cognitive limits (and we do not have to be), then we cannot accept the morality of killing sentient beings (which do not harm us) without a prospective view of the future, just because they belong to other species. if my previous arguments are correct, then a moderate position such as that well exemplified by midgley and scruton is an inadequate option for the moral status of animals. relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ on midgley and scruton 143 references allegri, francesco. 2005. le ragioni del pluralismo morale. william david ross e le teorie dei doveri “prima facie”. roma: carocci. degrazia, david. 1996. taking animals seriously: mental life and moral status. cambridge: cambridge university press. degrazia, david. 2002. animal rights: a very short introduction. oxford: oxford university press. midgley, mary. (1983) 1998. animals and why they matter. reprint, athens (ga): university of georgia press. nozick, robert. 1983. “about mammals and people”. the new york times book review 88: 11, 29-30. scruton, roger. 2000. animal rights and wrongs. london: metro books-demos. scruton, roger. 2004. “the coscientious carnivore”. in food for thought: the debate over eating meat, edited by steve f. sapontzis, 81-91. amherst (ny): prometheus. singer, peter. 1979. practical ethics, 1st edn. cambridge: cambridge university press. singer, peter. 2009. “speciesism and moral status”. metaphilosophy 40: 567-581. singer, peter, and jim mason. 2006. the way we eat: why our food choices matter. new york: rodale. williams, bernard. 2006. philosophy as a humanistic discipline. princeton: princeton university press. relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ is there a moral problem in predation? 5 is sn 2 2 8 0 -9 9 5 3 beyond anthropocentrism 1 • january 2013 inside the emotional lives of non-human animals a minding animals international utrecht 2012 pre-conference event special issue (genoa, italy, 12-13 may, 2012) edited by m. andreozzi, r. bennison, a. massaro, s. tonutti capabilities approach and animal bioethics • michele panzera animals and our emotions. how to approach the study of an interspecific community? • sabrina tonutti advocacy and animal rights • kim stallwood the emotional lives of animals: a christian perspective • alma massaro – gianfranco nicora animalia: ontology and ethics in weak antispeciesism • leonardo caffo the contemporary debate on experimentation • susanna penco – rosagemma ciliberti non-human animals and genetic engineering • arianna ferrari the relationship between humans and other animals in european animal welfare legislation • paola sobbrio human’s best friends? • matteo andreozzi elationsre l a t io n s . b e y o n d a n t h r o p o c e n t r is m 1 • 2 0 1 3 r 10.2 december 2022 human beings’ moral relations with other animals and the natural environment edited by francesco allegri studies and research contributions what we owe owls: nonideal relationality among fellow 9 creatures in the old growth forest ben almassi the “cruel absurdity” of human violence and its consequences: 23 a vegan studies analysis of a pandemic novel jessica murray duality of abuse and care: empathy in sara gruen’s water 39 for elephants moumita bala smriti singh immanuel kant e l’etica ambientale. tre proposte per rivisitare 55 (e una per riattualizzare) la morale kantiana matteo andreozzi ecosocial autonomy as an educational ideal 75 jani pulkki sami keto comments, debates, reports and interviews is there a moral problem in predation? 93 francesco allegri author guidelines 101 relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 93 is there a moral problem in predation? francesco allegri università degli studi di siena doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2022-02-allf allegri2@unisi.it one of the topics that is receiving increasing attention in the field of animal ethics is the question of the suffering of animals in nature due to predation. this theme is the subject (or one of the subjects) of several texts that have been published recently. i indicate for all three that appear particularly relevant: wild animal ethics: the moral and political problem of wild animal suffering, by kyle johannsen; wilderness, morality, and value by joshua s. duclos; and animal ethics in the wild: wild animal suffering and intervention in nature by catia faria (johannsen 2021; duclos 2022; faria 2022). relations already dedicated two special issues to this topic in 2015, which still remain highly important contributions on a matter that appears to be very intricate (faria and paez 2015) 1. as now i will try to show. reflection on the problem of animal suffering has for some decades now led to the questioning of human practices and habits such as intensive farming, experimentation using animals, the circus, the zoo, etc. but in recent years consideration for animal welfare has come to extend beyond the suffering caused by humans and their institutions. questions have been asked about the conditions of animals in the wild and some have pointed out (in the wake of c. darwin, j.s. mill and s.j. gould) how this modus vivendi is anything but idyllic: hunger, cold, diseases, adverse weather conditions, etc., are the dominant traits. among the various problems non-human sentient beings face in the natural world is that of predation. many animal species, in addition to having to defend themselves from the various hostile factors mentioned above, must face the onslaught of predatory animals, which cause them suffering and death. is there anything wrong with this? is man required to intervene to help the weakest? or is there not a moral problem associated with predation, 1 the second issue of relations 2015 also contains the first comprehensive bibliography on the problem (see dorado 2015). relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2022-02-allf mailto:allegri2@unisi.it https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ francesco allegri 94 which is an entirely natural phenomenon devoid of moral connotations? in this regard, animal ethics has divided and is dividing into two main fronts, one in favor of human intervention against predation (at least in principle, theoretically), the other against human intervention. historically, positions that see predation as an evil and call for human intervention to put an end to it can already be found in l. gompertz (1824) and in j. howard moore (1895). among the philosophers immediately following the pro-animal turn of the 1970s is worth mentioning s.f. sapontzis (1984; 1987, 229-248). today this kind of position is well exemplified by jeff mcmahan, for whom predation causes vast suffering among its innumerable victims, and to deprive those victims of the good experiences they might had were they not killed. […] the elimination of predation could therefore make the difference between an indefinitely extended future in which millions of animals die prematurely and in agony every day and an alternative future in which different animals would live longer and die in ways other than in terror and agony in the jaws of a predator. (mcmaham 2016, 273) what could be done to put an end to predation, or in any case reduce its extent (decrease its scale)? proponents of human intervention against predation point to two main ways: the first consists in causing the extinction of some or all predatory species through sterilization; the second, rather futuristic and at present technically unfeasible, consists in a genetic modification (reprogramming) intervention that leads carnivorous species to gradually transform (evolve) into herbivorous animals (for example, mcmahan 2016, 273-274) 2. the project of the proponents of human intervention against predation thus takes on the connotations of the biblical utopia outlined by the prophet isaiah, who imagines that at the end of time the original idyllic situation in which animals and humans coexisted without killing each other will be restored. so the wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and the little child shall lead them. and the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. and the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice’ den. (isaiah, 11, 6-8) 2 similar theses are supported by mosquera: “the painless extinction of predators could be one way of proceeding. genetically reprogramming the instincts of predators so that they stop being hunters, but also their metabolism so that they can survive with a meat-free diet, would be another possible way to proceed” (mosquera 2015, 76). relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ is there a moral problem in predation? 95 but such a radical project, which sees predation as an evil and human intervention as a moral necessity, finds strong criticism of various kind and nature. they can be found in many environmental philosophers, but also in a significant part of animal rights defenders. meanwhile, on the subject of suffering, the positions of environmental ethics are not so alarmist. for j.b. callicott, one of the most eminent exponents of ecological or environmental ethics, pleasure and pain seem to have nothing at all to do with good and evil if our appraisal is taken from the vantage point of ecological biology. […] the doctrine that life is happier the freer it is from pain and that the happiest life conceivable is one in which there is continuous pleasure uninterrupted by pain is biologically preposterous. (callicott 1995, 52-53, 54) but the value of pain to which callicott seems to refer is an instrumental, extrinsic value. in this sense, the positive value of pain is not denied even by hedonists. what proponents of intervention against predation reject about pain is its intrinsic value, asserting that suffering, regardless of whether it can be good as a means, is bad as an end. moreover, as mcmahan’s quotation reveal, the issue is not only the suffering that prey experience before dying, but also (and perhaps above all) the quantity (months, years) and quality (more sexual intercourse, more emotional ties, etc.) of the experiences that the killed animal loses by interrupting its life in advance. predation, in addition to causing suffering, deprives the victim of its future. that is, the problem is also (and perhaps above all) the harm of death. as oscar horta points out in very clear terms, “dying at a certain time t would harm us because it would deprive us of the positive things we would have had after that time t had not we died at t”. the same is true for all beings capable of having positive experiences. hence the sentient animals are not harmed only when they suffer in nature: the fact that they die prematurely is a disvalue as well. this entails that the total negative balance in nature caused by the vast prevalence of suffering over wellbeing is also increased by the enormous number of premature deaths taking place in it. (horta 2015, 27) also another of the big names in environmental ethics, holmes roston  iii, does not evaluate the phenomenon of predation in negative terms and is skeptical about the pro-intervention option. in his view, if predation is bad for the prey, it is good for the predator. the harm caused by predation (suffering and death) to the moose is compensated by the good obtained by the wolf (pleasure and survival). one life is lost to make possible the survival of another. and the suffering of the prey is counterrelations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ francesco allegri 96 balanced by the pleasure of the predator. in predation rather than a loss of value, there is a transfer of value. furthermore, according to roston iii, another positive aspect of predation is the following: if it is something negative for the individual specimen that undergoes it, it can be positive for the species object of predation, because, for a matter of natural selection, in the long term it favors the development of better perceptive and cognitive characteristics (rolston iii 1992). but the merits of natural selection when shifted (evaluated) on the ethical level always arouse justified perplexities. just think of so-called “social darwinism”, which extends the principles of natural selection to the human world, giving them a positive connotation. on points like these, for example, mcmahan criticizes tom regan, accusing him of oblique darwinism, for arguing that animals should be left alone because they do not need our help in the struggle for survival (regan 2004, xxxvii): it is true that predators and prey species will continue to evolve through the competition for survival, but it is false that individual prey can do without our help in their struggles for survival. they would do much better were we to protect them than they do now when we leave them to deal with predators by themselves. the fact that predators tend to be well fed when there are prey around, together with the fact that in some species only about 1 percent of those born survive to adulthood, indicates that the “general competence” of prey “to get on with the business of living” is less impressive than regan’s comment suggests. (mcmahan 2016, 285-286) but, as already mentioned, objections to the anti-predation line do not come only from the environmentalist front, but also arise from within the world of animal rights defenders. an often recurring argument in animal rights literature against human intervention in defense of predated species asserts that it violates the autonomy of animals; and appeals to their selfdetermination and to the fact that humans cannot impose a moral order on nature. moral rules apply in the human world, not outside it. this thesis can be found for example in lori gruen, who criticizes the idea of some intervention as an unacceptable form of ethical paternalism: “paternalism is appropriate in the case of children, but not so in the case of individuals who are capable of exercising their freedom to live their lives in their own ways” (gruen 2011, 182). however, another important philosopher in defense of animals like martha nussbaum does not think so. in her view, if the general value of autonomy is beyond question, the problem is whether it fully applies to the animal world. already in the human world it seems unwise to apply it in the case of children and people relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ is there a moral problem in predation? 97 with severe mental disabilities. for non-human animals, in her opinion, it is not wrong to combine respect for autonomy and a paternalistic attitude. this leads nussbaum to take an intermediate position between gruen and mcmahan (nussbaum 2006). but a thesis not dissimilar to that asserted by lori gruen (as has already partially emerged from the previous reference) was articulated in a more complete and rigorous way by one of the fathers of animal ethics, tom regan, in his most important text, the case for animal rights. according to regan, since animals are not moral agents, it is wrong to attribute duties to them. only people have duties. this means that animal predation poses no moral problem. only acts performed by rational subjects, the only ones with the status of moral agents, have moral weight. if no rational beings are involved, there are no moral issues at stake. regan develops his argument by responding to a possible objection to his rightsbased deontological model. faced with the observation that by accepting the deontological approach, animals would be the first to violate the rights of their fellow by killing and eating them, regan replies by asserting that only those who possess duties can violate rights. but in order to have duties, cognitive capacities are necessary which animals are not endowed with, so that they, having no obligation, cannot violate anyone’s rights. and consequently, in his opinion, another objection linked to the previous one also falls down: that for which we, having to intervene to protect the rights of animals, should prevent that, for example, the wolf attacks the sheep, with the paradoxical result that, by doing so, we would violate the legitimate right of predators to feed. but since the wolf in no way infringes on the rights of the sheep, we have no obligation to defend the latter from the former’s attacks (regan 2004, 357). regan’s argumentative approach, however, raised many objections. his way of reasoning does not seem plausible, because he who has a right has the right to have it protected from wherever the threat comes from (e.g. i have the right to have my life protected, whether against the action of a moral agent – e.g. an unjust aggressor – or against that of someone who is not a moral agent – an animal – or against threats from natural events – e.g. a flood or a fire). if regan’s reasoning were well-founded, we would have to refrain from any intervention even if both aggressor and aggressor were handicapped or the aggressor was an animal and the aggressor a handicapped person. what does not appear cogent in the reganian approach, therefore, is that it does not allow us to justify human intervention even in those cases where it appears manifestly obligatory. criticism of regan on this point is widespread. for example, callicott notes that relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ francesco allegri 98 if innocent vegetarian animals have a right to life, as regan argues, they should be protected from all agents of destruction, whether moral or not. we regard criminally insane human beings as “not moral agents” either. hence, we do not try them in court and punish them as we do those who are sane. but neither do we permit them to remain free in society. we protect innocent people by humanely incarcerating, in maximum-security psychiatric wards, destructive humans who are not moral agents. likewise, then, shouldn’t predators be humanely incarcerated in similar institutions (zoo or holding pens) to safeguard the rights of their would-be victims? regan provides no reason to object to this proposal. (callicott 1993, 352-353) a more general criticism of regan’s theses is advanced by torres, who, referring to sapontzis, notes that regan’s argument misses the point: nobody is saying that animals have the moral duty to respect the rights of other animals. the point is to decide if we, moral agents, have the duty to intervene in nature to impede animals harming each other. therefore to answer that animals are not moral agents and that, hence, there is no moral problem in predation is to refute a straw man. of course, the attribution of moral agency to an individual is important to settle responsibility and punishment issues but it does not affect the rightness or wrongness of the harm itself. (torres 2015, 37-38) but even if the thesis that considers predation a moral evil (so much so that it would be desirable to put an end to it) were correct, when one moves on to the problem of the concrete realization of the project to defend prey animals and eliminate predator species, there is a convergence between proponents of intervention and critics on the impossibility (at least at present) of putting it into practice. not only because of the technical difficulties (the option of genetic reprogramming is futuristic, i.e. currently unfeasible; in order to implement the sterilization project the problems to be resolved would be manifold, as well as requiring huge resources); but also because – as the intervention’s supporters themselves recognize – at least at the moment, a human intervention aimed at reducing or eliminating predator species would result in an environmental catastrophe and would not benefit at all those species for which it was intended. in fact, let us imagine that a vast sterilization campaign could lead to the extinction of predatory species such as wolves, tigers, lions, etc.; what would presumably happen? there would be what in technical terms is called a malthusian dystopia. without predatory animals, herbivorous species would proliferate disproportionately and to such an extent that the environment would no longer be able to satisfy their food needs. with the consequence that the huge herbivorous populations, instead of facing a possible rapid killing by carnivorous animals, would relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ is there a moral problem in predation? 99 slowly die of starvation and diseases related to malnutrition. as mcmahan himself admits: “rather than diminishing the suffering and extending the lives of herbivores, the elimination of predation might increase their suffering overall and even diminish their average longevity” (mcmahan 2016, 274). that is, the elimination of predation would produce the opposite of the desired result, worsening the situation of the animals currently preyed upon by carnivores. with chain negative effects because, in addition to this, with herbivores desperately looking for food, there would be a systematic destruction of the vegetation, of plants on which the life of many other animals depends, leading to the death of the latter too. a similar picture, albeit on a smaller scale, has occurred in those areas of the united states where deer, in the absence of predatory species, have experienced an abnormal increase in numbers and, in addition to damaging the environment in their desperate search for food, are at risk of starvation (singer 2011, 121). the point of convergence (the mediation point) between the two parties involved is therefore the practical obstacle to carrying out the project of eliminating predation, even if it were desirable from an ethical point of view. for the catastrophic consequences it would give rise to in terms of stability and harmony of the entire ecosystem and for the enormous difficulty of remedying them. so even if there were a moral reason (and perhaps there is) to prevent predation, it is outweighed (at least for now) by opposing reasons, of a consequentialist nature, that induce us not to intervene (reasons which, however, may no longer apply in the future). obviously if the moral problem exists, it does not concern predators as much as predation (the negative judgment is not on the agent – that is not a moral agent – but on the action). references callicott, john baird. 1993. “the search for an environmental ethic”. in matters of life and death: new introductory essays in moral philosophy, edited by tom regan, 322-382. new york: mcgraw-hill. callicott, john baird. 1995. “animal liberation: a triangular affair”. in environmental ethics, edited by robert eliott, 29-59. new york: oxford university press. dorado, daniel. 2015. “ethical interventions in the wild: an annotated bibliography”. relations. beyond anthropocentrism 3: 219-238. duclos, joshua s. 2022. wilderness, morality, and value. lanham (md): lexington book. relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ francesco allegri 100 faria, catia. 2022. animal ethics in the wild: wild animal suffering and intervention in nature. new york: cambridge university press. faria, catia, and eze paez, eds. 2015. relations. beyond anthropocentrism 3 (1-2), special issue: wild animals suffering and intervention in nature. gompertz, lewis. 1824. moral inquiries on the situation of man and of brutes. london: westley and parrish. gruen, lori. 2011. ethics and animals: an introduction. new york: cambridge university press. horta, oscar. 2015. “the problem of evil in nature: evolutionary bases of the prevalence of disvalue”. relations. beyond anthropocentrism 3 (1): 17-32. johannsen, kyle. 2021. wild animal ethics: the moral and political problem of wild animal suffering. new york: routledge. mcmahan, jeff. 2016. “the moral problem of predation”. in philosophy comes to dinner: arguments about ethics of eating, edited by andrew chignell, terence cuneo, and matthew c. halteman, 268-293. new york: routledge. moore, john howard. 1895. why i am a vegetarian. chicago: dusenberry. mosquera, julia. 2015. “the harm they inflict when values conflict: why diversity does not matter”. relations. beyond anthropocentrism 3 (1): 65-77. nussbaum, martha. 2006. frontiers of justice. disability, nationality, species membership. cambridge (ma): the belknap press of harvard university press. regan, tom. 2004. the case for animal rights. berkeley: university of california press. rolston iii, holmes. 1992. “disvalues in nature”. the monist 75: 250-278. sapontzis, steve f. 1984. “predation”. ethics and animals 5: 27-38. sapontzis, steve f. 1987. moral, reason and animals. philadelphia: temple university press. singer, peter. 2011. practical ethics. cambridge: cambridge university press. torres, mikel. 2015. “the case for intervention in nature on behalf of animals: a critical review of the main arguments against intervention”. relations. beyond anthropocentrism 3 (1): 33-50. copyright (©) 2022 francesco allegri editorial format and graphical layout: copyright (©) led edizioni universitarie this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives – 4.0 international license how to cite this paper: allegri, francesco. 2022. “is there a moral problem in predation?”. relations. beyond anthropocentrism 10 (2): 93-100. doi: https://dx.doi. org/10.7358/rela-2022-02-allf relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ relations_10-2-2022_00b_sommario.pdf studies and research contributions what we owe owls nonideal relationality among fellow creatures in the old growth forest ben almassi the “cruel absurdity” of human violence and its consequences a vegan studies analysis of a pandemic novel jessica murray duality of abuse and care empathy in sara gruen’s water for elephants moumita bala smriti singh immanuel kant e l’etica ambientale tre proposte per rivisitare (e una per riattualizzare) la morale kantiana matteo andreozzi ecosocial autonomy as an educational ideal jani pulkki sami keto comments, debates, reports and interviews is there a moral problem in predation? francesco allegri author guidelines intuitions gone astray: between implausibility and speciesism. ‘the predation and procreation problems’: a reply intuitions gone astray: between implausibility and speciesism the predation and procreation problems: a reply eze paez post-doctoral researcher, pompeu fabra university doi: 10.7358/rela-2015-001-paez joseezequiel.paez@upf.edu in his article stijn bruers presents an axiology which includes well-being and biodiversity. on his account, however, the latter has much more importance than the former. tremendous gains in well-being are proscribed when they can only be obtained through a great loss in biodiversity. that is why we should not phase out predation by genetically reprogramming predators. i argue that, even if we value biodiversity, it cannot be that important. this is shown, first, by considering the results of bruers’ account regarding the sacrifice of both nonhuman and human interests. second, i suggest how rejecting bruers’ view on biodiversity has acceptable implications regarding his two other worries, r-selection and the inadvertent killing of sentient invertebrates. 1. introduction according to stijn bruers there are two things that are to be pursued as ends, rather than as means to further ends. the first of these is well-being. the second is biodiversity, or “[a]ll variation in life forms, entities and processes that are the direct result of natural evolution, where natural evolution is generated by random genetic mutations”. there are instances in which one of these ends can only be pursued at the expense of the other. sometimes, the interests of sentient beings will outweigh the value of biodiversity. some other times, the value of biodiversity is the one to be promoted, all things considered. thus, we need an account about the relative strength of these values and the reasons for acting we are to derive from them. bruers partially tackles these issues in formulating a principle mailto:joseezequiel.paez@upf.edu http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 eze paez 94 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ (the 3-n-principle) about what we have most reason to do across a variety of cases. these include, most importantly, the phenomenon of predation. if biodiversity is to be valuable as an end (or intrinsically valuable, using bruers’ phrase), then it is possible, in principle, that there are certain kinds of behavior which are so instrumental to the preservation of biodiversity that we always have decisive reasons to allow them to happen. the idea is that when one of these behaviors is prevented, the loss in biodiversity is so great that it cannot be compensated for by the gains in wellbeing, if any, which would obtain (p. 87). of course, to entail such a strong conclusion, these kinds of behaviors must be specified in such a way as to make it indeed the case that great amounts of value are lost if they are prevented. bruers performs such specification through the 3-n-principle, which identifies the relevant categories of behaviors as those who are, at the same time, natural, normal and necessary. suppose that there is some kind of behavior that is the direct result of the blind processes of natural evolution (naturalness) and which is sufficiently widespread among a large group of life forms (normalcy). as bruers says, this is the kind of behavior that contributes, and tremendously so, to biodiversity. suppose, moreover, that it is instrumental to the existence of those life forms among which it is widespread (necessity). we can then infer that if such life forms disappear, so will too that kind of behavior and, with it, a great amount of biodiversity value. that is why, according to bruers, these kinds of behavior are to be allowed, no matter how detrimental to the well-being of the sentient individuals affected by them. predators need to feed on other sentient beings for survival. since predation is a very widespread natural behavior, it is covered by the 3-n-principle. according to bruers, then, predation, as a type of behavior, is morally allowed and we always have decisive reasons not to prevent it. i believe, however, that he is misguided. bruers raises many issues in his article. here, however, i can only focus but on a few of them. first, i will argue that even if we value biodiversity as bruers does, we should not endorse his 3-n-principle. finally, i will show how we can provide plausible answers to his worries about r-selection and bodily motion. the upshot of this is that predation is an undesirable phenomenon which we have very strong reasons to phase out. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 intuitions gone astray: between implausibility and speciesism 95 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 2. the 3-n-principle and the relative weight of well-being the 3-n-principle is a hypothesis on the result of our balance of reasons when our reasons to promote well-being and our reasons to preserve biodiversity conflict. regarding predation, it suggests that the loss in biodiversity value caused by phasing out predators cannot be outweighed by the gain in well-being which would result. however, that is not so. consider a planet in which life has been evolving for billions of years, producing rich and complex ecosystems. these are inhabited by innumerable sentient beings, who are constantly beset by a series of natural harms, including predation. eventually, some of them evolve complex cognitive capacities and, over time, develop a process to genetically reprogram predators into herbivores. that would amount to a variation in a life form achieved through artificial means, that is, by a “conscious, reflective, noninstinctive invention” (p. 87). thus, a whole pattern of natural behavior would have been eliminated, not through substitution by another natural behavior, equally valuable in terms of biodiversity, but by an artificial one, valueless in that respect. certainly, on bruers’ definition of biodiversity, much value would be lost in the process of reprogramming predators. yet much suffering would be prevented as well. the 3-n-principle asks us to assess, on the one hand, the overall improvement in net well-being produced by the fact that present and future animals will no longer be preyed upon. it also asks us, on the other hand, to assess the loss in biodiversity produced by the disappearance of the various instances of predation that would otherwise obtain. finally, it tells us that the latter is too great to be compensated by the former. but how can that be so? if indeed the value of biodiversity obtains with any variation “in life forms, entities and processes that are the direct result of natural evolution” it seems, first, that it has no negative scale. losses in biodiversity never reduce it below zero, but are restricted to movements along a positive scale. second, this means that it is ever increasing and that, with the passage of time, any past loss in biodiversity can be compensated by future variations. that is to say that, even if after phasing out predation the biodiversity value of the planet at t1 is less than it would have been if predation continued to exist, such value may at t2 be as high due to the cumulative effect of variations in life forms over time. it can be objected that the biodiversity value of the world at t2 is nevertheless lower than the value it would have had at that time if predation persisted, assuming all other variations would have also taken place. this is possible, but on bruers account, biodiversity must always be pitted against http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 eze paez 96 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ well-being. unlike biodiversity, well-being does possess a negative scale. it is fair to assume that most nonhuman animals living in the wild lead lives of net negative well-being. the mere phasing out of predation is probably not enough to ensure that these nonhuman individuals would enjoy lives at the positive side of the scale. yet that can be ensured if we combine the phasing out of predation with other interventions in nature which bruers considers unproblematic. indeed, he seems to consider morally permissible to nourish animals that live in the wild and control their populations through contraceptive methods (p. 87, n. 1). but if contraception is permissible, then vaccination and similar methods for preventing and healing diseases must be as well. hundreds of billions of animals live in the wild. thus, even on bruers’ account, it is possible to prevent the overwhelming majority of sentient beings from living lives of net negative well-being by paying the price of the loss in biodiversity produced by reprogramming predators. we are assuming, in following bruers, that the value of an outcome is a compound of its biodiversity value, which is always positive, and its wellbeing value, which might be either or positive or negative. in these cases, we are contemplating the possibility of vastly reducing its negative wellbeing value by eliminating a part of its positive biodiversity value. on these terms, it is highly implausible to say that we have decisive reasons not to phase out predation. but, if so, then the 3-n-principle fails as a hypothesis about our balance of reasons. a possible way out is to claim that the importance of well-being, even negative well-being, is relatively low, when compared to biodiversity. thus, we can imagine a spectrum of cases in which, at one end, we find the loss of value produced by the disappearance of predation, which is greater than the foreseeable increase in net well-being. at the other end of the spectrum, we find the negligible losses produced by preventing isolated instances of predation. it is implicit in bruers’ treatment of these cases (p. 87, n. 1) that these losses actually can be compensated by gains in well-being, since he admits that we are permitted to intervene to save particular prey. let us now imagine a case in the middle of the spectrum. consider an ecosystem on earth in which, after a period of natural disasters, all predator species except one have become extinct. a severe drought follows, killing most of the herbivores on which these predators fed. we can foresee that, after a while, all predators will die of starvation. suddenly, a herd of a new herbivore species migrates into the ecosystem. there are enough of them to feed the predators for the time they need until the local prey recover their numbers. on the other hand, we are in the possession of the necessary technology to reprogram predators into herbivores, thus preventing both their death and the death of their prospective prey. undoubthttp://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 intuitions gone astray: between implausibility and speciesism 97 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ edly, on the 3-n-principle, what we have most reason to do is to allow the predators to kill the new species, so that they can continue to exist in the future. but consider now a variation of that case. suppose that instead of a new migrating herbivore species, it is a previously unknown tribe of human beings who reach the ecosystem, fleeing from a severe famine. on bruers’ account, each of these human beings has the moral permission to defend herself from the predators. as observers, though, we can tell with a high degree of probability that because they are weak and unprepared, they will all die. we can, however, easily reprogram the predators. what ought we to do? it would be highly implausible to say that, in this case, we have decisive reasons not to reprogram the predators. that might cause some loss in biodiversity, but it also preserves the lives the tribe of human beings, without thereby causing the predators death by starvation. actually, it is arguable that in this case we have decisive reasons to help the humans by reprogramming the predators. if that is so, consistency requires us to provide a similar answer in cases where the victims are nonhuman animals instead of humans. if, as bruers himself recognizes, mere reference to species is arbitrary, we cannot explain our different treatment of these cases by pointing to the different species to which the prospective prey belong. when reflecting in an unbiased way focusing on cases in which the victims are human beings, we clearly see how well-being cannot have such little importance when compared to biodiversity. because we must reject speciesism, that cannot be the case either when nonhuman well-being is at stake. let us return to the first imaginary case and consider the entire phasing out of predation. we can now suppose that all present and future lives of net negative well-being that we could prevent by phasing out predation (combined with the other morally unproblematic interventions) are human, rather than nonhuman. that would be a much better world than the one in which hundreds of billions of humans lead miserable lives. but then, so would be the world in which these lives belong to nonhuman individuals. hence, even if biodiversity matters, it cannot matter as much as the 3-n-principle implies. it tells us that the prevention of unfathomable amounts of net negative well-being is not worth the loss of the phenomenon of predation. on bruers’ axiology, biodiversity simply counts too much, and the well-being of sentient individuals too little. that is plainly seen when considering its implications for human well-being. rejecting speciesism forces us to take as seriously the well-being of nonhumans, who are the ones who suffer predation. we do have decisive reasons to phase predation out. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 eze paez 98 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 3. the issues of r-selection and bodily motion one of the virtues bruers attaches to his 3-n-principle is its ability to explain as well his intuitions in favor of bodily motion and r-selection. when we move around, we kill insects (or sentient invertebrates, more generally), yet it does not seem to him that moving is morally impermissible. most animals are r-selected, which causes a tremendous amount of suffering and death, yet it does not seem to him that we should eliminate this reproductive strategy. we do not need, however, the 3-n-principle in order to provide plausible answers to the issues raised by these two phenomena. the issue of r-selection should not be worrisome once we perceive that well-being cannot be as unimportant, when compared to biodiversity, as bruers claims. as he admits, the existence of r-selection causes billions of animals to be born only to die shortly thereafter, leading brief lives of net negative well-being. if we had the means to prevent that from happening without thereby causing more harm, we would surely have decisive reasons to do so. that is what follows form the considerations i made in the previous section, even taking into account the loss in biodiversity that would ensue. regarding bodily motion, we risk dismissing the possibility that there might be something objectionable with killing sentient invertebrates out of sheer prejudice. because of their small size and their lack of cuteness it is harder for us to intuitively consider them as beings with interests which must be taken into consideration. if one worries that her treatment of these cases is biased in this way, one can try to counter the prejudice by imagining that we are discussing small, cute, furry rodents which we may inadvertently kill. all our activities have harmful effects, either seen or unforeseen. if, nevertheless, we can reasonably expect their positive value to outweigh the harm they might cause, we are justified in pursuing them. this is the case, for example, of activities which involve benefiting the worse-off, like nonhuman animals. of course, we must think of less harmful alternatives to achieve the same valuable results or of ways in which we might alleviate the negative consequences of our decisions that befall on other sentient individuals. invertebrates have interests, and we ought to take those interests into account in our decisions. if we are pursuing an activity with sufficiently expectable good effects and we are aware that we might unintentionally kill invertebrates what we must do is the same as if victims were cute rodents. we must avoid recklessness and be attentive, preventing as much harm as we can. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 intuitions gone astray: between implausibility and speciesism 99 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 4. conclusion in an axiology that includes both well-being and biodiversity, the latter cannot have as much importance when compared to the former as the 3-n-principle implies. first, denying so does not have counterintuitive results regarding either r-selection or bodily motion. second, it forces us to either embrace highly implausible implications regarding the sacrifice of human well-being, or accept them with respect to nonhuman interests, but not with human ones – thereby incurring into speciesism. neither horn of the dilemma is admissible. the only admissible way out is amending the original theory, denying that biodiversity has such importance. phasing out predation (in combination with other interventions) would greatly improve the lives of hundreds of billions of nonhuman animals. even if we value biodiversity, that is the kind of world we have decisive reasons to bring about. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 captivating creatures. zoos, marketing, and the commercial success of yann martel's life of pi captivating creatures zoos, marketing, and the commercial success of yann martel’s life of pi 1 tanja schwalm phd, new zealand centre for human-animal studies associate, university of canterbury doi: 10.7358/rela-2014-001-schw tschwalm@gmail.com abstract the visually striking tiger on the cover of man booker prize-winning novel “life of pi”, originally published in 2001, highlights the role of exotic, charismatic animals for the marketing of fiction to a world-wide readership. deploying zoo and circus animal imagery, “life of pi” emphasises commercially attractive animals in packaging and content. indeed, the notion that animal entertainment within zoos especially is not only attractive, but also beneficial to the animals themselves, reassures consumers and alleviates feelings of guilt. “life of pi” succeeds commercially for many of the same reasons that zoos profit from exhibiting non-human animals. it portrays a mythology of “good zoos” as a kind of ark, ostensibly underpinned by science and research, and thus represents a deeply conservative reaction to growing calls that for ethical and environmental reasons we need to rethink our consumption-based relationship to animals. this paper examines some of the novel’s arguments in favour of zoos and discusses the ways in which a “story with animals is the better story”. this paper makes use of an activist approach to literature and starts from the premise that an animal studies approach necessarily takes the interests of animals and their subjectivity as the central concern. keywords: life of pi, yann martel, zoo, entertainment, charismatic, exotic, animal studies, critical animal studies, literary criticism, marketing. 1. introduction in an online interview with craig rintoul in 2007, yann martel, author of life of pi, asserts that his best-selling novel is “taking on zoos, which no-one likes. you know, it’s unfashionable, in fact in some ways objectionable. 1 the author wishes to thank andrew dean for helpful comments on early drafts. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ tanja schwalm 50 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ who’s gonna want to read this? so yeah, i was as surprised as anyone else that it did so well” (martel 2007e; my transcript). this paper argues that, contrary to martel’s comment here, and in keeping with other comments he makes elsewhere, life of pi advocates for the zoo as an important and necessary institution – at least in principle, and that, moreover, life of pi’s commercial success rests on the very same strategies that zoos use to promote themselves. indeed, by deploying zoo animal imagery, life of pi emphasises commercially attractive animals in packaging and content, as martel constructs a colourful spectacle for his international audiences. in particular, the visually striking tiger on the cover of life of pi highlights the role of exotic, charismatic animals for the marketing of fiction to a global readership. the notion that animal entertainment within zoos especially is not only attractive, but also beneficial to the animals themselves, reassures consumers and alleviates any feelings of guilt arising from the animals’ incarceration. life of pi portrays a particular mythology of “good zoos” as a kind of ark, underpinned ostensibly not only by pi’s expertise as zoologist, but also by the fact that martel himself has repeatedly stressed that he carried out research – amateur research, as it were – into zoos and animal behaviour, prior to writing life of pi. this paper examines some of the arguments put forward in the novel that are in favour of zoos, and discusses the ways in which, to borrow the words of one of martel’s characters, a “story with animals is the better story”. 1.1. an animal studies approach this paper makes use of an activist approach to literature. in response to a number of discussions at the minding animals 2 conference (utrecht, netherlands, july 3-6, 2012) about the role and definition of animal studies as an academic field, and the kinds of unique contributions it can and does make to a number of disciplines, i find it necessary here to explicitly outline my approach and method, and highlight its difference to a conventional literary critique. in the institute of critical animal studies’ minding animals 2 satellite event (utrecht, netherlands, 3 july, 2012), lynda birke voiced the key question that sets animal studies apart from other academic fields. she asked “what’s in it for the animals?”, “what’s in it for them?”. outside of animal studies, a paper on life of pi might, for example, analyse the way martel’s animals are allegorical representations of human traits or the human characters in the story. without questioning what such an allegorical use of animal imagery means in relation to our understanding of actual animals, and what the possible implications are for our treatment of them, such a paper would captivating creatures 51 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ be a literary critique that merely happens to look at animals. at the very least, a contribution to the field of animals studies would require the preparedness to undergo the scrutiny of such questions. to do animal studies is not only to take animals as subject matter, but also as subjects who matter, or as “subjects of their own experience”, to use john simons’ phrase (2002, 21). following this premise, the focus in this paper is on an examination of the relationship between context and content: that is, what we say and think about non-human animals profoundly affects the way we treat them; in turn, how we treat animals affects the way we think and speak about them. life of pi is well suited to demonstrating this approach. an animal studies reading of martel’s novel uncovers this relationship of mutual reinforcement between cultural production on the one hand and animal practices on the other. this paper, then, questions common assumptions about animal use and welfare, and aims to demonstrate that life of pi is a deeply conservative reaction to growing calls that, ethically and environmentally, we need to fundamentally rethink our consumption-based relationship to animals. 2. charismatic animals life of pi is the story of an indian boy called pi patel whose family owns a zoo, and when they migrate to canada with a number of the zoo animals, their ship sinks and pi finds himself on a lifeboat with a bengal tiger called richard parker. the plot follows pi’s struggle for survival, as he negotiates the situation with his knowledge of zoo animal behaviour and circus animal training. life of pi was an unprecedented success for publishing house canongate and sold millions of copies world-wide. after winning the man booker prize, the novel went on, according to the man booker prize website, to “become one of the biggest selling man booker prize winners in the prize’s 40 year history” (the man booker prize 2012). in the context of marketing the book, jamie byng, the publisher and managing director of canongate books, comments: from the moment i first read yann martel’s novel life of pi i was astounded by its intensely visual nature. it seemed a book writ in colours, a book of painterly qualities, and so when we started to discuss at canongate how we might best clothe this book, we all felt instinctively that it should be an illustrated jacket. and the illustrations that andy bridge created for the original uk edition managed to achieve all that we hoped for and more. so much so that over thirty of yann’s forty international publishers also used andy’s iconic cover art. (2009) tanja schwalm 52 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ indeed, the tiger gracing the covers of all life of pi editions in some variation or another, at least until the recent promotional covers for ang lee’s film appeared, illustrates the wide appeal of animals as marketable and spectacular commodities; images of animals are everywhere. john berger’s observation about consumer items relating to childhood still holds true decades later: “no other source of imagery can begin to compete with that of animals” (1977, 122). in short, animals sell, and evidently very effectively so. as adrian franklin observes, “the formation of mass markets, generalized affluence and mass popular culture” had “the greatest impact” on human-animal relationships in the twentieth century (1999, 38). animals were turned into mass market products in the process, which, as franklin points out, “stimulated the demand for mass media representations of animals” (1999, 39). moreover, the dominant visual media, in which i include zoos, produce for the most part images of so-called charismatic animals, usually visually attractive mammals, birds or reptiles, with a particular focus on the cute, the colourful, and the carnivorous. martel’s novel reflects this trend of using especially exotic animals as glamorous commodities, as both the packaging and the content of life of pi place great emphasis on the instant visual appeal of richard parker. in an online chat with yann martel, one reader commented that it was specifically the book’s cover that “drew” them to the book (martel 2002b). as life of pi’s narrator remarks, “[t]he sudden appearance of a tiger is arresting in any environment” (martel 2003, 160). such an environment can, of course, be the window of a bookshop. the reader is visually seduced by the cover, and this seduction continues inside the novel, where richard parker is described in vivid colours. this virtually cinematic effect gave rise to the illustrated edition of the novel with images by tomislav torjanac (2007), and it has now been adapted for cinema (life of pi [2012], dir. by ang lee). ironically, pi charges zoo critics with being fixated upon charismatic animals: “these people usually have a large, handsome predator in mind, a lion or a cheetah (the life of a gnu or of an aardvark is rarely exalted)” (martel 2003, 15). charismatic animals are the bread and butter of zoos, and martel uses precisely this tool to attract his readers. there are, for example, no images of cockroaches in the illustrations or book covers that accompany life of pi’s marketing. although they, too, are survivors of the sinking of the tsimtsum, they have no place in the floating life-boat ark cum circus arena. indeed, they are thrown overboard with the stroke of a pen, so to speak, and, like the rat and the flies, they are usually forgotten by reviewers when the tsimtsum survivors are listed (a human, a tiger, a hyena, a zebra, an orang-utan, flies, a rat, and cockroaches). even martel himself overlooks them completely, listing “only five survivors”, when discussing captivating creatures 53 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the novel (martel 2007a; see also 2007d). this oversight reflects the fact that insects, with few notable exceptions such as butterflies, are unpopular, commonly reviled as pests, and overlooked as unworthy of consideration. in any case, the presence of flies and cockroaches would undermine the idea of pi’s mastery of the ark and all its inhabitants: the mistaken, but popular notion that large predators and humans are at the top of the food chain is on shaky ground, when there is a suggestion of flies and cockroaches feasting on corpses and proving themselves to be the ultimate survivors. 3. in defence of zoos originally showcases for imperial conquest, zoos and circuses have taken on new meanings in the context of the global environmental crisis, and yet the historical relationship between human masters and trained or exhibited animals remains essentially intact. as randy malamud comments: “the zoo’s forte is its construction of zoogoers as paramount, masters of all they survey, and zoo animals as subalterns” (malamud 1998, 58). rather than a critique of zoos – or circuses, for that matter – pi’s mastery of richard parker through zoo animal management and circus animal training methods is not only rationalised for the situation at hand, but also naturalised in a general context. pi’s methods are “given” through nature, rather than culture. as a result, the narrative is perceived as an endorsement especially of zoos. indeed, the frontmatter of the 2003 canongate paperback edition promotes life of pi as “[a]n impassioned defence of zoos” (the new yorker review). moreover, yann martel has variously talked about his views on zoos. the title of his article a giraffe in a cage is worth two on the box is as programmatic as it is self-explanatory (2002a). martel’s core argument, in that article and elsewhere, is that a zoo is an important educational tool, which serves to protect endangered species and has much to teach especially children about animals, much more than a nature documentary on tv ever could. what martel does criticise is what he perceives as the welfare issues associated with “bad zoos” – as opposed to “good zoos”. he says it is “better to have a good zoo – note the adjective – than not” (2002a). so, according to martel, zoos are good in principle, if not always in practice. his views are closely reflected by his creation pi patel, with the one exception that pi argues zoos are ultimately better places for animals than their natural habitat – comparable to luxury hotels, even (martel 2003, 13, 18). tanja schwalm 54 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the views put forward in life of pi are reassuring to mainstream readers, who are used to the zoo as a cultural given in the western world. zoos are marketed nowadays as institutions not only for entertainment and education, but also for species conservation. at the same time, despite the best efforts of zoo landscapers and architects to render the confining structures of the zoo invisible, to replace bars and cages – sometimes  – with moats and hedges or immersion exhibits, people are increasingly aware that zoo animals are deprived of freedom, space and the stimuli a natural habitat would provide. people still want to and do visit the zoo, not least because it is considered an essential part of childhood experience, but they feel uneasy about it. life of pi is successful not only because it employs the kinds of strategies that zoos use to attract people in the first place, but also because it reassures: visiting a zoo, the novel suggests, is a good thing to do. to this end, pi speaks of ideal enclosures that contain the supposed essence of any given animal’s natural habitat, which meets all of the animal’s needs, and provides stimuli and protection. philip armstrong, citing marian scholtmeijer, argues that science in life of pi represents a reduction of animals to “a system of behaviours to be isolated, manipulated, and tabulated”. they effectively become “cartesian beast-machine[s]” through pi’s knowledge of zoology and behavioural science, as the lives of richard parker, trained like a circus animal, and the other pondicherry zoo animals are governed by flight distances and stimulus responses (armstrong 2007, 216-7). martel’s view of zoos, in and outside of the novel, is thus underpinned by the supposed weight of scientific authority. he sets up his protagonist and himself as rational, unbiased authorities on the topic, and contrasts pi’s opinions to the “nonsense” circulated by “[w]ell-meaning but misinformed people” (martel 2003, 15). martel stresses, and is frequently asked about, his research into the topics his novel deals with. and frequently he points out: “i read a history of zoos, some books on zoo biology, on animal psychology. and i visited zoos. i interviewed someone at the toronto zoo as well as the director of the trivandrum zoo in india” (cited in sielke 2003, 27; see also martel 2007b and 2007c). he projects this role as researcher by creating a protagonist with a zoology degree, frequently citing “the literature” by which he implies expert publications (see martel 2003, 19, 29, 85, 163, 265). he produces a semblance of a scientific text by citing “beebe (1926)”, “bullock (1968)”, “tirler (1966)”, and “hediger (1950)” (martel 2003, 4, 44), complete with publication dates in brackets in the manner of a professional scientific journal article. for all that, it is – unintentionally – ironic captivating creatures 55 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ that pi, as an expert on sloths with “an algae” in their fur (martel 2003, 4), does not know that the singular of “algae” is “alga” 2. nonetheless, many readers and reviewers accept martel’s and pi’s authority on zoo animal welfare and behaviour. the arguments put forward in life of pi apparently even manage to convince some people who were previously critical of zoos. martel, after all, is a convert himself, so to speak. he explains: a zoo is not an ideal place for an animal – of course the best place for a chimp is the wilds of tanzania – but a good zoo is a decent, acceptable place. animals are far more flexible than we realize. if they weren’t, they wouldn’t have survived. but my opinion about zoos came after research. initially i had the opinion that most people have, that they are jails. (martel 2002b) accordingly, readers comment in an online interview with martel that his “research on the zoos was good. after reading your book, i started thinking that zoos are not such bad places”, that his book made them “look at zoos in a new light”, and one person writes: “i have to admit that you certainly changed my mind on the whole zoo thing. my husband is delighted that he can now take our son to one without feeling my wrath” (cited in martel 2002b). in contrast to the supposed weight of evidence for “good zoos” provided in the novel is a study by ros clubb and georgia mason, partly funded by “a number of british zoos keen to learn more about how best to handle the animals in their care”, has shown zoos to be utterly unsuitable environments for wide-ranging carnivores such as tigers and lions, with polar bears the worst affected species (bbc 2003). clubb and mason recommend that “the keeping of naturally wide-ranging carnivores should be either fundamentally improved or phased out”, keeping in mind, for example, that “a polar bear’s typical enclosure size […] is about one-millionth of its minimum home-range size”, a measure on which their wellbeing depends (2003, 473). correspondingly, philip armstrong argues: of course, the merest knowledge of either zoos or zoology is sufficient to discredit pi’s claims, which cannot account (among other things) for the pathologically repetitive behaviour of many confined animals, the needs of migratory species whose territories are defined not by boundaries but by vastly extensive paths of travel, the distress produced by inappropriate climatic conditions, or the other incalculable effects of removing organisms from the network of relationships that comprise their native habitats. (2007, 178) 2 pi (and/or martel) makes this mistake two more times: “i wondered whether this algae would ever cease to amaze me with its botanical strangeness” (martel 2003, 278); “a fish-eating algae that produces fresh water?” (martel 2003, 294). tanja schwalm 56 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ yet, pi’s response would be that any zoos that do not meet these needs by recreating the essence of the animals’ habitats would simply need to improve. as martel suggests, “[b]etter to work at making zoos better” than not have them at all (2002a, 37). pi’s argument, however, is based on an impossible ideal, which is used to justify the institution of the zoo per se. readers are reassured that their spectatorship actually amounts to doing something good for animals, and once the idea that the institution as such is “good” is accepted, it justifies the practice regardless of whether the particular zoos subsequently visited actually meet the ideal. the matter of improvement becomes incidental, an issue for experts to worry about. life of pi appeals to contemporary audiences influenced by what franklin describes as a shift from a “mood of entertainment and spectacle […] to one of empathy and moral support” (1999, 48), as people seek reassurance that their zoo visit and entrance fee serve the greater good of animal welfare, conservation and education. as pi declares: a zoo is a cultural institution. like a public library, like a museum, it is at the service of popular education and science. and by this token, not much of a money-making venture, for the greater good and the greater profit are not compatible aims, much to father’s chagrin. (martel 2003, 78) what zoo visitors therefore see is the ideal of the zoo, not the reality, as mythical discourse sets them up to disregard cages, zoochotic behaviour, and the inadequacy of the zoo “habitat”. as malamud writes, “[t]hey see what they want to see, rather than the thing itself” (1998, 134). indeed, it seems extraordinary that pi does not report what must have been signs of zoochosis, caused by extreme confinement, after “spen[ding] hours observing” richard parker for 227 days at sea (martel 2003, 191). there is no swaying, chewing, or pacing. arguably, learning about the symptoms of zoochotic behaviour would have been a valuable lesson for readers concerned about zoo animal welfare, but like the educational institutions that zoos present themselves to be, martel’s fictional menagerie, his book that itself presents an image of being “at the service of popular education and science”, does not inform about zoochosis. the keyword here is “popular”. despite pi’s protestations, zoos are indeed money-making ventures. and despite martel’s assumption of scientific authority, his book is meant to be bought. the fact that pi highlights the san diego zoo as a particularly good zoo (martel 2003, 40) is instructive here in terms of showing the connection between marketing zoos and marketing life of pi. on their website, the san diego zoo appeals to potential corporate sponsors as “one of the most powerful and impactful [sic] brands in southern california”. in 2007, their advert succinctly stated: captivating creatures 57 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ “nothing draws customers like a good cause. that’s what cause marketing can do for you. companies can see strong sales when linking their products to saving endangered species and their habitats” (san diego zoo 2007). malamud argues that an institution governed by the principles of supply and demand cannot ever be adequate: “[e]ven in the hands of the most enlightened emperors of commerce, consumer culture cannot beneficially mediate people’s relationship with animals, and nature can prosper only to the extent that it can be divorced – rescued – from consumerist forces” (1998, 98). after all, the priority of consumer culture lies not with the question of “what it would take to make the animals happy” (masson and mccarthy 1996, 146), but with the question of what makes producer or provider and consumers – and that includes readers – happy. 4. conclusion life of pi’s commercial success rests on its reassuring reinforcement of the status quo in human-animal relationships. for whatever novelty this novel possesses, it is the familiar that is ultimately attractive to its global readership. reading this book with the question “what’s in it for the animals” in mind reveals the dynamic between representation and exploitation and uncovers disingenuous arguments – perhaps well-meaning but misguided, even – in welfarist discourse. life of pi, given its popularity and the general acceptance of the zoo defence its human protagonist pi puts forward, thus makes an appropriate resource for teaching new ways of reading, looking and thinking with an animal studies approach. teaching compassion in reading and critical practice fosters, hopefully, compassion elsewhere, as well as the recognition that we, too, are animals, one species amongst many. finally, encouraging the question “what’s in it for the animals?” at every turn, both in scholarly practice as well as in daily life, has, after all, implications in a much wider context. given the environmental crises we face, the animals’ – and with that, ultimately, our own – survival depends on it. references armstrong, philip. 2007. what animals mean in the fiction of modernity. london: routledge. bbc. 2003. “carnivores’ need for walk”. bbc news. last modified october 2, 2003. accessed may 2, 2013. http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/sci/ tech/3156478.stm. tanja schwalm 58 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ berger, john. 1977. “why zoos disappoint”. new society 40: 122-3. byng, jamie. 2009. “the story behind the illustrated life of pi”. life of pi website. last modified april 4, 2009. accessed may 2, 2013. http://www.lifeofpi. co.uk/jamie-byng-on-life-beyond-pi. clubb, ros, and georgia mason. 2003. “captivity effects on wide-ranging carnivores”. nature 425 (6957): 473-4. doi: 10.1038/425473a. franklin, adrian. 1999. animals and modern cultures: a sociology of human-animal relations in modernity. london: sage. malamud, randy. 1998. reading zoos: representations of animals and captivity. new york: new york university press. martel, yann. 2002a. “a giraffe in a cage is worth two on the box”. spectator 289 (9079): 37. 2002b. “author interview”, edited transcript of an online chat with yann martel. writtenvoices.com. republished by bookbrowse. last modified october 2, 2002. accessed may 2, 2013. http://www.bookbrowse.com/author_ interviews/full/index.cfm?author_number=823. 2003. life of pi. edinburgh: canongate. 2007a. “ask booker prize winner yann martel”. bbc news. last modified october 24, 2002. accessed may 2, 2013. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/talking_ point/forum/2350807.stm. 2007b. “exclusive interview – life of yann martel. abebooks speaks with booker prize-winning author yann martel”. abebooks.com. accessed may 2, 2013. http://www.abebooks.com/docs/authors-corner/yann-martel.shtml. 2007c. “how i wrote ‘life of pi’”. powells. accessed may 2, 2013. http:// www.powells.com/fromtheauthor/martel.html. 2007d. “interview with mishal husain”. bbc news. last modified august 8, 2005. accessed may 2, 2013. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/ hardtalk/4131242.stm. 2007e. “yann martel ‘life of pi’ – author interview”. bookbits. last modified february 18, 2007. accessed may 2, 2013. http://bookbits.ca/joomlatest/ index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=85&itemid=26. alternative link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_ embedded&v=ajys9sqn1la#. masson, jeffrey moussaieff, and susan mccarthy. 1996. when elephants weep: the emotional lives of animals. london: vintage books. san diego zoo. 2007. “partnership marketing”. san diego zoo. accessed august 19, 2012. http://www.sandiegozoo.org/society/partnership.html. sielke, sabine. 2003. “the empathetic imagination: an interview with yann martel”. canadian literature 177: 12-32. simons, john. 2002. animal rights and the politics of literary representation. basingstoke: palgrave. the man booker prize. 2012. “news story”. the man booker prize. accessed june 28, 2012. http://www.themanbookerprize.com/news/stories/1214. torjanac, tomislav. 2007. “changes, changes”. tomislav torjanac. accessed august 20, 2007. http://www.torjanac.com/2007/07/changes-changes.html. sickness and abnormal behaviors as indicators of animal suffering 23 relations – 1.i june 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ sickness and abnormal behaviors as indicators of animal suffering michele panzera laboratory of veterinary comparative ethology, department of veterinary science, university of messina, italy doi: 10.7358/rela-2013-001-panz mpanzera@unime.it abstract the welfare status of an animal represents the integrated outcome of all sensory and other neural inputs from within its body and from the environment. these inputs are processed and interpreted by the animal’s brain according to its species-specific and individual nature and experiences, and then are perceived consciously. that being said, for an animal to be able to perceive states that we believe would reflect its welfare, the animal must be alive and conscious, and it must also be sentient. previous studies, which i cite and describe further later in this paper, show that the brains of animals, especially mammals, have enough complexity to process mental states. the mental abilities of an animal arise as a result of sensory and other neural inputs linked to nutritional, environmental, health and behavioral components of physical or functional abilities. they are also linked to cognitive-neural inputs and activity related to external challenge. all of these components are integrated and expressed mentally as varying degrees of thirst, hunger, weakness, debility, breathlessness, nausea, sickness, pain, distress, fear, anxiety, helplessness, boredom and so on. keywords: bioethics, animal welfare, sentient, feelings, behavior, allostasis, stress, depression, cytokines, sickness behavior. 1. introduction many scientific reports have shown that even animals possess the physiological requirements to be considered ‘sentient’. possessing a mastery of sentience, from a bioethical point of view, means that animals are not only objects of moral duties but also that they are the owners of rights. pain perception in animals, in terms of physiological mechanisms of pain detection, has been indirectly confirmed by using central and peripheral analgesics on experimental animals in pharmaceutical research. in light of these findings, cognitive ethological studies have also found that animals can translate the http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ michele panzera 24 relations – 1.i june 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ central representation of pain perception not only as physical hurt but also as emotional suffering. further experimental research has shown that emotional suffering can be generated through behavioral deprivation induced by an intensive farming system. it is clear that an animal’s ‘quality of life’ depends on its possibility to express natural behavior. an animal’s emotional suffering induces metabolic modifications that alter the organoleptic properties of animal products. 2. the adaptive response of stress scientific analysis of animal welfare have used a wide range of indicators as proxy measures of an animal’s wellbeing (broom and johnson 1993; squires 2003; webster 2005). these indicators can be divided into four categories: pathological, physiological, behavioral and productive (smidt 1983). classically, stress is defined as a threat to physiological and emotional homeostasis to which the organism, in order to survive, responds with a large number of adaptive responses. stress can be either acute or chronic. chronic stress is at times referred to as ‘distress’. it has been suggested that chronic stress can act as a predisposing factor in the onset of illness, especially in humans affected by depression, and that an individual’s ability or lack of ability to cope with stress may be a predisposing factor to psychiatric illness (zacharko and anisman 1991; willner 1995; leonard and song 1996). because of these findings, physiological indicators have been used to measure animal welfare. examples of these indicators include cortisol and beta-endorphin levels; assessments related to the nutritional status of the animals; and pathologic changes in specific tissues (such as heart, muscle, liver, adrenal glands, etc.) (barbieri and nassuato 2006). any evaluation of physiological indicators should take into consideration the age of animals, as there is evidence that the ability to experience stress and pain is different in young animals than it is in adult animals (fitzgerald 1999; efsa 2005). in addition, animal welfare can be measured by studying an animal’s behavioral responses to stressful situations. for example, one could measure the apparent motivation of an animal to obtain access to desired objects (such as food, a companion, or bedding) or to perform some specific behavior (feeding, social interactions, etc.) (veissier et al. 2000). the stress response is a conserved, physiological coping reaction to adverse environmental conditions. examples of adverse environmental conditions can include physical or psychological constraints, injuries, trauma, poor microclimate and infectious diseases. under these circumsickness and abnormal behaviors as indicators of animal suffering 25 relations – 1.i june 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ stances, immune responses such as stress and inflammation are an ancestral, overlapping set of responses aimed at neutralizing the stimuli perturbing homeo stasis (ottaviani and franceschi 1998). the complex interaction between the immune system and the stress/inflammation complex has mainly developed through the phylogenetic evolution of vertebrates in which a redundant, diversified system of cytokines and chemokines develops. behavioral responses to psycho-sensorial stimuli and immune responses to antigenic stimuli can be viewed as two subsystems of an integrated complex aimed to provide optimal conditions for the host’s survival and adaptation. this integrated complex is based on a signalling feedback network regulated by neuroendocrine and immunological mediators. acute and chronic stress conditions have repercussions not only on an animal’s physical homeostasis, but also on its emotional homeostasis. allostasis is an adaptive and dynamic strategy, actuated by complex living organisms to maintain a balance between their own physiological systems – involved in homeostasis process – and the external environment, in response to both predictable and unpredictable events (mcewen 2000; mcewen and wingfield 2003). 3. short and acute stress this allostatic system is elicited by animals through different coping strategies based on the type and duration of stress stimuli. the hypothalamus pituitary adrenal-axis (hpa-axis) system and hypothalamus pituitary gonads-axis (hpg-axis) system are activated when an animal is under short-term stress conditions and exhibiting proactive and reactive coping strategies, and fight/flight reactions. animals actuate these physiological and behavioral modifications during daily routines that have an energetic ‘cost’ for an organism such as feeding, sheltering, breeding, and migration. these well-known physiological and behavioral responses are regulated by the sympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system. simultaneously, activation of the hpa-axis induces the release of corticotrophin realising factor (crf) by the hypothalamus, stimulating synthesis and release of the adrenocorticotropic hormone (acth) which in turn stimulates the adrenal glands to activate the glucocorticoid hormones and increases levels of catecholamine (adrenalin and/or noradrenalin). severe or long-term stress can lead to a disturbance of physiological and behavioral homeostasis and an emotional state identified as distress, which includes reduced productive or reproductive fitness, passive coping strategies and illness. depression in humans is characterized by high levels of crf which causes michele panzera 26 relations – 1.i june 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ hpa-axis over-activation. hypercortisolaemia is also a common abnormality found in depression in human patients (owens and nemeroff 1991; dinan 1994). in fact, in depressed subjects, there seems to be a defect in the inhibitory cortisol feedback mechanism which acts on crf secretion, leading the organism to maintain elevated cortisol levels and reduced immunological activity (dinan 1994). moreover, cytokines and prostaglandins mediate sickness behaviors, such as lethargy, anorexia, curtailment of social and reproductive activities (hart 1988). they have also been associated with a concurrent decrease in learning and in memory – both of which are maladaptive responses towards an unsuitable environment (dunn and swiergiel 1998; dantzer 2001). cytokines are secreted in response to both infectious and non-infectious stimuli, such as experimental stress conditions in rodents has shown (lemay, vander, and kluger 1990; zhou et al. 1993; shintani et al. 1995; deak et al. 1997). friedman et al. demonstrated the capacity of cytokines to enter the central nervous system (cns) after an increase in the permeability of the blood brain barrier (bbb) in mice subjected to an acute swim stress (friedman et al. 1996). additional studies have attempted to evaluate and characterize the controversial role of bbb permeability under stress conditions (minami et al. 1991; goujon et al. 1995; plotkin et al. 2000; ovadia et al. 2001). currently, it is postulated that cytokines produced in the periphery organs act predominantly on the circumventricular organs within the brain, particularly via the organum vasculosum of the laminae terminalis (ovlt) (hopkins and rothwell 1995). bbb permeability is not as dense in the circumventricular organs as it is in other parts of the brain. at the ovlt, cytokines are believed to bind to glial cells, which in turn produce cytokines and other mediators such as prostaglandins, particularly pge2. other studies have shown the presence of an active transport mechanism that could be the way of entry through the bbb when plasma concentrations of cytokines are very high (banks, kastin, and durham 1989; banks et al. 1991). cytokines and their receptors have been identified in many tissues, including in the peripheral and central nervous system (schobitz, holsboer, and ron de kloet 1994). histochemical studies using rodent and human tissues have revealed that il-1, il-6 and tnf-alpha are expressed in neurons and glial cells within the cns under non-inflammatory conditions, albeit in small quantities (schobitz, holsboer, and ron de kloet 1994). thanks to their general properties of pleiotropism, redundancy, synergism and antagonism, cytokines have an integrated and interdependent sickness and abnormal behaviors as indicators of animal suffering 27 relations – 1.i june 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ function in the immunological system. they operate within a complex network and may act either synergistically or antagonistically, thus influencing the production of cytokines from other cell types and inducing a consequent neuroendocrine and immune response associated with behavioral changes. however, the exact relationship between cytokines and characteristics of depression remain to be identified. elevated cytokines levels (e.g. il-1, il-6, tnf-alpha, ifn-gamma) contribute to some aspects of the abnormal behaviors in animals and atypical symptomatology, including increase in sleeping, muscle fatigue, and decrease of eating (dantzer 1991; dantzer 2001; anisman and merali, 2002). altered cytokine activity seen in animal and/or human depression may actually be caused by increased stressor perception (or actual experience) and is believed to be based specifically on the duration of the stress. situations which cause discomfort, such as unsuitable environment or lifestyle conditions, lead to a reduced perception of uplifting events and increased feelings of loneliness with consequent physiological and emotional alterations, where cytokines have an important role as biomodulators (ravindran et al. 1995; 1999). 4. stress and animal welfare animals kept in laboratories and/or intensive housing systems are exposed to different stress situations and often do not have the possibility to avoid aversive stimuli by showing specific adaptive reactions. broom stated that welfare is poor when the individual has difficulty in coping with its environment (broom 1991). when the environment also causes a reduced fitness level, an animal may fail to cope with stress, and abnormal sickness behaviors may occur (wiepkema 1987; dantzer 1991; cronin, wiepkema, and hofstede 1984; wechsler 1995; mcewen 2000; mcewen and wingfield 2003). the protection and the welfare requirements for animals is an area covered by a wide range of eu legislation (these protections are created most commonly in the interest of guaranteeing the quality of animal products such as meat, eggs, and milk). consumers are sensitized to animal welfare campaigns because of slogans like “the quality of food depends on health and welfare of the animal that produce it”. because we have witnessed a demonstration of animals’ negative ‘capacity’, such as pain and suffering, we must intuitively consider the possibility that animals also have positive ‘capacity’, such as intention, expectation and gratification. both of these capacities ensure emotional homeostasis. many studies have found that animals in intensive husbandry michele panzera 28 relations – 1.i june 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ systems are unable to express a normal range of behavioral patterns. the occurrence of abnormal behavior in animals is therefore an expression of a central alteration of their emotional sphere. to prevent poor welfare, indicative of a poor physical and emotional state, housing systems should be designed to allow animals to perform specific behavioral habits and achieve physical and behavioral homeostasis. 5. conclusion from an anthropocentric view, animals are often considered only for their utility for humans – but this should not always be so. mental and physical integrity, in a holistic sense, determine an animal’s capacity. it’s possible to ensure this integrity through the satisfaction of all animal needs – all of which can be achieved through different animal behaviors. if animal integrity is injured then altered emotional homeostasis can eventually translate to abnormal behavior. animal integrity is ensured when animals can live in an environment that allows them to manifest their full ‘capacity’, not only those capacities that are ‘convenient’ for humans 1. in fact, by recognizing animals’ positive and negative capabilities, it follows our duty to ensure them the possibility to cope with their environment in order to live a good life. references anisman, hymie, and zul merali. 2002. “cytokines, stress, and depressive illness”. brain, behavior and immunology 16 (5): 513-24. doi: 10.1016/s08891591(02)00009-0. banks, william a., abba j. kastin, and debra a. durham. 1989. “bidirectional transport of interleukin-1 alpha across the blood brain barrier”. brain research bulletin 23 (6): 433-7. doi: 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factor”. pharmacological reviews 43 (4): 425-73. plotkin, scott. r., et al. 2000. “differential transport of rat and human interleukin-1α across the blood-brain barrier and blood-testis barrier in rats”. brain research 881 (1): 57-61. doi: 10.1016/s0006-8993(00)02772-4. ravtndran, arun v., et al. 1995. “lymphocyte subset in major depression and dysthymia: modification by antidepressant treatment”. psychosomatic medicine 57 (6): 555-63. ravtndran, arun v., et al. 1999. “treatment of primary dysthymia with group cognitive therapy and pharmacotherapy: clinical symptoms and functional impairments”. american journal of psychiatry 156 (10): 1608-17. schöbitz, bernd, florian holsboer, and ronald e. de kloet. 1994. “cytokines in the healthy and diseased brain”. news in physiological sciences 9 (3): 138-42. shintani, f., et al. 1995. “involvement of interleukin-1 in immobilization stressinduced increase in plasma adrenocorticotropic hormones and in release of hypothalamic monoamines in rat”. journal of neuroscience 15 (3-1): 1961-70. smidt, diedrich, ed. 1983. indicators relevant to farm animal welfare. a seminar in the cec programme of coordination of research on animal welfare, organized by dr. d. smidt, and held in mariensee, 9-10 november 1982. dordrecht, the netherlands: kluwer academic publishers. squires, james e. 2003. applied animal endocrinology. wallingford: cabi publishing. veissier, isabelle, et al. 2000. “welfare of livestock: how to define and evaluate?”. developmental medicine and child neurology 31 (205): 117-24. webster, john. 2005. animal welfare: limping towards eden. oxford: blackwell publishing. wechsler, beat. 1995. “coping and coping strategies: a behavioural view”. applied animal behaviour science 43 (2):123-34. doi: 10.1016/0168-1591(95)00557-9. sickness and abnormal behaviors as indicators of animal suffering 31 relations – 1.i june 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ wiepkema, pieter r. 1987. “behavioural aspects of stress”. in the biology of stress in farm animals: an integrated approach. current topics in veterinary medicine and animal science, edited by pieter r. wiepkema and pieter w.m. van adrichem, 113-38. the hague, the netherlands: martinus nijhoff. willner, paul. 1995. “s-19-2 pharmacology of anhedonia”. european neuropsychopharmacology 5 (3): 214. doi: 10.1016/0924-977x(95)90243-7. zacharko, robert m., and hymie anisman. 1991. “stressor-induced anhedonia in the mesocorticolimbic system”. neuroscience & biobehavioral reviews 15 (3): 391-405. doi: 10.1016/s0149-7634(05)80032-6. zhou, daohong, et al. 1993. “exposure to physical and psychological stressors elevates plasma interleukin 6: relationship to the activation of hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis”. endocrinology 133 (6): 2523-30. doi: 10.1210/ en.133.6.2523. animals and justice: the unfinished journey 5 is sn 2 2 8 0 -9 9 5 3 beyond anthropocentrism 1 • january 2013 inside the emotional lives of non-human animals a minding animals international utrecht 2012 pre-conference event special issue (genoa, italy, 12-13 may, 2012) edited by m. andreozzi, r. bennison, a. massaro, s. tonutti capabilities approach and animal bioethics • michele panzera animals and our emotions. how to approach the study of an interspecific community? • sabrina tonutti advocacy and animal rights • kim stallwood the emotional lives of animals: a christian perspective • alma massaro – gianfranco nicora animalia: ontology and ethics in weak antispeciesism • leonardo caffo the contemporary debate on experimentation • susanna penco – rosagemma ciliberti non-human animals and genetic engineering • arianna ferrari the relationship between humans and other animals in european animal welfare legislation • paola sobbrio human’s best friends? • matteo andreozzi elationsre l a t io n s . b e y o n d a n t h r o p o c e n t r is m 1 • 2 0 1 3 r 9.1-2 november 2021 animals: freedom, justice, welfare, moral status, and conflict cases edited by francesco allegri studies and research contributions pigs vs. boars: the ethics of assisting domesticated 9 and wild animals beka jalagania the chincoteague ponies and what it means to be free 27 alexis flower beyond the fairy tale of the shape of water: reimagining 41 the creature viktorija lankauskaitė max scheler e la possibilità di una nuova forma di antispecismo 59 enrico r.a. calogero giannetto distributive justice and animal welfare 75 paola morreale unitarianism or hierarchical approach for moral status? 91 a very subtle difference francesco allegri relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ relations. beyond anthropocentrism 6 comments, debates, reports and interviews animals and justice: the unfinished journey 111 paola fossati author guidelines 123 relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 111 animals and justice the unfinished journey 1 paola fossati università degli studi di milano doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2021-0102-foss paola.fossati@unimi.it 1. introduction the theme of justice for all animals is very stimulating and very topical, given the recent steps that are being taken to change our legal system to be able to guarantee greater protection for non-human animals. before addressing the issue, i would first go over the meaning of the word “justice”, to make sure to focus on the most pertinent aspects of the journey animals are taking towards this goal and the most significant milestones already achieved. in fact, the idea of justice applies both to ethics and to law, and it occupies centre stage in public policies, as well as in legal and political philosophy. these are core features that can drive the discussion of the different forms of justice that (should) affect all forms of life. according to the definition from the oxford english dictionary, the word justice means: “the virtue represented by the willingness to recognize and respect everyone’s right by giving them their due according to reason and law; one of the four cardinal virtues according to christian doctrine”. such a concept deals with how individual people are treated. but the idea of justice can also be applied to groups (e.g., categories of citizens or other categories of people) and institutions. regarding the latter and their fairness, to quote a well-known philosopher’s statement, justice could be described as “the first virtue of social institutions” (rawls 1971, 1999). but we can assume that it can apply to other institutions too, as a concept that takes different forms in various practical contexts. for this very reason, also, recipients of justice are diverse. this leads to the question of whether the principles of justice can be applied 1 this text was presented at the fifth italian festival of bioethics, entitled “justice, environment, animals”, organized by the italian institute of bioethics and held at s. margherita ligure (genoa, italy) from 22 to 23 august 2021. relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2021-0102-foss mailto:paola.fossati@unimi.it https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ paola fossati 112 to non-human animals and, conversely, whether only human people can be subjects of justice. going back to the literal definition of the concept, it appears to be directly linked to those of respect and rights, referring to each individual and to mutual relations. two other elements are, then, interesting to emphasize because they relate to the ways in which justice is exercised. they are the words reason and law, which are two keywords, because, while it is necessary for man to be rational enough to understand what kind of relationship he should have with animals and how much he owes to animals, the law is fundamental as the instrument through which binding rules can be established, on which rights depend on and through which compliance can be ensured. respect and law are therefore two closely related concepts. if we respect someone, we recognize his or her rights, and, vice versa, through the rights (granted and ensured by the law) we can allow there to be respect. it might even be pointed out that talking about respect also means recognizing someone’s dignity and personhood. this deals with justice, as, for an individual, it can be understood as being properly recognized. while misrecognition may deal with injustice, which, in some cases, involves the kind of inappropriate treatment that stems from this attitude. failures of recognition often lead to a lower value being attributed to individuals and groups and make them placed in a category or assigned an identity that is not their own (honneth 2004). the question of justice embedded in the way individuals and groups are treated and in determining what is due to each of them or what is the best way to pursue some common purpose has to do with the scope of justice itself. in this regard, a crucial issue to which attention must be drawn on is the identification of the target of justice. that entails answering the question of who and under what conditions the principles of justice apply. this premise is strictly linked with the recognition of who is entitled to make claims of justice (or to be represented at this end) and who should meet them. so, are there any features or other reasons not to “recognize” someone or not to include someone within the scope of justice? it is a fact that there is not a comprehensive theory of justice since this concept does not correspond to an overarching framework into which convictions about it can all be fitted (walzer 1983). what justice requires to be done depends on the different practical contexts in which it is applied, and on the codification that the law gives of it. but it also depends on the relative weight attached to the recipients, which is strictly connected with the way their relative position is considered worthy of justice. relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ animals and justice 113 referring to living beings, this deals with the question of whether some of them can be excluded from the scope of principles of justice, in whole or in part. that is if all creatures are entitled to be “someone” in front of (human) justice (nussbaum 2006; garner 2013). it is wellknown that the law still has some trouble fully recognizing non-human animals as “someone”, but still looks at them as if they were just “something”, and this continues to be an obstacle along the animals’ journey to justice. does one therefore have to deduce that the principles of justice are not applicable to non-human animals? but, if justice is about respect and rights, why shouldn’t it apply to animals? if so, how do you guarantee respect for animals? these and other questions arise when one addresses the issue. for example, what about animal rights? and again, what rights can be identified? above all, even if rights were recognized that could be extended to non-humans, should or could they be enjoyed by everyone, i.e., nonhuman animals of all species and categories? let us remember that even the categories into which animals are classified have been constructed and decided by man, just as it is always the man who can decide whether or not to grant rights to non-human animals, since they cannot claim them for themselves (garner 2002). moreover, the law itself has a human basis, and the laws are developed by people, even when it comes to “animal law”. thus, we must keep in mind that the process and success of the animals’ journey to justice depends on human willingness to recognize that even those who are not humans deserve to be respected and to have prerogatives that allow them to satisfy their own interests. this is a challenge for man, and it is interesting to analyze it through the prism of justice. 2. lessons from a painting a quite famous painting by p. mathews (1838) depicts the trial of bill burns that is considered to be the world’s first known case of conviction for cruelty to animals, handed down by a u.k. court after a man (bill burns) was found beating his donkey (fig 1). the prosecution was brought by richard martin, a u.k. mp and animal rights campaigner, and the case became memorable because the donkey was physically brought into the courtroom as if he himself wanted to plead his case, thus as if he already had legal subjectivity as well. the ruling was made under the so-called martin’s act, enacted in 1822, which was one of the first animal protection laws in recorded history. the act was focused against relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ paola fossati 114 the cruel treatment of livestock and was initially limited to certain species, but it was later repealed by a broader law against cruelty to animals (cruelty to animals act 1849). in the end, a verdict of condemnation was obtained for the abuser, and this was a historical moment that is deemed the emblem of a turning point in the consideration given to animals in the legal framework for animal protection. the picture includes several significant elements that are interesting to analyze. firstly, the initiation of this court process carries along the evidence that one can be prosecuted for unjust acts against animals (in the literal sense, since in the painting the scene takes place in a court of law). moreover, it already foreshadows that they might be legal entities. furthermore, the existence of a national law on the protection of livestock was particularly significant for the very reason of its subject matter. indeed, the term “livestock” refers to the species that were, and still are, considered among the least deserving of respect and rights. the painting also depicts the image of a person making a mockery of the donkey. this picture within the picture is interesting because it is a metaphor of the mentality and of the fears of the time. figure 1. – by p. mathews https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4177701. relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ animals and justice 115 on one hand, it seems to emphasize that the affair had some ridicule, thus recalling the incredulous laughter that had until then accompanied the efforts made to change the position of animals before society and before the law. on the other hand, it also wants to express the desire to belittle the idea of taking on the defenses of an animal, which was considered with hostility also because it was seen as the risk of establishing a kind of “precedent” that could undermine the condition of supremacy of human beings over non-human animals. apparently, with the ruling in favor of the donkey, these prejudices have been defeated, and this is another important symbolic element which corresponds to a stage in the journey towards a fundamental cultural change, which can also influence the law. 3. the current stage of the animals’ journey towards justice now, two centuries later, the question is how far along the animals are on their journey to justice. in order to make an assessment, we need to take into account both the current cultural climate and the current legislation as well as the existing legislative proposals concerning animal welfare, while bearing in mind that law and culture are closely intertwined and that the law plays a central role in defining behaviors and distinguishing between lawful and acceptable ones and prohibited ones. indeed, social attitudes towards animals are still conflicting, since they range from having pro-animal attitudes (e.g., to the point of treating companion animals as members of the family) to accepting and justifying the instrumental treatment of other animals and their exploitation for human purposes, in all sorts of contexts (as a source of food, source of skins, research models, circus “performers”, etc.). the legal system, that is a central factor in ending disrespectful behavior towards animals, is, paradoxically, the essential element in continuing to allow their exploitation and oppression. the law as it now stands, which includes anti-cruelty provisions and creates the duty to treat animals at least “humanely”, on the other hand, allows inflicting pain and suffering on non-humans when “necessary” and, above all, it treats non-human animals as things and as properties (francione 1995; favre 2004). conversely, it is important to take into account what is made available by science, on which both culture and law draw a lot. to date, it has relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ paola fossati 116 taken us further in understanding the characteristics of animals and has informed us about their capacity to suffer and about their cognitive and relational abilities that are highly developed (proctor et al. 2013). so, it is important that the legislature is open to incorporating both the new understanding of animals and the changes in sensitivity to animals, which it is fostering, and new input about their capabilities that comes from scientific research. over the centuries, we have moved from a totally anthropocentric conviction, which nurtured a law made only for humans, to a re-evaluation of the animal-human relationship. signs of a change in sensitivity towards animals have started to appear in society. however, one thing remains unchanged, while is the key to the success of the journey of animals towards justice: nonhumans are still treated as objects before the law, and the true recognition of their legal personhood has not yet been achieved. this not only slows down the changes in favor of animals, but in fact, it does not prevent the emergence of new forms of exploitation and oppression of the animals themselves (for example, consider the case of invertebrates seen as being novel food; they will be managed with no chance of being considered individuals). for years, the battle for the recognition of animals as subjects before the law has been going on, but so far, only partial results have been achieved, especially with reference to certain categories of animals; in any case, there are obvious differences among species (epstein 2004). for example, behaviors towards companion animals come very close to considering them as subjects and not as objects to be exploited. by contrast, farm and laboratory animals, or in general working animals, remain in a context of commodification despite the enactment of specific, higher standards of protection from the force of human desires. on the other hand, when it comes to the impact of a possible change in the legal status of animals, the consequences would be so challenging and revolutionary that it is not really possible to foresee them in the near future (they would mean no more slaughtering animals, breeding them, transporting them in cattle trucks, using them in research as now, etc.). thus, are we at a standstill, so must we assume that the animals’ journey to justice will not have an end? actually, as the italian philosopher norberto bobbio wrote, we live in the “age of rights”, which is characterized precisely by the phenomenon of the multiplication of the rights that are claimed, recognized, and protected, in correspondence with the emergence of new interests (bobbio 1996). and it cannot be denied that the interests of animals are becoming a paradigm of analysis in an increasingly wide-ranging and relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ animals and justice 117 argued way, as well as duties towards them have become the subject of discussion by legislators, making the objectives of a broader rights and justice system more tangible. influential legal experts and scholars have already highlighted this while stating the reasons why the subjectivity of animals should be recognized along with animal rights. there are very significant examples of ambitious judicial battles being fought in the world in this regard. some of them are egregious, such as the common law writs of habeas corpus (habeas corpus, meaning “show me the body”, is an institution which historically has been used to grant freedom to people from arbitrary detention and deprivation of liberty) that aim at expressly affirming legal personhood for non-human animals, or at least for cognitively advanced animals that face inadequate and indefinite detention in zoological structures 2. this is a new legal frontier where these animals are recognized as non-human legal persons, enjoying the guarantees traditionally provided by law in favor of human beings. in italy, too, there are noteworthy examples of steps taken in the direction of extension of legal rights to animals. they are perhaps more limited in scope, but nonetheless significant as they are part of an undertaken path that is reaching important stages. among them, we can mention the case law that demonstrates that agrees on the principle that animals possess “inherent” qualities and deserve consideration as “subjects of life”. in 2007, the italian supreme court stated that animals and children should be taken care of with equal diligence 3. following this principle, the judgment led to the conviction of a man who had dragged his dog by car for several dozen meters before realizing that the leash was entangled in the door and that the animal was not inside the car. in recent years, several judgments on the separation of couples have established that the rules for the custody of children should apply to companion animals in order to protect their own interests instead of including them in the property distribution (fossati 2020). other evidence that the interest of at least companion animals is given some measure of weight that is comparable to that of people can 2 see the process that, in 2016, led to a successful writ of habeas corpus on behalf of a chimpanzee (cecilia) in argentina, which was followed by a similar judgement in favour of the bear chuco. more recently, on may 4, 2021, the new york court of appeals agreed for the first time to hear the habeas corpus case of a non-human animal, happy the elephant. 3 cass. pen., sez. iii, 05/06/2007, n. 21805, available online at https://www.altalex. com/documents/massimario/2007/06/11/maltrattamento-degli-animali-diligenza-chenormalmente-si-usa-verso-un-minore. relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ paola fossati 118 be found in the italian civil code (c.c.), which prohibits preventing the presence of domestic animals in condominiums (art. 1138 c.c.). furthermore, it is compulsory under the codice della strada (traffic code) in force to assist animals (both domestic and wild ones) when they are victims of accidents. while the italian penal code (c.p.) guarantees the punishment of crimes against animals such as unnecessary and cruel killings, mistreatment, and the use of animals in prohibited fights or shows. if one were to examine further the case law sources, one would be presented with a picture regarding the recognition of the relationship with a companion animal as a “subjective right” of the person, guaranteed by the italian constitution (art. 2), as it contributes to the realization of the person. such an approach has been confirmed for the elderly hospitalized in social and healthcare facilities, and also for prisoners in jail, who must be allowed at least one visit from their animals. it also emerges where the judges award compensation for the non-material loss suffered because of the loss of a companion animal. these decisions give meaning and value to the bond that develops between humans and animals, while confirming that it creates a sense of empathy and emotional, psychological, and physical connections, which undoubtedly create a relationship between sentient beings on both sides. italy is a civil law country; thus, case law is not a direct source of law. nevertheless, the italian constitution is now one step away from the amendment of article 9 that will include the protection of animals as a fundamental principle of the state of law. this step will assign constitutional significance to non-human animals in italy after other countries in the european area, such as germany, austria, and switzerland (the latter also went so far in this ambit, by introducing an express reference to the dignity of animals, see swiss constitution of 18 april 1999, art. 120.2 4) that have already attempted a reform of the legal status towards their deobjectification, even if a complete recognition of the animal subjectivity has not been achieved yet. this is, in any case, expected to give a boost to the adoption of more significant legislation in the field of animal protection and to the separation of non-human animals from the realm of property. 4 bundesverfassung des schweizerischen eigenossenschaft, art. 120.2: “der bund erlässt vorschriften über den umgang mit keimund erbgut von tieren, pflanzen und anderen organismen. er trägt dabei der würde der kreatur sowie der sicherheit von mensch, tier und umwelt rechnung und schützt die genetische vielfalt der tierund pflanzenarten” (https://www.admin.ch/opc/de/classifiedcompilation/19995395/index. html). relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ animals and justice 119 the path of inclusion of animal protection in the constitution must also be seen in conjunction with the step taken by the european union with the inclusion of the concept of animal as a sentient being in article 13 of the tfeu, which, albeit with many limitations, legally binds member states to pay full regard to animals’ welfare requirements, as sentient beings. it is expected that such a supranational legal instrument, despite the limitations that it imposes in the second part of its composition 5, can be the buttress for granting greater consistency in the classification of animals in the civil law systems and in their position before the law, and therefore before human justice. in sum, the condition of animals in the legal system is indubitably fluid and evolving. unfortunately, it is also still firmly anchored to an anthropocentric and economic perspective. in support of this, a fairly recent ruling by the italian civil court of cassation can be mentioned, which is in contrast with the trends of case law cited before, and also with the cogency of the lisbon treaty constraint and the duty to refer to the animal as a sentient being. with the judgment of 25 september 2018, n. 22728, a sick dog was compared to a defective consumer good; that is to say, for instance, a broken toaster, to which the rules governing chattels apply. this approach might be interpreted as the consequence of the lack of a clear qualification of animals before the law, which results in legal uncertainty and allows different interpretations and solutions. 4. still, a long path ahead this brief excursus, which is certainly not complete, on the difficulties of looking at animals as the living, sentient beings that they are, should lead to thinking about the need to assess whether it is actually necessary to achieve this goal in order to guarantee their full protection. if we are going to talk about a path to justice for animals, we need to make sure we are clear about what we want to offer and grant them 5 when the lisbon treaty came into force in 2009 it amended the treaty on the functioning of the european union (tfeu) and introduced the recognition that animals are sentient beings. article 13 of title ii states that: “in formulating and implementing the union’s agriculture, fisheries, transport, internal market, research and technological development and space policies, the union and the member states shall, since animals are sentient beings, pay full regard to the welfare requirements of animals, while respecting the legislative or administrative provisions and customs of the eu countries relating in particular to religious rites, cultural traditions and regional heritage”. relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ paola fossati 120 along with subjectivity. subjectivity for animals must not mean falling back into anthropomorphisation, i.e., to strive to humanize the needs of animals, ending up treating them as if they were people, at the expense of their actual needs and the respect for their dignity. it would, then, be more appropriate and perhaps even more just to talk about developing a more suitable system of duties of protection and respect to be placed on human society (posner 2000). considering these issues would also lead the human society to clarify what it is prepared to give up or pay for the establishment of a new consideration of animals. because there is no doubt that as the legal protection offered to animals grows, the legal duties of humanity towards them will also increase. and this will result in a burden on humans and will make it difficult to implement the rights granted to animals in practice. be that as it may, these observations make it necessary to bear in mind that the road that can lead to justice for animals is open, but it is quite tortuous and, above all, it will have to be traveled in its last stretch with the awareness that the guarantees and prerogatives that will be granted to animals will cost mankind. recognizing animals as subjects because they are living, sentient beings, seems to many people to be a right and proper action, and even an ethical and legal necessity. we can also expect and accept that this should happen gradually and by degrees, beginning with some species that have been part of the human community for longer and then extending the consideration to more non-human species. we already have several demonstrations of how the time seems ripe enough to take advantage of what has already been done and to envisage steps forward, offering ever greater legal protection to animal beings. it will be important, however, to have respect for animals, with the progressive abandonment of the anthropocentric dimension while raising the animal protection threshold. the case law has already started to broaden the boundaries of legal subjectivity, and the legislator is offering greater legal protection to animal beings in several countries. nevertheless, the recognition of animal rights should avoid some risks, such as being a process of “humanization” and of anthropomorphizing. furthermore, since the granting of rights to animals will result in a “burden” for humans, the possibility that the protection process may come to a standstill or be “rethought” because of human egoism should not be underestimated. the key to success might be a shift of attention from anthropocentrism to biocentrism, which will lead to considering the particular connection of all forms of non-human lives with the life of human beings. relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ animals and justice 121 references bobbio, norberto. 1996. the age of rights, translated by allan cameron. cambridge (ma): polity press. epstein, richard a. 2004. “animals as objects, or subjects, of rights”. in animal rights: current debates and new direction, edited by cass r. sustein and martha c. nussbaum, 143-161. new york: oxford university press. favre, david. 2004. “a new property status for animals: equitable self-ownership”. in animal rights: current debates and new direction, edited by cass r. sustein and martha c. nussbaum, 234-250. new york: oxford university press. fossati, paola. 2020. “protecting interests of animals in custody disputes: italian caselaw outpaces italian and european union legislation”. society & animals. journal of human-animal studies 24: 1-18. francione, gary l. 1995. animals, property and the law. philadelphia: temple university press. garner, robert. 2002. “political ideology and the legal status of animals”. animal law 8: 77-91. garner, robert. 2013. a theory of justice for animals. oxford: oxford university press. honneth, axel. 2004. “recognition and justice: outline of a plural theory of justice”. acta sociologica 47: 351-364. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4195049 nussbaum, martha. 2006. frontiers of justice: disability, nationality, species membership. cambridge (ma): harvard university press. posner, richard a. 2000. “animals rights”. yale law journal 110: 527-541. proctor, helen s., gemma carder, and amelia r. cornish. 2013. “searching for animal sentience: a systematic review of the scientific literature”. animals: an open access journal from mdpi 3: 882-906. https://doi. org/10.3390/ani3030882 rawls, john. 1971. a theory of justice. cambridge (ma:) harvard university press. rawls, john. 1999. a theory of justice. revised edition. cambridge (ma): harvard university press. walzer, michael. 1983. spheres of justice: a defence of pluralism and equality. new york: basic books. relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 http://www.jstor.org/stable/4195049 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ relations_9-1-2-2021_00b_sommario.pdf studies and research contributions pigs vs. boards beka jalagania the chincoteague ponies and what it means to be free alexis flower beyond the fairy tale of the shape of water viktorija lankauskaitė max scheler e la possibilità di una nuova forma di antispecismo enrico r.a. calogero giannetto distributive justice and animal welfare paola morreale unitarianism or hierarchical approach for moral status? a very subtle difference francesco allegri comments, debates, reports and interviews animals and justice paola fossati author guidelines humanitarian intervention in nature. crucial questions and probable answers review: sue donaldson and will kymlicka, zoopolis: a political theory of animal rights (2011) humanitarian intervention in nature crucial questions and probable answers adriano mannino executive director, foundational research institute, basel manninoadriano@gmail.com donaldson, sue, and will kymlicka. 2011. zoopolis: a political theory of animal rights. new york: oxford university press. 352 pp. $ 29.95. isbn 9780199599660 sue donaldson’s and will kymlicka’s zoopolis: a political theory of animal rights is a very laudable effort to move the animal rights discussion beyond the issue of animal individuals’ basic moral status. the authors consider the question of our overall obligations towards the class of animals that can plausibly be viewed as our co-citizens; towards the class that may be considered “liminal”; and last but not least, the class of wilderness animals in nature, whose communities should enjoy prima facie sovereignty rights  – as a way of preventing and correcting for impermissible human action towards them. the latter also raises the question of humanitarian intervention in nature, which is potentially very consequential and should therefore be accorded significant epistemic resources: could natural animal populations be (akin to) failed states? and if so, what is the prevalence of failed states in nature? donaldson and kymlicka seem to admit the normative possibility of humanitarian intervention in nature but deny obligations to try and intervene on a large, systematic scale, mainly on empirical grounds. in what follows, i will outline the crucial questions, normative and empirical, which the issue of humanitarian intervention in nature hinges on. crucial questions are questions which, depending on how we answer them, can radically alter the practical course we take 1. if we get a crucial question wrong, our actions are likely to be radically sub-optimal or even counterproductive. in addition to outlining the crucial questions for humanitarian 1 i owe this concept to nick bostrom, who introduces it on his website: http://www. nickbostrom.com. http://www.nickbostrom.com http://www.nickbostrom.com http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 adriano mannino 108 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ intervention in nature, i will attempt to identify their probable answers on the basis of arguments that are likely to have dominant force. i will argue that donaldson and kymlicka are right about the normative possibility of humanitarian intervention in nature but empirically probably wrong about the non-existence of an obligation to try and help wilderness animals on a large, systematic scale. the proposed crucial questions are: (1) what is the empirical fact of the matter about how good/bad the situation of wilderness populations is? are they “competent” or rather “failed states”? (2) if we were to try and intervene in nature, what is the probability of us actually (greatly) improving the situation vs. making it (much) worse? (3) to what extent should we accept obligations to help? or: how (non-)consequentialist should we be? crucial question (1): what is the empirical fact of the matter about how good/bad the situation of wilderness populations is? are they “competent” or rather “failed states”? this question is crucial because there is broad agreement that the situation of wilderness populations being (sufficiently) catastrophic greatly increases the probability that an obligation to systematic humanitarian intervention exists. donaldson and kymlicka accept “overwhelming catastrophes” (e.g. by meteor impacts or devastating viruses) as a “triggers for intervention” (p. 182) and are sympathetic to the view that “there are times when humans should insert themselves into the equation, altering nature’s course in order to prevent catastrophe” (p. 290) and thus oppose the “let nature be” doctrine. when we think of wilderness animals, we tend to imagine cases of animals that may have decently autonomous, long and happy lives. these are strongly “k-selected” animals (macarthur and wilson 1967; pianka 1970), i.e. species with few offspring that are taken good care of. unfortunately, k-selected species do not seem to be representative of the animal populations in nature: species following the “r-selection” strategy are much more prevalent (ng 1995; horta 2010a). they bet on the numbers and have many more offspring than will survive to adulthood. if populations remain roughly stable (as they eventually must, given finite resources), then only one child can survive per parent individual – but r-selected animals have hundreds, thousands or even millions of offspring during their life-time. the consequence is that almost all of them have lives that can roughly be characterized as follows: birth; struggle over the way too scarce resources against the way too numerous siblings; gruesome death very shortly after birth. in his paper, animal liberation and environmental ethics: bad marriage, quick divorce, mark sagoff quotes the following passage from fred hapgood: http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 s. donaldson and w. kymlicka, “zoopolis: a political theory of animal rights” 109 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ all species reproduce in excess, way past the carrying capacity of their niche. in her lifetime a lioness might have 20 cubs; a pigeon, 150 chicks; a mouse, 1000 kits; a trout, 20,000 fry, a tuna or cod, a million fry or more; […] and an oyster, perhaps a hundred million spat. if one assumes that the population of each of these species is, from generation to generation, roughly equal, then on average only one offspring will survive to replace each parent. all the other thousands and millions will die, one way or another. (hapgood 1979, 44-5) sagoff continues: the misery of animals in nature–which humans can do much to relieve– makes every other form of suffering pale in comparison. mother nature is so cruel to her children she makes frank perdue look like a saint. (sagoff 1984, 297) in zoopolis, donaldson and kymlicka do consider the harms wilderness animals suffer in some detail. they mainly focus on food cycles and predation and claim that the evidence suggests that wilderness communities “respond competently [to this challenge]” (pp. 176, 288). while this may or may not be true, the much bigger – much more crucial – empirical issue is the one of wasteful reproductive strategies, which seem to be by far the biggest cause of suffering, preference frustration and death in nature (tomasik 2009a; horta 2010a). they should therefore be prioritized in our analysis. unfortunately, donaldson and kymlicka only consider them in one very brief passage: this competence argument [to the conclusion that wilderness populations are sufficiently competent to self-govern, which is a necessary condition of their sovereignty rights] is more compelling in relation to some animals than to others. many mammalian species produce few offspring, and invest greatly in their care either as individual parents or larger social groups. individual young have a real chance of surviving the challenges of their early years and making it to adulthood. compare this with the many amphibian and reptile species who lay vast quantities of eggs and leave them to fend for themselves. most eggs never hatch. most hatchlings are quickly consumed by predators. life for many a fish, turtle, or lizard amounts to a few brief moments after emerging from the shell until a larger fish or bird or reptile swoops in to devour them. the scope for “competent agency” varies across species, but should be recognised and supported wherever it does exist. for some species, it grounds a strong argument for respecting autonomy. for others, the argument is weaker. on balance, however, we should still respect the sovereignty of wild animals, including those for whom there is minimal evidence of competent agency, because the argument is strongly buttressed by the earlier arguments about fallibility and flourishing. (p. 176) before turning to the fallibility argument under crucial question (2), let me note how this passage is dubious in the light of the empirical facts: it is not http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 adriano mannino 110 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ clear whether individual young have a “real chance” of making it to adulthood even for the most strongly k-selected species. a lioness might have 20  cubs, only two of which will reach successful sexual maturity on average. these are bad odds, and they are good compared with the typical odds in nature, which are terrible – and which permanently affect hundreds of billions of animals (tomasik 2009b). given this situation, it is unclear why “competence” (and resulting sovereignty) should be the default assumption. rather, the empirical evidence probably supports an “incompetence” default assumption. donaldson and kymlicka accept that there are wilderness populations for whom there is only “minimal evidence” of competent agency, and seem to suggest that by positing sovereignty we are on the safe side. but this judgment likely results from a persisting bias towards the “let them be” or “let nature be” doctrine, which zoopolis is itself interested in avoiding (p. 285): if the evidence supporting the “competence” assumption is minimal, then there is a significant probability that the “incompetence” assumption is true, too. on the “incompetence” assumption, positing sovereignty and an obligation to non-intervention could be a momentous moral error. it is thus not true that a “safe side” consideration points towards non-intervention. rather, the empirical facts about what life in nature is typically and permanently like for hundreds of billions of animals make the opposite view more probable. (crucial questions [2] and [3] will further elaborate on “safe side” considerations.) crucial question (1) is meant to be about empirical facts. one might legitimately wonder whether the normative question of population ethics should not be listed as a separate crucial question: which (sub-)populations are optimal/good/neutral/bad/catastrophic? is some total or average value the (more) relevant criterion? can the extreme suffering of some members of a population be outweighed by the happiness of sufficiently many others? given that population ethics confronts us with very difficult problems whose solutions are highly controversial (arrhenius 2000), listing it as a separate crucial question seems particularly in order. i have decided against doing so for the purposes at hand, though, based on the following consideration: donaldson and kymlicka share the broad agreement that an obligation to (large-scale, systematic) humanitarian intervention necessitates the existence of a (large-scale, systematic) catastrophe, i.e. an axiologically catastrophic animal (sub-)population in nature. the question of when a population is catastrophic is thus of particular interest to us. now, the class of judgments that are highly controversial in population ethics is wide-ranging, but some judgments about what very bad populations look like do not belong to it. it is uncontroversial that populations where almost 100% of an enormous number of individuals die very painful http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 s. donaldson and w. kymlicka, “zoopolis: a political theory of animal rights” 111 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ deaths very shortly after birth are catastrophic. the section at hand – on crucial question (1) – has argued that the hypothesis that many wilderness (sub-)populations are in fact catastrophic is reasonably probable, or at the very least much less improbable than is standardly assumed. if this case is sound, then donaldson and kymlicka should be much more willing to assume the existence of “failed states” in nature triggering obligations to humanitarian intervention. in the context of their discussion of the “competence” assumption, they write: someone might respond that wild animals are hardly competent to exercise sovereignty if they are unable to protect all of their own members from starvation or predation. if a human community failed in this regard, we would likely view it as a “failed state”, or in any event one that requires some degree of external intervention. but in the context of ecosystems, food cycles and predator-prey relationships are not indicators of “failure”. rather, they are defining features of the context within which wild animal communities exist; they frame the challenges to which wild animals must respond both individually and collectively, and the evidence suggests that they respond competently. (p. 176) the footnote to the passage elaborates: wild animals could turn the tables here, pointing to the sustainability of sovereign animal communities compared with the rapacious ecological footprint of human communities which is quite possibly leading us all towards ecological collapse. (p. 288) sustainability being positive and greatly important assumes that populations in nature are not just non-catastrophic, but (greatly) net positive. the empirical evidence about reproductive strategies calls this into question. if an enormous human population were permanently stuck in a situation where almost all its members died very painful deaths very shortly after birth, judging it a tragically failed state would not be controversial. moreover, we would (rightly) refrain from definitionally sanctifying the causes of the countless, painful deaths as “not indicators of failure” and “defining features of the context within which the communities exist”, as well as from (even partly) defining “flourishing” in terms of what happens to humans in horrific contexts, however normal they may be. if the very defining features of a context cause catastrophe, then so much the worse for the context. these features belonging to the “natural” context does not diminish the harm that results for the sentient individuals affected by them, as donaldson and kymlicka seem to agree (p. 32). http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 adriano mannino 112 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ crucial question (2): if we were to try and intervene in nature, what is the probability of us actually (greatly) improving the situation vs. making it (much) worse? this question is crucial because if a pessimistic stance on our ability to positively intervene on a large-scale is correct, there can be no obligation to intervene even if the situation of wilderness animals were indefinitely catastrophic. the fallibility argument (p. 163) says that we are prone to serious misjudgements about when and how to intervene for the better (especially when intervening on a large, systematic scale), which our track record bears out. therefore, were we to embark on a “large-scale humanitarian intervention in nature” project, we would be likely to make the situation (possibly catastrophically) worse. it is, of course, very reasonable to be concerned with our epistemic limitations and practical track records. however, the fallibility argument as outlined above is open to a number of serious objections: first, the project would be one of altruistically motivated intervention in nature. no bad track record exists in this regard. and it is hard to see how (advocacy for) such a project, especially when combined with (advocacy for) very careful, gradual, scientifically grounded procedure – so as to safeguard global stability and enable adequately informed decisions –, would be more likely to lead to bad rather than good outcomes. second, even if the risk of (greatly) net negative outcomes were very significant, it is to be balanced against the risk – or rather, assuming what has been said on crucial question (1), the certain, indefinitely ongoing catastrophe – of doing nothing. it is by no means clear that the former risk is greater. cognitive psychology has shown that human minds are systematically biased against taking harmful omissions into account, and toward the status quo, which is likely to distort our assessment of the decisional situation (spranca et al. 1991). third, the empirical evidence presented as crucial for the task of answering (1) would suggest that the risk of doing nothing is greater: in a permanent situation where almost 100% of the members of a population die gruesome deaths very shortly after birth, it is probably quite hard to make the situation even worse, let alone catastrophically worse. the probability of making it catastrophically worse, although a popular theme and worry, may be close to zero. indeed – adding to the aforesaid first point – it seems, perversely, possible that humanity’s track record of primarily egoistically motivated (and near-sighted) intervention in nature has been net positive for wilderness animals. humanity’s net effect on nature has been to significantly reduce it – in ways that jeopardize global stability, which is an enormously bad consequence that responsible humanitarian intervention must avoid. but http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 s. donaldson and w. kymlicka, “zoopolis: a political theory of animal rights” 113 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ purely in terms of how well or badly wilderness animals are off, it is not clear the situation has gotten worse even through egoistic human intervention: it is quite uncontroversial in population ethics that some possible populations are sufficiently catastrophic to support the judgment that reductions in (future) population size are good. (incidentally, this is just the causal effect vegetarianism and veganism have.) exactly how bad the situation of wilderness animals is remains an open research question, but the empirical evidence regarding reproductive strategies suggests that we should not be surprised to find that it is catastrophic. if we were to accept an important obligation to large-scale, systematic humanitarian intervention in nature, it would likely translate into an urgently set-up massive research project of “welfare biology” (ng 1995) for the time being: many open research questions need to be explored and adequately answered first. after a long phase of small-scale trials, one might (or might not, depending on the results) ultimately attempt to implement larger-scale interventions. they might, e.g., take the form of safe and stable reductions of the prevalence of r-selected animals relative to k-selected ones, which can probably be expected to improve the fate of wilderness populations. cross-species fertility control is likely to play a crucial role (just as systematic fertility control has been crucial for the welfare of the human species). in general, we should expect there to be a number of positive large-scale interventions that are inconceivable given present-day knowledge and technology, but which may become feasible in the coming decades and centuries (bostrom 2014). with our choices today, we inevitably influence the probability that technologically advanced future decision-makers will try and help wilderness animals in nature or not. for an illustration of what significant initial steps might look like, i recommend examining existing proposals such as the one for a “welfare state for elephants”, providing “cradle-to-the-grave healthcare and welfare provision for the entire population of free-living elephants” (pearce 2012). they seem to be in line with zoopolis’ spirit: in an interview (mannino 2014), kymlicka has accepted duties to small-scale intervention such as protecting “prey animals” from predators on a one-off basis (e.g., by making some noise if, while hiking, we see a predator about initiate an attack). kymlicka also accepts larger-scale interventions such as protecting wilderness populations against new and devastating parasites. he does fear, though, that if we go beyond the “one-off” basis, we will reach a situation of human management – a “natural zoo” – that undermines wilderness animals’ right to live autonomously. however, the difference between “one-off” and “systematic” intervention is not categorical, but gradual. it is not clear when the blurred line between the two is being crossed (if we http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 adriano mannino 114 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ have a prima facie obligation to protect one “prey animal”, then the same obligation presumably applies to the next, and so on); nor is it at all clear that systematic human intervention cannot empirically be the much lesser evil for wilderness animals in terms of their degree of autonomy. only we can find out. zoopolis’ argument that wilderness animals are not seeking human contact (nor, a fortiori, humanitarian intervention) and are thus “voting with their feet” (p. 177) for sovereignty is dubious: wilderness animals lack the competence to adequately understand the situation they are in, let alone to compare it to the potential alternatives and pursue them. we may have it – any may thus be obliged to act on their behalf. at this point, we should certainly not be confident that the billions of animals that are starving to death, being eaten alive, asphyxiated or disembowelled as we speak would reject systematic human management in favor of the status quo (if they were competent to assess the decisional situation), but rather accept a probabilistic pointer in the other direction. crucial question (3): to what extent should we accept obligations to help? or: how (non-)consequentialist should we be? this question is crucial because any obligation to humanitarian intervention is an obligation to help (equivalent to positive rights of the individuals to be helped), which non-consequentialist normative outlooks might deny or consider relatively unimportant in the first place. donaldson and kymlicka note that a narrow focus on our obligations not to harm animals (equivalent to their negative rights) has been popular in animal rights theory (p. 159). the least controversial argument justifying this focus is the fact that the harms we actively (and directly) cause to animals are the ones we can most easily remove. this argument has a lot of merit, but it may be just one element of the full picture, given what has been said on (1) and (2), and given the options for answering (3). donaldson and kymlicka rightly note: the fact that animals have a negative right not to be killed which humans must respect does not logically entail that animals also have a positive right to human aid or protection in the face of threats […]. but while there is no logical contradiction in affirming the former and rejecting the latter, the moral rationale for the former seems to push in the direction of the latter, and critics of [animal rights theory] are right to say that this moral tension has not been adequately addressed. (p. 285) it is indeed a powerful push. it is logical, too, in the sense that if the driving reason (or: one reason) for not harming animals is that it is counterfactually bad for them, then it is logically inconsistent to deny the existence of any reason to help them – for if we do not help them, it is counterfactually bad http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 s. donaldson and w. kymlicka, “zoopolis: a political theory of animal rights” 115 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ for them, too. justifying obligations not to harm on (at least partly) altruist grounds and rejecting any obligation to help is inconsistent (norcross 2008). furthermore, if obligations not to harm are justified from the impartial perspective (harsanyi 1953; 1955) or from behind the veil of ignorance (rawls 1971), then strong obligations to help cannot be avoided either: positing them will make us much better off than rejecting them. further arguments for accepting obligations to help animals are from intuition and parallel human cases: peter singer’s famous drowning child argument (make it a drowning piglet argument) is very hard to completely reject (singer 1972), and most legislations accept obligations to direct aid (“duty to rescue”) as well as more indirect obligations to help other members of local and global society. more specifically, the view is widely shared that obligations to humanitarian intervention can be triggered by catastrophes of all sorts. additionally, there is a “safe side” consideration in favour of granting obligations to help significant moral weight: even if one remains sceptical about the aforesaid arguments for obligations to help, one should grant a non-trivial probability of being wrong about the matter, especially in the light of strong peer disagreement. it follows that while providing help is certainly no moral error (but may be supererogatory), not providing help could – with the granted probability – be a serious moral error. we should therefore seek to err on the safe side and lean towards accepting obligations to help. one might object that while it is plausible to grant some obligations to help, they should count for much less than our obligations not harm; and that, empirically, we will not be able to help wilderness animals on a large scale without harming some of them in the process. the latter is true, but consider the parallel human cases: very few normative outlooks reject humanitarian intervention in all practical cases – and practical humanitarian intervention usually comes with the risk (and reality/necessity) of seriously harming some individuals. furthermore, the greater the catastrophe to be prevented, the more acceptable is harming some individuals in the process. more specifically, imagine what the typical moral reactions would be if almost 100% of the individuals of an enormous human population were suffering permanently horrible fates. there is no question that interventionist research programs would urgently be set up – and that in the face of the enormous catastrophe, a significant amount of actively (though unintentionally and regretfully) caused damage would be accepted. in zoopolis, donaldson and kymlicka discuss a number of novel issues that arise in the context of extending animal ethics beyond animals’ basic moral status. humanitarian intervention in nature is one such issue. it is http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 adriano mannino 116 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ potentially very consequential and thus needs to be accorded significant epistemic resources. i have attempted to outline the crucial questions upon which the issue of large-scale humanitarian intervention in nature turns. crucial question (1) asks how good/bad the situation of wilderness animals actually is, as a matter of empirical fact. humanitarian intervention presupposes the existence of a catastrophe and there is broad population-ethical agreement on what this means. i have argued that we currently tend to greatly underestimate the probability of wilderness animals’ situation being permanently catastrophic. crucial question (2) asks to what extent we can be confident that our intervention would actually make things (much) better, as opposed to (catastrophically) worse. i have argued that we have no track record of altruistically motivated intervention in nature going badly and can expect it to go reasonably well; that we need to balance the risks of intervening against the risks of doing nothing, which we are biased against; and that if and to the extent that the situation of wilderness animals already is permanently and indefinitely catastrophic, it is hard to make it worse (even through egoistic intervention), let alone catastrophically so, and easy to make it better. question (2) thus partly hinges on question (1). crucial question (3) asks to what extent we should accept obligations to help, i.e. be consequentialist. i have argued that theoretical arguments, arguments from intuition and parallel human cases, as well as a “safe side” consideration speak in favour of accepting significant obligations to help; furthermore, that the greater the catastrophe to be prevented, the harder it is to deny any practical obligation to try and help, and to deny the acceptability of some harm actively caused in the process. the zoopolis authors’ judgment seems to broadly coincide with my own on the normative questions contained in (2) and (3). there is significant disagreement on the crucial empirical question of (1) as well as on the empirical aspect of (2), which thus recommend themselves as productive focal points of further research and discussion. such discussion could likely benefit from a greater willingness to view supposed “reductios” as counterintuitive discoveries, not only but especially by authors critical of anthropocentrism. cognitive psychology suggests that our intuitions are affected by numerous biases, e.g., “status quo bias” (bostrom and ord 2006). non-anthropocentrism – in the form of non-speciesism (faria and paez 2014) – is both well-supported (horta 2010b) and counterintuitive: it greatly alters our ethico-political outlook and overturns traditional priorities. additional counterintuitive discoveries further down the inferential line should not come as a big surprise: they are predicted by the fact that (non-)anthropocentrism occupies a very crucial place in our action-guiding belief system. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 s. donaldson and w. kymlicka, “zoopolis: a political theory of animal rights” 117 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ references arrhenius, gustaf. 2000. future generations: a challenge for moral theory. uppsala: university printers. bostrom, nick. 2014. superintelligence: paths, dangers, strategies. oxford: oxford university press. bostrom, nick, and toby ord. 2006. “the reversal test: eliminating status quo bias in applied ethics”. ethics 116: 656-79. faria, catia, and eze paez. 2014. “anthropocentrism and speciesism: conceptual and normative issues”. revista de bioética y derecho 32: 82-90. hapgood, fred. 1979. why males exist: an inquiry into the evolution of sex. new york: morrow avon. harsanyi, john. 1953. “cardinal utility in welfare economics and in the theory of risk-taking”. journal of political economy 61: 434-5. 1955. “cardinal welfare, individualistic ethics and interpersonal comparisons of utility”. journal of political economy 63: 309-21. horta, oscar. 2010a. “debunking the idyllic view of natural processes: population dynamics and suffering in the wild”. télos 17 (1): 73-88. 2010b. “what is speciesism?”. the journal of agricultural and environmental ethics 23: 243-66. macarthur, robert h., and edward o. wilson. 1967. the theory of island biogeography. princeton: princeton university press. mannino, adriano. 2014. “will kymlicka on animal denizens and foreigners in the wilderness – part 2”. gbs research. last modified january 11, 2014. http:// giordano-bruno-stiftung.ch/blog/will-kymlicka-on-animal-denizens-and foreigners-in-the-wilderness-interview-part-2/. ng, yew-kwang. 1995. “towards welfare biology: evolutionary economics of animal consciousness and suffering”. biology and philosophy 10: 255-85. norcross, alasdair. 2008. “two dogmas of deontology: aggregation, rights, and the separateness of persons”. social philosophy and policy 26: 76-95. pearce, david. 2012. “a welfare state for elephants? a case study of compassionate stewardship”. the abolitionist project. last modified june, 2014. http://www. abolitionist.com/reprogramming/elephantcare.html. pianka, eric r. 1970. “on rand k-selection”. american naturalist 104: 592-7. rawls, john. 1971. a theory of justice. cambridge, ma: belknap press. sagoff, mark. 1984. “animal liberation and environmental ethics: bad marriage, quick divorce”. osgoode hall law journal 22: 297-307. singer, peter, 1972. “famine, affluence, and morality”. philosophy and public affairs 1 (3): 229-43. spranca, mark, elisa minsk, and jonathan baron. 1991. “omission and commission in judgment and choice”. journal of experimental social psychology 27: 76-105. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 http://www.abolitionist.com/reprogramming/elephantcare.html http://www.abolitionist.com/reprogramming/elephantcare.html adriano mannino 118 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ tomasik, brian. 2009a. “the importance of wild animal suffering”. foundational research on reducing suffering. last modified october 23, 2014. http:// foundational-research.org/publications/importance-of-wild-animal-suffering. 2009b. “how many wild animals are there?”. essays on reducing suffering. last modified june 24, 2014. http://reducing-suffering.org/how-many-wildanimals-are-there. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 http://foundational-research.org/publications/importance-of-wild-animal-suffering http://foundational-research.org/publications/importance-of-wild-animal-suffering http://reducing-suffering.org/how-many-wild-animals-are-there/ http://reducing-suffering.org/how-many-wild-animals-are-there/ what we owe owls: nonideal relationality among fellow creatures in the old growth forest 5 is sn 2 2 8 0 -9 9 5 3 beyond anthropocentrism 1 • january 2013 inside the emotional lives of non-human animals a minding animals international utrecht 2012 pre-conference event special issue (genoa, italy, 12-13 may, 2012) edited by m. andreozzi, r. bennison, a. massaro, s. tonutti capabilities approach and animal bioethics • michele panzera animals and our emotions. how to approach the study of an interspecific community? • sabrina tonutti advocacy and animal rights • kim stallwood the emotional lives of animals: a christian perspective • alma massaro – gianfranco nicora animalia: ontology and ethics in weak antispeciesism • leonardo caffo the contemporary debate on experimentation • susanna penco – rosagemma ciliberti non-human animals and genetic engineering • arianna ferrari the relationship between humans and other animals in european animal welfare legislation • paola sobbrio human’s best friends? • matteo andreozzi elationsre l a t io n s . b e y o n d a n t h r o p o c e n t r is m 1 • 2 0 1 3 r 10.2 december 2022 human beings’ moral relations with other animals and the natural environment edited by francesco allegri studies and research contributions what we owe owls: nonideal relationality among fellow 9 creatures in the old growth forest ben almassi the “cruel absurdity” of human violence and its consequences: 23 a vegan studies analysis of a pandemic novel jessica murray duality of abuse and care: empathy in sara gruen’s water 39 for elephants moumita bala smriti singh immanuel kant e l’etica ambientale. tre proposte per rivisitare 55 (e una per riattualizzare) la morale kantiana matteo andreozzi ecosocial autonomy as an educational ideal 75 jani pulkki sami keto comments, debates, reports and interviews is there a moral problem in predation? 93 francesco allegri author guidelines 101 relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 9 what we owe owls nonideal relationality among fellow creatures in the old growth forest ben almassi governors state university doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2022-02-almb balmassi@govst.edu abstract though many of us have constructed our lives (or have had them constructed for us) such that it is easy to ignore or forget, human lives are entangled with other animals in many ways. some interspecies relations would arguably exist in some form or another even under an ideal model of animal ethics. others have an inescapably non-ideal character – these relationships exist as they do because things have gone wrong. in such circumstances we have reparative duties to animals we have wronged because we have wronged them. here i draw upon christine korsgaard’s “fellow creatures” (2018) and other nonideal approaches to animal ethics to critically assess the united states fish & wildlife service practice of killing barred owls to protect endangered spotted owls in the old growth forest of the pacific northwest. this is a difficult case to be sure, but one that can benefit from non-ideal moral assessment in terms of interspecies relational repair. i argue for increased spotted owl habitat preservation and forest restoration as an alternative to barred owl removal that better aligns with both nonideal relational animal ethics and stated us fish & wildlife service values. keywords: animal ethics; christine korsgaard; endangered species; environmental ethics; interspecies relationality; old growth forest; owls; reparative justice; resource management; wildlife biology. 1. introduction in 1990 the northern spotted owl (strix occidentalis caurina) was officially listed as a threatened species according to the united states endangered species act. at that time environmental activist campaigns and court rulings led to significantly reduced logging and greater protection of relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2022-02-almb mailto:balmassi@govst.edu https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ben almassi 10 old-growth forests in the pacific northwest that these owls call home. the barred owl (strix varia) meanwhile did not figure prominently in the heated owl vs. timber disputes of the 1990s since historically few if any lived in the pacific northwest. for decades, however, the barred owl had been expanding its range westward, from the atlantic coast and the great lakes farther and farther across the great plains, following human development that made these areas more hospitable to them than before (fws 2013). by the 2000s it was clear to wildlife biologists that barred owls had arrived in british columbia, washington, and oregon, where they moved into the depleted, only recently protected habitats of the northern spotted owl. the northern spotted owl and barred owl are thought to have common ancestors and, though they have been geographically separated for thousands of years, can still apparently successfully mate, producing so-called “sparred owls”. but the tale of these two owls in the pacific northwest has not been about assimilation nor peaceful coexistence. studies through the 2000s and into the 2010s show steady losses in spotted owl populations in those areas where barred owls have arrived. the problem has been not so much barred owls killing spotted owls but competing for territory, including nesting sites that spotted owls leave behind when barred owls move in. by 2010 it was clear that the already low northern spotted owl numbers were dropping as barred owl migrated to the pacific northwest. in 2013 the us fish & wildlife service began the barred owl removal experiment (bore), a multi-year pilot project targeting barred owls for the aim of protecting endangered spotted owls. while capture, sterilization, and other efforts to impede barred owl reproduction were deemed infeasible, “lethal removal of barred owls was rapid, technically feasible, and cost effective” (diller et al. 2014). barred owls would have to be shot – not by hunting enthusiasts, but trained wildlife biologists who could tell the difference between owl friend and owl foe. since 2013, us fish & wildlife sharpshooters killed over 3000 barred owls at four study sites across the pacific northwest, with the initial experiment concluding august 2021. this raises the question whether barred owl population control should be adopted as a standing policy on public land in the pacific northwest and perhaps even extended to private landowners empowered to shoot barred owls for spotted owl conservation on their own properties. on the prospect of a range-wide management plan, lloyd diller estimates, managing barred owls over millions of acres would involve substantial cost and killing thousands of barred owls. whether our profession or society at large can accept this cost remains to be seen, but we all need to know there are no easy choices in this conservation dilemma. (diller 2013, 57) relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ what we owe owls 11 the nonprofit group friends of animals took legal action against the fish & wildlife service in 2014, arguing that the migratory bird treaty act did not license the deliberate killing of one bird species for the protection of another. the court ruled otherwise, however, and in march 2022 the appellate court affirmed the decision, which would seem to mean that at present there is no legal impediment to bore being adopted as standing policy. how might ethical assessment help us make sense this situation? here i consider several ethical considerations both for and against the possible extension of the barred owl removal experiment as standing management practice, with specific attention to the nonideal approach to animal ethics taken in christine korsgaard’s fellow creatures (2018). building upon this sort of nonideal reparative approach to interspecies relationality, i argue for increased spotted owl habitat preservation and forest restoration as an alternative to barred owl removal that better aligns with stated us fish & wildlife service values. 2. barred owl removal: initial moral considerations 2.1. animal rights (deontological considerations) for animal rights theorists like tom regan, both spotted owls and barred owls are “experiencing subjects of a life” (2003, 93) just like you and i. for his part regan is quite clear that an animal’s prima facie right not to be killed cannot be overridden simply for benefit to others – whether those others are human beings or an endangered species of owls (1983, xxviii). now one might think that what is at issue here are not barred owl rights vs. spotted owl benefits, but rather animal rights on both sides. as cheryl abbate argues in “how to help when it hurts” (2016), reganstyle animal rights also include rights of assistance, particularly for animals like the spotted owl who have been victims of prior injustice. in that case, the crucial question is whether the spotted owls’ rights of assistance outweigh – or are outweighed by – the barred owls’ right not to be killed. regan acknowledges that there are situations in which one individual’s rights conflict with another, not just that overriding rights may produce some benefit. in such situations where there is no ideal solution, no course of action that avoids violating someone’s or something’s rights, regan argues that what morality requires of us is to minimize rights relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ben almassi 12 violations. “precisely because each is to count for one, and no one for more than one, we cannot count choosing to override the rights of b, c, and d as neither better nor worse than choosing to override a’s right alone” (1983, 305; see also aaltola 2005, 20-22). when the harms are not comparable, regan says, the severity of rights violations is what matters. if the numbers of barred owls killed outweighs the number of spotted owls assisted, then bore fails both the minimization and severity tests. furthermore, if there are other viable ways to fulfill our duties of assistance to spotted owls without killing barred owls, this approach will unequivocally reject the latter as an unforced and indefensible rights violation. 2.2. animal welfare (consequentialist considerations) though generally more reformist than radical, utilitarian and other consequentialist animal ethicists often agree with rights-based critiques of conventional uses and abuses of nonhuman animals, albeit on different grounds. their welfare-based ethical opposition to animal agriculture and hunting, for example, is not so much that we view such animals as ours to eat or that we violate their rights when we do so, but rather the suffering to which we subject them (and the future positive experiences of which we deprive them) in the ways we confine, injure, and kill them (singer 1990; norcross 2004; mcmahan 2008). from a welfare-based perspective it is hard to escape the conclusion that bore causes more suffering than it prevents; there is little reason to think this would be different were it adopted as a range-wide policy. with trained wildlife biologists as shooters, adult barred owls with younglings are avoided and spotted owls are not mistakenly, needlessly shot and killed (diller et al. 2014, 3), yet the total number of barred owls killed far exceeds the number of spotted owls saved. as the fish & wildlife service acknowledges (2020), the result of this pilot project has not been spotted owls numbers rebounding within the areas studied but at best their numbers stabilizing at already low levels. here one might reasonably respond that welfarist considerations are not simply a matter of numbers of owls’ lives saved and lost, but also the flourishing and suffering they experience along the way. death by starvation or natural predation may well be more painful and protracted than a sharpshooter’s bullet. even assuming that “on average the suffering of northern spotted owls as the result of this competition is much worse than the suffering of the barred owl”, odenbaugh (2022, 5-6) allows, relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ what we owe owls 13 the aggregate effect on welfare would still seem to be negative since so many more barred owls have been killed – and further still more would be killed should bore become a standing practice – to promote so few spotted owls. 2.3. mental health (virtue/character considerations) some may suggest that moral ambivalence about barred owl removal is misplaced, that as a practice for the purpose of spotted owl conservation it is no more problematic than deer hunting as population control in habitat conversation or restoration projects. to be fair, animal-rights and animal-welfare advocates subject deer hunting to moral scrutiny too. there are also significant disanalogies between the barred owl removal experiment and standard deer culling practices. venison can be used for personal consumption and social programs, for example, and at least in some cases, deer overpopulation is bad for the deer themselves (ross 1992). unlike with owls there are long-standing cross-cultural traditions of deer hunting, and unlike with owls we don’t specifically assign the work of deer culling to those who have dedicated themselves to the study, care, and protection of deer. the use of wildlife biologists as bore sharpshooters may be suitably discriminating, but it is not without some psychological toll. lloyd diller, one such experienced shooter, describes how deliberately killing owls was a decidedly new and somewhat disturbing experience. “intellectually i believe that some barred owls need to be lethally removed in an experimental context”, diller writes (2013, 56), “but when faced with the reality of actually shooting one, it remains an internal struggle”. he continues: i was amazed at my emotional reaction to the prospect of killing this bird – an act superficially no different than shooting a grouse or turkey. but i had always rationalized that game birds were okay to shoot because they would be eaten by my family and me, and because their demographics allowed for a harvestable surplus. in contrast, i saw owls and other raptors as something to be strictly protected. (diller 2013, 54) the bore pilot project indicates that spotted owl numbers have at best leveled off in the areas studied, and given the larger phenomenon of barred owl westward migration, new barred owls will continue to populate these areas in coming years. if shooting barred owls is going to help spotted owls, it will seemingly need to continue indefinitely, which raises the concern that the psychological toll experienced by sharpshooters will continue as well. (the idea that wildlife biologists would become affecrelations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ben almassi 14 tively numb to the challenge of deliberately killing creatures they had previously seen as “something to be strictly protected” is hardly a morally reassuring alternative.) 2.4. non-intervention (wildness considerations) even putting aside animal rights, overall suffering, and psychological considerations, one might oppose shooting barred owls to save spotted owls on the grounds that we as humans should not be actively interfering with nature. this seems to be the position taken up by friends of animals, the forementioned nonprofit organization that took legal action against the fish & wildlife service. “while human-induced changes in animals’ habitats is certainly a bad thing, once they happen, animals need to be able to sort it out themselves”, argues nicole rivard (2019). “more human interference just makes it worse”. i appreciate rivard’s acknowledgement of prior human wrongdoing – but she follows this up with only negative moral relationality, doubling down on human non-interference. in doing so, she repeats a mistake made too often in animal-rights activism and theorizing. human-animal relations aren’t limited to exploitation or harmful interference, donaldson and kymlicka (2011) remind us. as ecological beings we cannot help but live in relation to other animals, including domesticated, liminal, and wild populations. “we are entangled in complex relationships and rather than try to accomplish the impossible by pretending we can disentangle”, lori gruen (2015, 63) advises, “we would do better to think about how to be more perceptive and more responsive to the deeply entangled relationships we are in”. 2.5. anti-invasive rationale (nativist considerations) most ethical arguments in favor of bore focus on helping spotted owls and acknowledge the effect on barred owls as a regrettable, justifiable moral cost. but one might support bore because it kills barred owls. one anti-invasive rationale is that barred owls simply don’t belong in the old-growth forests of the pacific northwest and thus should be eliminated from them. in practice i have not found fish & wildlife administrators, scientists, or others citing this rationale in defense of barred owl removal. notice that if this were one’s primary rationale, extending bore would not be an especially effective way to achieve it. too few owls have been shot at pilot-project levels to come close to eliminating the species in the relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ what we owe owls 15 region, not to mention the upstream issue of barred owls’ continuing westward migration. 2.6. species preservation (intrinsic/political/systemic considerations) in contrast to the anti-invasive rationale, species preservation is cited frequently in defense of barred owl removal. if what matters most is that an endangered species is saved from extinction, then the us fish & wildlife pilot project must be recognized as at least a partial success, stabilizing if not increasing spotted owl numbers in study areas. what about spotted owl preservation valued not so much for its own sake but as politically or systemically valuable? as noted, spotted owl protection was a divisive issue in the 1990s: given the political capital that was spent, it seems especially tragic to lose them now anyway. now as before, protecting the endangered spotted owl has been an effective way to protect old-growth forests indirectly by appeal to the endangered species act. if barred owls replace spotted owls in old-growth areas, those areas might lose their protected status – which would converge with the previous us chief executive’s agenda. “the trump administration is proposing to eliminate protections for imperiled spotted owls by taking back critical habitat status from more than 200,000 acres of public forests in oregon”, monica samayoa (2020) reported. “the us fish & wildlife service has proposed to reduce the northern spotted owl’s critical habitat population by 204,653 acres, or 2% of the 9.6 million acres that have been designated as protected habitat for the owl”. the political value of spotted owl species preservation at least partially overlaps with its systemic value. “when we endanger the spotted owl, we also endanger our communities”, argues doug heiken, coordinator of oregon wild conservation & restoration, “because spotted owl habitat also provides us with clean water, stable water flows, carbon storage and climate stability, habitat for fish and other wildlife, community fire resilience, recreation, scenery, and quality of life” (in samayoa 2020). notice that some ecosystem services identified here would seem to be more about the habitat than the northern spotted owl itself. this reaffirms that the spotted owl’s value is in part political: indirect protection of what is ecologically valuable around it. the owl itself plays a significant role in ecosystem health, to be sure, yet saving it from extinction is not necessarily enough for it to fill that role. if their populations are too low, they cannot occupy their historical niche in the ecosystemic health of old growth forests in the pacific northwest. relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ben almassi 16 it is too soon to say whether bore is supported or undermined (or neither) by systemic considerations, in part because it is too soon to say whether barred owls can fill spotted owls’ ecosystemic niches or know what other positive and negative ecological effects barred owls might have as they migrate to new areas. also worth noting is that the speciespreservation and ecosystemic arguments here would fail or succeed regardless of human responsibility for spotted owls’ endangerment. does the fact that this is our fault make a moral difference? what sorts of reparative obligations follow from past, present, and even future human wrongdoing toward these owls and the forests in which they live? 3. nonideal animal ethics and relational repair “if i had been in a position to design and create a world”, writes jeff mcmahan (2010), “i would have tried to arrange for all conscious individuals to be able to survive without tormenting and killing other conscious individuals. i hope that most other people would have done the same”. mcmahan proceeds to ask whether (and why not) we should bring an end to all predation, not just hypothetically but as active interventions in the actual world. his framing is illustrative of an ideal-theoretic ethic, seeking as it does to make sense of what our moral obligations are to nonhuman animals by reference to what these moral obligations would be if we had created them (and the rest of the world) from the ground up. “but this is not the relation in which we stand to the other animals”, korsgaard (2018, 186) responds. “we are not their creators, and we are not creating a world from scratch. we are the inhabitants of a world we already share with other animals, and the question we are asking is what we owe to them”. we are not creating a world from scratch, and the world we already share is one in which we have hurt, exploited, and otherwise wronged other animals – repeatedly, historically, and persisting today. to ask then what we owe them in this world cannot be limited to what we should do understood as what we should have done nor to what we should stop doing understood as what we should never have done in the first place, as valuable as these counterfactual questions might truly be. given the extant reality of interspecies wrongdoing, what we now owe other animals should include ameliorative duties of interspecies moral repair. similar to korsgaard’s nonideal approach to animal ethics are recent works (palmer 2018; emmerman 2019; almassi 2020) that extend notions relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ what we owe owls 17 of moral repair (walker 2006) and reparative justice (walker 2010) to interspecies relationships. for her part emmerman offers an ecofeminist account of the obligations we have to other animals in the aftermath of moral dilemmas and other conflicts. palmer argues that we have positive duties of assistance specifically because of our prior and present wrongdoing to both domesticated and wild animals made dependent or otherwise negatively impacted by our actions. her example is a coyote population whose habitat is lost due to human development. “if we take their interests with moral seriousness”, palmer says, “these harms should generate some backward-looking special obligations to assist” (2010, 102). we can see how this line of reasoning might be extended to northern spotted owls whose habitat has been degraded and destroyed in the pacific northwest. that said, it is absolutely crucial for us to recognize that a process of interspecies relational repair, like reparative justice generally, is itself a context of ethical analysis. we must ask what sort of amends we owe spotted owls, just what they need in light of how we have wronged and continue to wrong them. yet barred owls like other members of the affected biotic community cannot simply be disregarded in the reparative ameliorative process. even if killing barred owls is a way to assist spotted owls, are there not other, better ways for us to repair this morally degraded interspecies relationship without further degrading another in the process? these reflexive questions about nonideal interspecies relations direct us to consider alternative courses of action. note that the us fish & wildlife service itself acknowledges that barred owl competition is one of two main threats to the spotted owl’s continued survival. habitat loss is the other. note further that the revised fws northern spotted owl recovery plan in 2011 makes three primary recommendations: (a) to protect remaining spotted owl habitat; (b) to revitalize forest ecosystems through active management; and (c) to reduce competition from encroaching barred owls. given the multiple ethical issues with and modest success of (c), an alternate course of action with greater emphasis on (a) and (b) merits consideration. the great irony would be if we exempted even more habitat from protection while expanding barred owl killing in the name of saving endangered owls, as the trump administration sought to position this issue. consider how a pilot project of greater commitment to old-growth preservation and forest restoration would fare against the various moral considerations identified in the previous sections. to be fair, this sort of alternative would probably be inadequate on the anti-invasive rationale, since it prioritizes critical habitat for spotted owls rather than removing relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ben almassi 18 barred owls. greater protection of existing old-growth forests would be compatible with the non-interventionist rationale, although folks like eric katz (1992; 2012) and freya matthews (2004) would likely resist forest restoration as further human domination of nature. but on animal rights, animal welfare, sharpshooter psychology, and ecosystemic rationales, this alternate course of action grades out better than continuing to shoot barred owls indefinitely. in terms of interspecies relational repair, our obligations are to acknowledge and apologize for historical harms visited upon spotted owls, to cease continued perpetrations which we (purportedly) genuinely acknowledge as wrong, and to make amends via actions we can perform that our nonhuman victims actually need rather than those actions that we ourselves may prefer. shooting barred owls without protecting what little remains of old-growth habitat and restoring degraded habitats to better support spotted owls and other key members of those biotic communities fails these reparative guidelines. 4. concluding remarks let us conclude by anticipating and responding to two potential skeptical responses to greater commitment to old-growth preservation and forest restoration as a better way to fulfill our nonideal obligations and repair interspecies relationality in the pacific northwest. the first is ecological. what if this doesn’t work? what if barred owls simply expand into preserved habitats and revitalized forests and outcompete spotted owls there too? after all, lloyd diller warns, “the most likely outcome from setting aside more habitat will be to have even more barred owls” (2013, 55). that is indeed possible. but as an alternative answer to our main question, it may not be necessary that barred owls stay out of preserved habitats and revitalized forests. it may be enough that spotted owl populations increase or simply stabilize, even at low levels, regardless of barred owl population, for this course of action to fulfill stated us fish & wildlife values at least as well as adopting and expanding bore as a standing resource-management practice. the second skeptical response is political. greater commitment to old-growth habitat preservation and widespread forest restoration as a solution to spotted owl conservation is nice in theory, the response allows, but not political and economically realistic. perhaps this is true, although it is worth remembering that 1990s measures for owl conservation were often considered politically and economically unrealistic until relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ what we owe owls 19 adopted. more to the point, if this is the argument against a reparative alternative and for adopting bore as standing practice, then appeals to ecosystem health, endangered species preservation, or interspecies relational repair are exposed as little more than greenwashing. in that case, advocates for barred owl removal at least should acknowledge that their main priority is not protecting spotted owls but rather the status quo functioning of resource-management, economic, and political systems and stabilizing already low spotted owl populations to whatever extent is compatible with that. references aaltola, elisa. 2005. “animal ethics and interest conflicts”. ethics and the environment 10 (1): 19-48. abbate, cheryl. 2016. “how to help when it hurts”. journal of social philosophy 47 (2): 142-170. almassi, ben. 2020. reparative environmental justice in a world of wounds. lanham: lexington books. cornwall, warren. 2014. “there will 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https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://friendsofanimals.org/news/wildlife-wars-killing-one-animal-to-save-another-is-not-conservati https://friendsofanimals.org/news/wildlife-wars-killing-one-animal-to-save-another-is-not-conservati https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ what we owe owls 21 us court of appeals, 9th circuit. 2018. friends of animals v. us fish & wildlife service 879 f.3d 1000. us fish & wildlife service. 2013a. “final decision announced for barred owl removal”. https://www.fws.gov/pacific/news/news.cfm?id=2144375288 us fish & wildlife service. 2013b. “experimental removal of barred owls to benefit threatened northern spotted owls: final environmental impact statement”. executive summary (july). https://www.fws.gov/media/executive-summary-experimental-removalbarred-owls-benefit-threatened-northern-spotted-owls us fish & wildlife service. 2020. “barred owl study update”. https://www.fws.gov/project/barred-owl-study-update walker, margaret urban. 2006. moral repair. cambridge: cambridge university press. walker, margaret urban. 2010. what is reparative justice? milwaukee: marquette university press. copyright (©) 2022 ben almassi editorial format and graphical layout: copyright (©) led edizioni universitarie this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives – 4.0 international license how to cite this paper: almassi, ben. 2022. “what we owe owls: nonideal relationality among fellow creatures in the old growth forest”. relations. beyond anthropocentrism 10 (2): 9-21. doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2022-02-almb relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.fws.gov/pacific/news/news.cfm?id=2144375288 https://www.fws.gov/media/executive-summary-experimental-removal-barred-owls-benefit-threatened-nort https://www.fws.gov/media/executive-summary-experimental-removal-barred-owls-benefit-threatened-nort https://www.fws.gov/project/barred-owl-study-update https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ relations_10-2-2022_00b_sommario.pdf studies and research contributions what we owe owls nonideal relationality among fellow creatures in the old growth forest ben almassi the “cruel absurdity” of human violence and its consequences a vegan studies analysis of a pandemic novel jessica murray duality of abuse and care empathy in sara gruen’s water for elephants moumita bala smriti singh immanuel kant e l’etica ambientale tre proposte per rivisitare (e una per riattualizzare) la morale kantiana matteo andreozzi ecosocial autonomy as an educational ideal jani pulkki sami keto comments, debates, reports and interviews is there a moral problem in predation? francesco allegri author guidelines the chincoteague ponies and what it means to be free 5 is sn 2 2 8 0 -9 9 5 3 beyond anthropocentrism 1 • january 2013 inside the emotional lives of non-human animals a minding animals international utrecht 2012 pre-conference event special issue (genoa, italy, 12-13 may, 2012) edited by m. andreozzi, r. bennison, a. massaro, s. tonutti capabilities approach and animal bioethics • michele panzera animals and our emotions. how to approach the study of an interspecific community? • sabrina tonutti advocacy and animal rights • kim stallwood the emotional lives of animals: a christian perspective • alma massaro – gianfranco nicora animalia: ontology and ethics in weak antispeciesism • leonardo caffo the contemporary debate on experimentation • susanna penco – rosagemma ciliberti non-human animals and genetic engineering • arianna ferrari the relationship between humans and other animals in european animal welfare legislation • paola sobbrio human’s best friends? • matteo andreozzi elationsre l a t io n s . b e y o n d a n t h r o p o c e n t r is m 1 • 2 0 1 3 r 9.1-2 november 2021 animals: freedom, justice, welfare, moral status, and conflict cases edited by francesco allegri studies and research contributions pigs vs. boars: the ethics of assisting domesticated 9 and wild animals beka jalagania the chincoteague ponies and what it means to be free 27 alexis flower beyond the fairy tale of the shape of water: reimagining 41 the creature viktorija lankauskaitė max scheler e la possibilità di una nuova forma di antispecismo 59 enrico r.a. calogero giannetto distributive justice and animal welfare 75 paola morreale unitarianism or hierarchical approach for moral status? 91 a very subtle difference francesco allegri relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ relations. beyond anthropocentrism 6 comments, debates, reports and interviews animals and justice: the unfinished journey 111 paola fossati author guidelines 123 relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 27 the chincoteague ponies and what it means to be free alexis flower canisius college, buffalo (ny) doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2021-0102-flow flowera@my.canisius.edu abstract the chincoteague pony swim is a cherished tradition in chincoteague, virginia, where noble saltwater cowboys round up wild horses to be sold at auction the next day. the island thrives off this event’s economic impact, which is amplified through marguerite henry’s series “misty of chincoteague”, allowing the pony’s fame to reach all corners of the world. the tradition is rooted in chincoteague culture, but several different ethical aspects come into question after critical consideration. the islander’s economic dependence and pride in the ponies and yearly round up act as a disguise for these ethical quandaries, through the practice of modern myth making. this paper explores concepts of breed, the state of being wild vs. free, language surrounding horses, and hidden symbols within the swims organization to uncover the covert way in which chincoteague culture upholds colonial values. keywords: breed; chincoteague ponies; colonialism; culture; ethics; modern myth; slavery; taxidermy; tourism; wild. 1. introduction chincoteague island is a charismatic small town with a tourist attraction that makes you feel like part of the community: the chincoteague ponies. growing up thirty minutes from the island, my childhood contained many visits to chincoteague’s beaches, fascination for the wild horses, and walks through the quaint “downtown”. many american small towns maintain customs established around their time of settlement, and chincoteague is no exception. declared “america’s happiest seaside town” of 2014 (bekiempis 2014), this little island provides all the small quirks and amenities that enable its people to live slow, nostalgic lives throughout most of the year leading up to their one major event each july: the relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2021-0102-flow mailto:flowera@my.canisius.edu https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ alexis flower 28 chincoteague pony swim. this event draws massive crowds from across the world to witness the famous stocky “ponies” swim across the assateague channel to reach the chincoteague shore where they are corralled for auction. witnessing the event several times myself, i recall the near magical experience the spectacle provides: it is easy to lose oneself in the seemingly ancient custom and prideful experience of capturing the “wild” horses. it is clear that the chincoteague ponies mean everything to the island town. you cannot walk down a street in chincoteague without spotting something pony themed, whether it be the banners hung on street posts, merchandise in gift shops, or cleverly named businesses such as the “sandy pony donut shop” or the “pony express”. even the high school’s mascot is “the ponies” (bekiempis 2014). yet, when you break down the components of the pony swim and the significance of the ponies’ paradoxical “wild” status, the ethical relationship between the town and ponies comes into question. islander’s economic gain from the ponies is substantial, but i aim to uncover certain aspects of the culture surrounding the chincoteague ponies that may be overlooked due to the towns’ financial dependence on them. to better understand the complex relationship the people of chincoteague share with the local ponies, i will provide a brief historical account of chincoteague. this history helped lay the foundation for the oppressive tendencies that evolved into the chincoteague pony swim today. another major factor contributing to the ponies’ perceived value on the island is the award winning children’s series, “misty of chincoteague”. i will provide an in depth analysis of how this series has affected the people of chincoteague by elevating the chincoteague pony from a living being to a “piece of living history” (bekiempis 2014) as a result of the romanticized introductory theory of the ponies to the island. it is also important to consider the terminology associated with horses, which will play a crucial role in determining the status of the chincoteague pony, both in terms of their freedom and value to society. finally, firsthand accounts from various members of chincoteague society will be included to get a better understanding of the local perceptions on the importance of the chincoteague ponies to the community and how its members justify certain practices still used in the swim today. relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the chincoteague ponies and what it means to be free 29 2. chincoteague history chincoteague is a 9.3 square mile sliver of island located just south of maryland’s eastern shore border. assateague, the larger of the barrier islands, protects chincoteague from the brunt of the atlantic ocean (camagna and cording 2004, 2). together, these two islands have a shared history with overlapping use of the famed saltwater ponies. the chincoteague bay, a channel of water separating the two islands, is the setting for the celebrated pony swim. despite the small size of the island, 2,899 people inhabit chincoteague with 92% of its inhabitants being white according to the most recent available data (us census bureau 2018). prior to the discovery of chincoteague island by italian explorer giovanni da verrazzano in the early 16th century (devincent-hayes and bennett 2000; camagna and cording 2004), chincoteague and the surrounding barrier islands were home to a network of native american tribes called the assateagues, which included the tribes: pocomoke, annamessex, manokin, assateague, kicotank, and chincoteague. these tribes all lived under the control of the emperor of assateague (devincent-hayes and bennett 2000, 92). by the late 1600’s, european settlers began claiming the barrier islands as their own, utilizing the shore to pasture livestock (camagna and cording 2004, 2). in addition to stealing the assateague’s land, early settlers also enslaved them, forced miscegenation (mostly between blacks and natives), and murdered them either violently or by introducing diseases such as the small pox (krogh n.d.). an attempt at peace was made in 1742 and a treaty was struck between the remaining assateague tribe members and the european settlers in the area. several accounts, however, claim that this treaty “did not work well” (devincent-hayes and bennett 2000; camagna and cording 2004), and most of the native americans were driven from the area by 1750. by the early 1800’s, about 200 people inhabited both chincoteague and assateague islands, and settlers began holding periodic penning events to sort and brand animals (camagna and cording 2004, 4). the colonialism that had first subjugated the native american tribes began to see its way into the lives of the chincoteague ponies, as white christian settlers saw this new land as their “moral obligation to conquer any people who were still living in harmony with nature” (spiegel 1988, 16). the first written account of the now famous pony penning appeared in a letter to a magazine in 1835 (camagna and cording 2004, 4). the writer described the event as an “‘ancient custom’ that inspired great celebration and attracted crowds from afar” (ibid.). what prompted this tradition of pony penning? there are several theories as to how relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ alexis flower 30 the ponies arrived on the islands, varying in degrees of practicality and romanticized stories. the most popular accounts include pirates who attempted to hide the ponies within the barrier islands, or spanish galleons wrecking off the coast of chincoteague compelling the chincoteague ponies to swim to shore (devincent-hayes and bennett 2000, 182; camagna and cording 2004, 53; shepherd 2007; arden 2013; bekiempis 2014). these romanticized versions of the chincoteague ponies arrival aids in their mythical status perceived by the islanders, which in turn transforms them from living being to historical object. the ponies’ arrival story is likely much more practical than many would choose to believe, with their original owners leaving the horses on the shore to graze, allowing free pasture, fencing, and importantly, freedom from paying taxes against the livestock (devincent-hayes and bennett 2000, 183). however, this reality doesn’t make for a good story, and many forms of oppression require rationalization through a backstory. the chincoteague pony herd is considered “wild”, although the population is legally owned by the chincoteague volunteer fire department, who keeps the herd size to a manageable 150 ponies (camagna and cording 2004, 4; bekiempis 2014). the herd is composed of various breeds resulting from the incorporation of outside stock, including: paso fino, shetland pony, mustang, quarter horse, and arabic ancestors (guest 2019, 182). the chincoteague ponies are small, but sturdy equine, and are actually horses when considering their skeletal structure (shepherd 2007). the ponies have adapted to live in the harsh environment that the islands provide, with thick coats to protect them from the copious stinging insects in the summer and temperature drops in the winter (camagna and cording 2004, 53). they live mostly on marsh grass and brackish water, constituting a high salt diet, which contributes to stunting their growth (ibid.; shepherd 2007). to offset their high salt intake, chincoteague ponies drink about twice as much water as horses living in mainland areas, at about 20 gallons per day, making their stomachs swell and appear pregnant (ibid.). it is important to note that there are two distinct herds found on the barrier islands. a fence separates assateague island, marking the territory of the northern assateague herd who is owned by the federal government and managed by the national park service. these horses live a fairly undisturbed and natural life. however, the southern chincoteague herd is “the stuff of legends”, and is known worldwide as the chincoteague ponies (camagna and cording 2004, 4). the fence does not only stand to demarcate the two herds in terms of ownership, but also to relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the chincoteague ponies and what it means to be free 31 control breeding between the two herds in an attempt to maintain purity of the chincoteague bloodline (devincent-hayes and bennett 2000, 16). while the assateague herd receives limited to no human intervention, the chincoteague herd receives quite a bit of “assistance”, including the introduction of new breeding stock in an effort to improve the size and appearance of the ponies. the chincoteague ponies are rounded three times a year: once for the annual pony swim event and twice for wellness exams’ including the administration of vaccines and hoof trims (camagna and cording 2004, 63). the pony swim celebrated its 96th year in july 2020. what started as a rowdy local tradition of rounding up loose livestock has evolved into a globally recognized event that has defined the town of chincoteague, as well as its people. the event has remained customary throughout the years with the distinguished role of “saltwater cowboy” often spanning multiple family generations as the brave american men who ride out on horseback to roundup the “wild” beasts of the frontier. in traditional fashion, all riders must be men from the chincoteague volunteer fire department or one of their invited guests (camagna and cording 2004, 50). women have always played minor roles in the annual pony swim festivities, with the men holding major positions. “along with looking over the horses that would be auctioned the next day, the men also courted the women present, who would wear their finest dresses” (devincent-hayes and bennett 2000, 186). women’s exclusion from handling the horses, or involvement in the festivities outside of their appearance, objectified them in a similar fashion to the ponies. like the ponies who would later be auctioned based off of their appearance, the women of chincoteague further enabled the white men of the island to commodify living beings that began during chincoteague’s colonialization. 3. misty of chincoteague as cultural identity all forms of oppression are linked together (ko 2019). one group cannot be oppressed without the justification that comes with the oppression of another. the white male is often viewed as the pinnacle of human existence, which immediately relegates all others outside of this group as inferior. females, indigenous groups, people of color, and animals suffer from this apparent ordering of life. if all forms of oppression are linked together, then within each society, there has to be a progression of justifications for these actions. the misty of chincoteague series was just what the barrier islands needed to create an untouchable, timeless perception relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ alexis flower 32 of the chincoteague ponies – mythical creatures in their own right with a purpose to serve the island forevermore. “the chincoteague volunteer fire department has leveraged the misty mythology to create an industry that is arguably the most important economic driver for the island” (guest 2019, 182). the town once relied on the seafood industry, particularly oysters, to literally keep the town afloat, but the double introduction of the first annual pony penning and marguerite henry’s series in 1947 shifted the focus from seafood to tourism as thousands began visiting the islands to witness the famous ponies (camagna and cording 2004, 18). the impact of the series in conjunction with the swim created economic stability, with many islanders considering the event, “christmas in july” (devincent-hayes and bennett 2000, 157; bekiempis 2014). today, over 800,000 people visit the assateague refuge throughout the year. additionally, a staggering 1.2-1.5 million visit the virginia side, the island s welling to more than ten times its normal population during the roundup, swim, and auction (devincent-hayes and bennett 2000, 14; bekiempis 2014). i argue that the island’s economic dependence on the yearly roundup and related tourist attractions effectively disguises various ethical aspects concerning the yearly round up and auction. a concept that will be utilized throughout the evaluation of chincoteague and its ponies is modern myth making, “the means by which contradictory and complex ideological worldviews are simplified in images that naturalize their messages. myth ‘abolishes the complexity of human acts, it gives them the simplicity of essences’” (guest 2019, 178). the ponies’ mythological status both strengthens and justifies the paradoxical relationship they have with the people of chincoteague. the ponies are “wild” yet owned. they represent the untamed chaos of nature, and chincoteague culture upholds colonial values that seek dominion over what is wild. misty of chincoteague is about a family in which the two children buy a particularly elusive and rowdy mare, phantom, from the chincoteague pony auction. the first book follows their relationship with phantom as they attempt to “break” her, therefore extinguishing her free spirit and subjecting her to domestication. phantom triumphs in her situation, refusing the imposing dominance and maintaining her wild spirit (henry 1947). eventually, the family decides to return her to the wild beaches of assateague, but not before keeping her first foal, misty, who represents the successful domination over nature and remains on chincoteague under the family’s direct control. throughout the misty series, this oppositional and romantic view is extended: assateague is identified relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the chincoteague ponies and what it means to be free 33 as the island of “wild things” and chincoteague is the “island of men” (guest 2019, 180). the series clearly differentiates between wild (nature) and man (culture) and celebrates the control the round up allows over the ponies who inhabit the land – a similar dichotomy between the tribes and settlers years ago. spiegel summarizes the average colonists view on nature: “[the] frontiersmen acutely sensed that they battled wild country not only for personal survival, but in the name of nation, race, and god, civilizing the new world meant enlightening darkness, ordering chaos, and changing evil into good” (spiegel 1988, 16). this outlook over the domination the barrier islands experienced in the early 16th century continues covertly in many practices involving the ponies today. the series romantic view of the ponies is most responsible for their myth creation. henry chose to incorporate the spanish galleon wreck as the ponies’ introductory story to the shores of assateague. not only did she choose this romanticized version of their beginnings on the island, but she also framed their history in terms of biblical figurations when saying, “the ponies forgot the forty days and forty nights in the dark hold of the spanish galleon” (henry 1947, 26). this introduction that includes a biblical “time and trial” (guest 2019, 180) is reminiscent of noah’s ark and advances themes of christianity, which are “historically used as a colonial tool to bolster white superiority” (ko 2019, 10). the ponies’ introduction to the island also provided a sharp contrast between wild and domestic states (guest 2019, 180), with the ponies breaking free from the exploitative captain who originally wanted to sell and utilize the ponies for work in peruvian gold mines. when the ponies reach the shore of assateague, “[they] were exhausted and their coats were heavy with water, but they were free, free, free!” (henry 1947, 45). within the first two chapters, the ponies have gone from being transported by boat as owned merchandise ready to be sold and exploited for their labor, to escaping to their freedom. the islanders of chincoteague celebrate this introduction story and reverse the outcome. another factor adding to the mythology of the chincoteague ponies and further distinguishing them as commodities for human use is the establishment of “the chincoteague pony” breed, brought to life through henry’s series. “a mythology of breed crystallizes history and lore, nostalgia, and the economy of chincoteague in a version of ‘horse’” (guest 2019, 178). interestingly, the desirability of the breed does not reflect purity of blood or conformity to a breed standard, but rather, that the ancestry can be traced back to the territory owned by the chincoteague volunteer fire department (ibid., 182), or that the pony is from the same herd as “misty”. most potential buyers of a chincoteague pony desire relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ alexis flower 34 ponies that resemble “misty”, gold and white (camagna and cording 2004, 1), that provide a “living link to the history, real and imagined, that is circulated on the island and crafted in henry’s books” (guest 2019, 182). this concept of breed shaped by the myth of henry’s series creates the paradoxical relationship between the chincoteague islanders and the ponies: “the paradox of owning what is wild” (ibid., 188). 4. the paradox of the wild pony in order to correctly differentiate the status of chincoteague ponies, it is essential to understand perceptions of animals in terms of their involvement with people. as discussed, henry’s novels created the mythological breed “the chincoteague pony”, paradoxically placing them in a liminal state between wild and domestic. what then is a wild horse? dalke suggests: wild horses are referred to as feral or liminal animals by the scientific community since humans interfered with natural selection by domesticating and breeding them […] through no fault of their own these liminal animals live within the wild/domestic binary created by humans and are subject to definition according to categories of animal identity that include breed. (dalke 2019, 160) the chincoteague pony “breed” established through the misty series is reinforced through the annual round up and auction. the ponies “no longer [live] in a wild environment or herd through which they gain identity as part of a group” (ibid., 162), but rather exist in a liminal state, prized for their “wild” status but gathered for their submissive tendencies and mythological connections. this creates problems not only through disrupting the way the ponies derive their identity, but also to the horse’s place in the human perceptual hierarchy (ibid.), firmly creating an anthropocentric situation. ironically, once the chincoteague ponies are sorted for auction, potential buyers seek their submissive, gentle nature to allow for easy domestication, training, and the possibility to use them for whatever human ends desired (dalke 2019, 162; guest 2019, 177), contradictory to the unpredictability that is valued in a wild horse. “in effect, breed works to create equine bodies as cultural constructs that correspond to human desire, use, and imaginative resonance” (dalke 2019, 167). the chincoteague pony, then, successfully acts as a catalyst for speciesism, and in effect, the hierarchical nature of white supremacy. the paradoxical situation of the chincoteague ponies is further clarified when compared to human constructs. when considering domesticated animals, an animal breed is considered a sub species, similar to relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the chincoteague ponies and what it means to be free 35 a human race (dalke 2019, 170; renton 2019, 15). if this metaphor is extended, the situation of the chincoteague ponies can be visualized as a form of racism and colonialism. following postcolonial scholarship, these contradictory ideas about “humanness and animality shape the racist belief in western civilized superiority and white normativity” (deckha 2018). deckha continues: racist narratives about colonized peoples as ‘wild’, closer to nature, and subhuman – bolstered by scientific assertions about the bestial biological and physiognomic resemblances between nonwhites and animals – enabled european metropoles to be constituted as civilized and modern and whiteness to become the exemplar of humanity. (ibid.) the chincoteague pony’s breed being grounded in the romantic and mythical constructs of henry’s series succinctly reflects the origin and heritage story of the island itself, further cementing their fate on the island and allowing its inhabitants to continue with “white ignorance” (harper 2010) or the unconscious participation in white privilege that allows taking advantage of others. the islands economic dependence and cultural identity constructed through the ponies proliferates the ignorance found in many engagements involving the horses. examination of several examples helps shed light on some of these ethical oversights. 5. ethical concerns of the chincoteague pony swim anthropocentric organizations of power cause animals to be viewed not as beings in their own right, but rather, as “passive objects of its dominion” (hansen 2012, 223). this power structure fuels many circumstances in chincoteague framing the ponies, and many connections in their treatment can be made to racist tendencies and, at times, slavery. “nonhuman is like nonwhite, it implies a lack of something” (kirksey 2010) – here we find that the category of “nonhuman” is grounded in human exceptionalism, which itself is hierarchical and contains elements of racism and colonialism that enhances this notion of white supremacy. in the following paragraphs i will assess various ethical dilemmas the ponies experience during the annual roundup that follow them through the duration of their lives, and at times, after death. the roundup marks the end of their “freedom”, and introduces them to slavery. and just as they have done so many pony swim days past, men on horses gallop hard alongside the approaching ponies, cracking whips to scare rebels who dare to stray from the string […] as they approach the shore, their water matted manes and tails slapping back and forth, as if they were relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ alexis flower 36 trying to break free from a tyrannical bridle […]. those paints, with their big patches, are sure to fetch a high price at auction the next day. (bekiempis 2014) this excerpt was taken from a newsweek article printed in 2014, by victoria bekiempis, a writer visiting chincoteague and witnessing the pony swim for the first time. her language alone alludes to many dominant tones. men ride horses cracking whips to scare rebels. the ponies show obvious signs of distress and bekiempis even goes as far to comment on their apparent “trying to break free from a tyrannical bridle”. all of these images, including preferential physical characteristics, lead to their impending future as a commodity on auction day. this scene marks the beginning of the ponies transition into subjugation and slavery. when interviewing a young member of the chincoteague volunteer fire department about the pony swim, he comments: “the swim is great. this place gets so busy, and you know, the fire department makes a killing from it, which we need to survive”. his response is common throughout chincoteague and proves the events social and economic impact on the community. however, the comment also serves to “naturalize the means by which the wild is subdued to serve the ends of civilization” (guest 2019, 185). chincoteague locals’ dependence and pride of the tradition further serves as justification for many ethical dilemmas that involve the ponies. once the roundup is complete, the ponies are corralled at the chincoteague fair grounds where they are inspected by veterinarians and prepared for the next day’s auction. come auction day, around 90 ponies, mostly young colts, will be auctioned (camagna and cording 2004, 7). many chincoteague locals recite a rendition of this line when asked about the young’s separation from their mothers: “while it may seem cruel to separate the colts from their mothers, the event actually occurs about the same time mother nature signals the mares to push the babies off on their own anyways” (ibid.). this sentiment, while true for some, is not universal and ignores the fact that animals develop strong bonds, even emotions recognized as love, for members of their species and within their families (spiegel 1988, 44). as mentioned, horses gain identity and their place in the world through their relationship to a herd (dalke 2019, 162), and when members of this herd are removed, social relationships can become disrupted. i asked a chincoteague local of 25 years to describe the ponies appearance during their hold in the corral on the day of auction: “you know, they seem calm, that’s a chincoteague pony for ya”. she then trails off … “well, it is sad when they come to take the babies away from the moms. they all start whinnying and trotting around”. her response is relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the chincoteague ponies and what it means to be free 37 conflicted, confident in her assessment of the chincoteague pony disposition, but then dispirited when she admitted her emotions regarding the parent and child’s separation, perhaps recognizing the emotional response similar to that in humans – distress. local’s attitudes about this separation are mirrored in henry’s novels. during the auction scene within “misty of chincoteague”, maureen, the sister of the sibling pair who buy phantom, is outwardly troubled by the colts separation from their mother. the fire chief comforts her by responding “colts got to grow up some time”, explaining that it is natural for “a mare to tell her youngster to rustle his own living” and “separating them from their mothers is the kindest way we know how to teach them” (henry 1947, 106; guest 2019, 185). this justification resonates within the local community, diminishing emotions felt toward the clearly recognizable signs of distress and grief shown by the mares and colts. in her assessment of comparing animal conditions to that of slavery, spiegel comments, “one of the most tragic aspects of life as a slave comes about through the destruction of the family, and in a larger sense, the social structure” (spiegel 1988, 43). another occurrence the chincoteague ponies are subjected to (as well as other various “wild” horses such as mustangs in the west), is the concept of “breaking”. this is not a unique term utilized by the locals, but still provides insight to the perceived status of the ponies as inferior. “nomenclature can serve to oppress or empower, and such is highly revealing of the attitudes of those who use particular terms” (hurn 2012, 218). once captured through the round up, sold at auction, and adjusting to their new home, chincoteague ponies then “suffer what all horses must in order to be in service to humans – ‘breaking in’ to harness and saddle, physical confinement and control of his movements” (hansen 2012, 212). while this term can also apply to domesticated horses, it takes a more literal meaning here, considering the ponies are taken from their wild, free lifestyle to one of control: removing the chaos and replacing it with a civilized figure in line with colonial standards (spiegel 1988, 87). therefore, when breaking a chincoteague pony, “we actually do break her. we break her spirit, bend her to our will, make her a subordinate and subservient servant” (ibid., 34), which is one of the most enticing and central concepts in the misty series. again, we see man overpowering nature, “allowing human exceptionalism to justify the utilization and exploitation of other species who are deemed different and, in many important respects, inferior” (hurn 2012, 202). however, the chincoteague ponies oppression does not end at their new home, but indeed follows them into death. misty, the most famous pony on the island of chincoteague, died in 1972. her body was preserved through taxidermy and can still be viewed relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ alexis flower 38 today as a permanent exhibit (and reminder) at the museum of chincoteague on the island next to the fairgrounds. her daughter, stormy, is preserved alongside her (camagna and cording 2004, 8; bekiempis 2014). to aph ko, taxidermy is a “covert symbol of white supremacy”. she argues that: taxidermy functions within the realm of white supremacist thought and attitude: ‘taxidermy is understood by some as the emblem of the very values that drove the imperialist spirit: dominion, courage, vigor, undaunted determination, triumph over the “untamed”, and eventual victory of patriarchal values. (ko 2019, 50) following with this ideology: taxidermy may be conceptualized as a sign system inclusive of but not restricted to the literal stuffing of skins that produces a continually rearticulating network of signs that manipulate the categories of humans and animals, culture and nature, and life and death in the service of white supremacy. (ibid., 58) misty and her daughter stormy were mythical icons captured both figuratively and literally, through henry’s novels, serving as models for the domination of nature that had taken place on the island since colonial times. accounts read, “she is stuffed and displayed at the museum of chincoteague in all her white gold grandeur” (bekiempis 2014), and “stuffed and mounted for everyone to see” (camagna and cording 2004, 21), tokenizing misty and therefore “projecting a racialized power fantasy” (ko 2019, 59) onto the commodified object that she has become. white supremacy relies upon zoological ideas to bolster its power, and the zoological racial order is the foundation towards establishing its dominion (ibid., 38). the culture of chincoteague, albeit perhaps under the fog of white ignorance and capitalism, has remained covertly stuck in colonial times, utilizing assateague tribes land and people for societal gain in the past, to the chincoteague ponies utilized in the present. 6. closing remarks the chincoteague pony swim is a cherished island tradition. it is clear that the citizens of chincoteague recognize their economic dependence on the ponies and are extremely proud of the attention the “misty of chincoteague” series provides for the island. however, the question needs to be asked – do these realities outweigh the ethical concerns of the ponies and further justify the forms of exploitation discussed above? is the pony relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the chincoteague ponies and what it means to be free 39 swim really in the best interest of the chincoteague ponies or merely meeting anthropocentric needs? (dalke 2019, 172). “arluke and sanders argue that all animals ‘are given a cultural identity as people try to make sense of them, understand them, use them, or communicate with them’” (ibid., 160). in the case of the chincoteague ponies, much of their cultural identity stems from the misty series, which further exacerbates the locals continued justification for collecting and commodifying them. garcia perfectly summarizes the chincoteague ponies relationship with the island: we miss the ways in which animality and racialization, nature and culture, have long mutually shaped each other. the same logics of classification and hierarchies of difference that govern human mastery over non humans are at work in projects of coloniality and macis. (garcia 2019) what happens when we refuse to acknowledge connections? i do not believe the people of chincoteague are tyrannical beings driven to conquer and control all the ponies on chincoteague, or even that the ponies who are auctioned end up living miserable lives. however, i think it is important to note that all forms of oppression are interconnected, and partaking in actions and traditions that cause concern in one species, should be equally considered in another. freedom is an inherently “american” right, yet many seem to struggle to maintain their freedom, or are constantly having it taken away. so, then, what does it mean to be free? all eyes are trained on the shoreline as spectators anticipate the return pony swim when the herd is restored to freedom on assateague island. (camagna and cording 2004, 51) references arden, amy. 2013. “it happened here: chincoteague, va.: saltwater cowboys round up wild island ponies”. american cowboy 20: 40. https://www. americancowboy.com/2013/07/25/it-happened-here-chincoteague-va/ bekiempis, victoria. 2014. “the wild ponies of chincoteague island; chincoteague is overrun by feral, swimming ponies. and it’s a wondrous thing to behold”. newsweek 163 (16). https://www.newsweek.com/wild-ponieschincoteague-island-276678 camagna, dorothy, and jennifer cording. 2004. chincoteague revisited: a sojourn to the chincoteague and assateague islands. richmond (va): oaklea press. dalke, karen. 2019. “mustang, wild horse or breed? reflections of american culture”. in horse breeds and human society: purity, identity and the making of the modern horse, edited by kristen guest and monica mattfield, 159-176. abingdon: routledge. relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ alexis flower 40 deckha, maneesha. 2018. “postcolonial”. in critical terms for animal studies, edited by lory gruen, 280-293. chicago: the university of chicago press. devincent-hayes, nan, and bo bennett. 2000. chincoteague and assateague islands. charleston (sc): arcadia publishing. garcía, maria e. 2019. “death of a guinea pig”. environmental humanities 11: 351-372. https://doi.org/10.1215/22011919-7754512 guest, kristen, and monica mattfeld. 2019. “wild at heart: the chincoteague pony and the paradox of feral ‘breed’”. in horse breeds and human society: purity, identity and the making of the modern horse, edited by kristen guest and monica mattfield, 177-192. abingdon: routledge. hansen, natalie c. 2012. “horse talk: horses and human(e) discourses”. in speaking for animals: animal autobiographical writing, edited by margo demello, 207-229. new york: routledge. harper, amie b. 2010. “race as a ‘feeble matter’ in veganism: interrogating whiteness, geopolitical privilege, and consumption philosophy of ‘cruelty-free’ products”. journal for critical animal studies 8: 1-23. henry, marguerite, and wesley dennis. 2006. misty of chincoteague. new york: aladdin paperbacks. hurn, samantha. 2012. humans and other animals: cross-cultural perspectives on human-animal interactions. london: pluto press. kirksey, s. eben, and stefan helmreich. 2010. “the emergence of multispecies ethnography”. cultural anthropology 25: 545-576. https://doi.org/10.1111/ j.1548-1360.2010.01069.x ko, aph. 2019. racism as zoological witchcraft: a guide for getting out. brooklyn (ny): lantern books. krogh, matthew. n.d. a community gone: the eastern shore natives. eastern shore of va network. http://www.esva.net/ghotes/matthew/es%20indians.htm renton, kathrin. 2019. “defining ‘race’ in the spanish horse: the breeding program of king philip ii”. in horse breeds and human society: purity, identity and the making of the modern horse, edited by kristen guest and monica mattfield, 13-26. abingdon: routledge. shepherd, misty. 2007. “an island’s living history”. grit. rural american knowhow. https://www.grit.com/animals/an-islands-living-history/ spiegel, marjorie. 1988. the dreaded comparison: human and animal slavery. new york : mirror books. u.s. census bureau. 2018. “american community survey 5-year estimates”. census reporter profile page for chincoteague, va. http://censusreporter. org/profiles/16000us5116512-chincoteague-va/ relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 http://www.esva.net/ghotes/matthew/es indians.htm https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ relations_9-1-2-2021_00b_sommario.pdf studies and research contributions pigs vs. boards beka jalagania the chincoteague ponies and what it means to be free alexis flower beyond the fairy tale of the shape of water viktorija lankauskaitė max scheler e la possibilità di una nuova forma di antispecismo enrico r.a. calogero giannetto distributive justice and animal welfare paola morreale unitarianism or hierarchical approach for moral status? a very subtle difference francesco allegri comments, debates, reports and interviews animals and justice paola fossati author guidelines duality of abuse and care: empathy in sara gruen’s “water for elephants” 5 is sn 2 2 8 0 -9 9 5 3 beyond anthropocentrism 1 • january 2013 inside the emotional lives of non-human animals a minding animals international utrecht 2012 pre-conference event special issue (genoa, italy, 12-13 may, 2012) edited by m. andreozzi, r. bennison, a. massaro, s. tonutti capabilities approach and animal bioethics • michele panzera animals and our emotions. how to approach the study of an interspecific community? • sabrina tonutti advocacy and animal rights • kim stallwood the emotional lives of animals: a christian perspective • alma massaro – gianfranco nicora animalia: ontology and ethics in weak antispeciesism • leonardo caffo the contemporary debate on experimentation • susanna penco – rosagemma ciliberti non-human animals and genetic engineering • arianna ferrari the relationship between humans and other animals in european animal welfare legislation • paola sobbrio human’s best friends? • matteo andreozzi elationsre l a t io n s . b e y o n d a n t h r o p o c e n t r is m 1 • 2 0 1 3 r 10.2 december 2022 human beings’ moral relations with other animals and the natural environment edited by francesco allegri studies and research contributions what we owe owls: nonideal relationality among fellow 9 creatures in the old growth forest ben almassi the “cruel absurdity” of human violence and its consequences: 23 a vegan studies analysis of a pandemic novel jessica murray duality of abuse and care: empathy in sara gruen’s water 39 for elephants moumita bala smriti singh immanuel kant e l’etica ambientale. tre proposte per rivisitare 55 (e una per riattualizzare) la morale kantiana matteo andreozzi ecosocial autonomy as an educational ideal 75 jani pulkki sami keto comments, debates, reports and interviews is there a moral problem in predation? 93 francesco allegri author guidelines 101 relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 39 duality of abuse and care empathy in sara gruen’s water for elephants moumita bala smriti singh indian institute of technology, patna (india) doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2022-02-basi moumita_2121hs05@iitp.ac.in smritisinghiitp@gmail.com abstract in an era of anthropocene, habitat loss and species extinction due to anthropogenic factors, and the upsurge in animal exploitation force us to reconsider the “animal question” and relationships between humans and animals. all forms of animal abuse violate the subjectivity of the animals by othering them as objects who are mercilessly exploited. purportedly influenced by the social consciousness of the moral rights of animals and the animal advocacy movement, sara gruen’s novel “water for elephants” (2006), exposes the horrible reality of animals being mistreated for entertainment in the circus industry through a fictitious description of the events in the benzini brothers’ shows. the framework of this research is based on two arguments: the crucial link between human insensitivity or empathy erosion and animal abuse; and the significance of empathy, in particular, “entangled empathy”, in acknowledging animals as moral subjects, taking care of them, and creating the harmonious human-animal relationship in the novel. keywords: animal abuse; anthropocentrism; empathy; empathy erosion; entangled empathy; ethics; fiction; human cruelty; moral agency; suffering. 1. introduction animals are exploited for different purposes throughout the world and entertainment is one of them (maher et al. 2017). the circus is a type of regulated animal entertainment that is an essential component of mainstream western civilization. criticism is directed not just at particular instances of animal mistreatment but also at the governing concept that permits the use of animals for entertainment (schwalm 2007). the ideology of speciesism or our prejudicial attitude towards other animals is relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2022-02-basi mailto:moumita_2121hs05@iitp.ac.in mailto:smritisinghiitp@gmail.com https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ moumita bala smriti singh 40 one of the reasons behind the exploitation of animals and their suffering (sunstein and nussbaum 2004). coined by richard ryder in the 1970s and later popularized by peter singer, the term “speciesism” is occasionally used to describe the ethically dubious notion that only humans should be given moral consideration; this form of discrimination nevertheless has to be addressed (dhont and hodson 2019). humans’ condescending attitude towards the animals reinscribes or reinforces the ideology of speciesism. whenever we think of circus, we are reminded of the seemingly inseparable worlds of humans and animals where people become so absorbed in entertainment that they do not pay any heed to the horrifying reality of exploiting animals, which is primarily caused by people’s speciesist attitudes toward animals. hanna sentenac’s article (2014) revealed several instances of animal exploitation inside the circus. despite being seriously ill, 3-year-old asian elephant kenny was forced to perform by ringling bros. circus in 1998. kenny subsequently passed away. the next year another young elephant named benjamin died of heart attack when his trainer began prodding benjamin with a bull hook as the elephant continued to swim against his trainer’s instructions. the inhuman treatment of animals at the universal soul circus is also revealed in 2013 by a whistle blower (“5  abuse cases”). thousands of animals are transported across the nation in claustrophobic trailers, held chained in filthy enclosures, and made to perform difficult acts under threat of punishment despite the horrific suffering they face in the circus (peta). in the late 20th century, the circus business developed over time into a popular form of entertainment, but the ongoing exploitation of animals for amusement remained concealed behind the glitz and glamour of the performances. with the development of modern transportation, the circus gained tremendous commercial success and the required level of popularity that significantly contributed to the growth of the american entertainment sector (nemec 2020). to meet the demands of the consumers the highly capitalized contemporary circuses deployed massive human and animal workforces, contemporary technology, and managerial strategies and traveled via wagon, trail, riverboat, and railway (nance 2013). animal celebrities have often led to the growth of the american circus industry. the usual discourse of the entertainment industry promotes the captivity of wild animals as an ecologically significant endeavor that is meant to lessen the distinctions between humans and animals (bell 2015). it never discusses the actual deplorable condition and the experiences of the elephants, the so-called celebrity of the circus. the illustration of the “genial circus elephant” exemplifies how caged relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ duality of abuse and care 41 animals are depicted as willing entertainers (nance 2013; barraclough 2014). but with the emergence of animal welfare groups, this discourse of glorifying captive wild animals is subverted in the narratives of the circus industry. to train them to exhibit unnatural behaviors, animals in the circus industry are frequently chained, imprisoned in tiny cages, and tormented with a variety of instruments. they do not act out on purpose until they are forced to, and since they are kept apart from their family for training and commercial reasons, they are subjected to physical and mental torture. animal rights activists protest against this serious issue of animal suffering in every sector of the society. not only does animal suffering concern social activists, but it has also gained significant attention in the literary world (holečková 2022). literary texts always present a cogent series of questions about humananimal relations where empathy has a very important role to play. the issue of animal exploitation and the pro-animal perspectives in literary representation of animal ethics may always serve as a counter argument to the ideology of speciesism (mckay 2004). fictional texts like black beauty by anna sewell (1877) and beautiful joe (1893) by margaret marshall saunders are recognized for conveying to readers the urgency of preventing animal cruelty and suffering (malecki et al. 2016). philosophers like peter singer, stanley cavell, cora diamond, and stephen mulhall have expressed a strong interest in j.m. coetzee’s elizabeth costello (2003) (beauchamp and frey 2011). these fictional texts have demonstrated the influence of animals on literary imagination and the reader-impacting moral implications of literary works addressing animal concerns. the american author sara gruen has also addressed the concerns about animal exploitation and suffering in her novel water for elephants (2006) (triana 2013; lifu 2022). the novel is moralistic in nature because it clearly deals with various forms of animal abuse through vivid images of animal suffering and implicitly condemns animal abuse through the symbolic depiction of the animals being freed from their cages or rather from all types of abuse at the novel’s conclusion. being set in america during the great depression of the 1930s (pfening 1976), it deftly captures the growth and collapse of the american circus through a fictitious description of the happenings in the benzini brothers’ show as recounted by jacob jankowski, the protagonist of the novel. drawing heavily from the traveling circuses in and around america, the fictional text sets out to investigate the activities of circus owners to expose the crooked practices that lie beneath the pomp and splendor of the magnificent performances and the horrifying reality of the abused animals in the name of entertainment (triana 2013). animals are subjected to relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ moumita bala smriti singh 42 abhorrent suffering and oppression in the entertainment industry, like the circus in the novel, employing effective control and violent methods. the deliberate exploitation of animals generates ethical concerns in this novel, which critiques the anthropocentric worldview by underlining the violation of the animals’ subjectivity. the literary portrayal of animal brutality and suffering compels readers to participate in an empathic engagement with the animals in the novel (keen 2006; bernaerts et al. 2014). the fictional characters in the novel can be divided into two categories those who lack empathy or do not display any empathy at all in their behaviouristic attitudes toward animals, and those who uphold an empathetic relationship with the captivated animals or accomplish their ethical obligations to them. this study applies simon baron cohen’s concept of “empathy erosion” and lori gruen’s concept of “entangled empathy” to investigate the issue of animal abuse and find out the solutions to this issue through an alternative ethic in the novel water for elephants (2006). this study is predicated on two arguments: the first is that animal exploitation and suffering are primarily caused by our lack of empathy or complete erosion of empathy, and the second is that empathy, or more specifically, “entangled empathy”, enables people to connect with animals more deeply and improve their situation. how “empathy” and “empathy erosion” operate simultaneously in the novel is a question that this research aims to problematize by analysing the fictional representation of human-animal relationships in the novel. 2. animal ethics and its approaches animal ethics, which gained popularity in the 1970s, is concerned with the normative aspects of the interaction between humans and animals, specifically, the moral status of non-human animals (armstrong and botzler 2003; aaltola 2012). kant defends our indirect obligation to animals by pointing out that treating them cruelly can affect how we treat other people. he contends that since responsibility is a result of reciprocity among rational beings, humans have no obligation to animals (beauchamp and frey 2011). the utilitarian philosophy of animal ethics, which addresses the relevance of sentience in animal ethics, has refuted the concept that cognitive abilities serve as the yardstick of moral considerability: “the question is not, can they reason? nor, can they talk? but, can they suffer?” (bentham 2014, 500). bentham’s well-known statement endorsing the utilitarian viewpoint initiates a serious discussion over the relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ duality of abuse and care 43 moral standing of animals. for utilitarians, sentience becomes the main criterion of moral standing of animals which specifically emphasizes pain and suffering of animals that they share with the human beings (stanford encyclopedia of philosophy 2003). suffering becomes a tool of defining the moral status of animals: “originally defined in relation to physical pain but more recently also defined to include mourning, grief, and other painful emotions, suffering has long been the primary focus for many writers on animal rights, from jeremy bentham to peter singer” (baker 2019, 4). by placing vulnerability at the centre of the contentious debate over the moral position of animals, it opens up the possibility of undermining the anthropocentric understanding of the world. with the publication of peter singer’s book animal liberation (1975), the animal liberation movement gained prominence in response to animal exploitation, and its practical objectives are to put an end to both human oppression and animal misery (gruen and weil 2012). in the 1970s, when singer and others promoted reason that is wholly separated from emotions in cases of moral concern for other animals, the connection between sentimentality and animal advocacy was temporarily lost (aaltola 2018). the separation of emotion from reason and the preference for the latter as the foundation for animal ethics are two issues with this mainstream philosophical viewpoint on animal ethics that have drawn criticism from feminist theorists whose ideology moved from an ethics of justice to an ethics of care by developing a praxis built on compassion, care and empathy (gruen and weil 2012; gruen 2015; donovan 2016; gruen 2017). to build a society that values greater respect, compassion, and equality, empathic development is urgently needed. shortly after singer’s defence of reason, mary midgely tried to clarify the role of emotion in comprehending moral concern for animals and stressed the interplay between reason and emotion. she made the argument that emotions, particularly empathy, paved the way for non-human animals to have moral importance (aaltola 2018). in addition to midgely, nussbaum, and the feminist care tradition researchers, other frameworks are also employed to suggest a new animal ethics, including the importance of emotions (aaltola 2018). animals are valued by feminist care approach of animal ethics in all of their heterogeneity, including the unequal power dynamics in human-animal relationships where animals are primarily employed as resources (donovan and adams 2007; gruen 2015). one must meet the world with compassion regardless of the skin color, sex, or species of other individuals if emotion is what defines a moral human being (aaltola 2018). animal philosophy needs to prioritize emotions as a legitimate and essential component of relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ moumita bala smriti singh 44 “moral agency” (pluhar 1988, 34) since failing to do so raises the likelihood that animal philosophy will revert to the logic of dominance. compassion, sympathy, and empathy are frequently discussed within the care tradition of animal ethics. empathy identifies connection with and knowledge of the circumstances of the other, as opposed to sympathy, which has a more detached perspective toward the other. lori gruen’s idea of “entangled empathy”, which she uses to approach animals and formulate animal ethics, is crucial in this movement of legitimizing emotions for recognizing the moral agency of animals (gruen 2015). lack of empathy or erosion of empathy may be detrimental factors in humananimal relationships. cohen argues that humans’ “empathy erosion” significantly affects how we treat others, considering them more like objects than subjects (baron-cohen 2011; aaltola 2013; franklin 2013). 3. “empathy erosion” and/in animal abuse martin buber’s notion of the “i-it” pattern of thought, in which one connects with a person or object in order to exploit them or it for some reason, might be related to simon baron-cohen’s concept of “empathy erosion” (baron-cohen 2011, 11). in many societies and individuals’ interactions with non-human animals, encountering empathy erosion has been a regular occurrence. it is very clear today how modern animal industries treat animals as objects of control, manipulation, and exploitation while their experiences are no longer taken into consideration and their suffering has very little significance (aaltola 2013). in the novel water for elephants (2006), it is plausible to interpret august’s cruel treatment of animals, animal slaughter, the circus owner uncle a1’s decision of keeping the animals in a helpless state for financial gain, and the audience’s enjoyment of cruelty in a performance as actions resulting from “empathy erosion” and objectification of animals. by trapping the lions, horses, and rosie, the elephant in confined spaces where they are unable to stand up straight or even turn around, their fundamental freedom of movement is denied while still being expected to be in good condition for the performance. they are exploited in every way imaginable, and when they are no longer profitable to the owners, they are mercilessly slain. in the novel, the cruel slaughtering of the aged and frail horses might be seen as the deeds that result from the erosion of empathy. pete executes august’s orders by slitting the throats of a deteriorating grey horse, an undernourished bay horse, and so on. pete begins by killing a grey horse, who is screaming as blood shoots relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ duality of abuse and care 45 six feet from a huge hole in its neck. the bay horse, who is chained next to the grey horse, is so afraid that its nostrils are dilated, and its muzzle is pointed straight up in the air. pete watches the horses until they are dead, then he wipes his nose and goes back to his work (gruen 2011, 178-179). the captivated animals are not properly fed either and for instance, august forces jacob to feed the cats rotten meat (gruen 2011). the hard decisions are always taken by uncle a1 at the cost of the lives of animals multiple times throughout the novel. uncle a1 has decided to take over the circus after fox brothers’ failure, but unless the fox brothers company lowers the price, the exotic or ring stock animals are not even fed or watered. uncle a1’s empathy has been turned off when he treats the animals as objects of manipulation for material wealth (baron-cohen 2011). the novel very skilfully depicts the hostile relationship between august and the animals. to be able to empathize with others, one must go through two stages of empathy: recognition and response. to develop empathy, one must be able to relate to the emotions of others and react to them appropriately (baron-cohen 2011, 18). but august throughout the novel consistently prioritizes his own needs over those of the animals, suggesting that his empathy is completely turned off. when rosie, the elephant refuses to comply with his demands, august becomes utterly furious and cruelly torments her with a bull hook until her eyes become narrow and her gigantic ears flatten on her head (gruen 2011, 176). august’s inhuman treatment of animals, specifically rosie, in the novel grabs the attention of the readers. by identifying some of the symptoms, such as people’s inability to manage their anger, baron-cohen (2011) in his book zero degrees of empathy demonstrates how to recognize zero degrees of empathy in individuals (143). during the performance of rosie and marlena, august constantly thrashes the elephant with the bull hook making rosie agitated and escape the show by running aimlessly. rosie’s disobedience to august’s commands incites august’s anger to the extreme and his madness is beyond comprehension when he begins to beat her while yelling aggressively: this sent the rest of the animals into a panic – the chimps screeched, the cats roared, and the zebras yelped […]. when she processed to squealing and shrieking, many of the men turned away, unable to take any more […]. the remaining men found rosie lying on her side, quivering, her feet still chained to a stake. (gruen 2011, 279-280) august’s outbursts of anger, such as the elephant-thrashing episode, are just one indication of his inability to control his anger and what baronrelations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ moumita bala smriti singh 46 cohen refers to as his “zero degree of empathy”. the history of the circus also contains several accounts of actual instances of elephant exploitation. animals’ sensitive skin is frequently lacerated by being struck with sharpened bull hooks; for example, a ringling brothers document depicts an elephant being hooked during a performance and leaking blood all over the floor. although the circus owners and the trainers directly abuse the animals via physical torment, the spectators or consumers unknowingly take part in the abuse by objectifying the animals and finding enjoyment in the show where nature is restricted and cruelty is so openly displayed: the audience loves it. each time rosie trots ahead of august and stops, they roar with laughter. and each time august approaches, red-faced and waving his bull hook, they explode with glee. finally, about three-quarters of the way around, rosie curls her trunk in the air and takes off at a run, leaving a series of thunderous farts in her wake as she barrels towards the back end of the tent. (gruen 2011, 207) the elephant rosie is involved in a relationship of gazing with the spectators in which the spectator or the gazer retains power and rosie is relegated to becoming the spectacle or the other. cruelty in a performance, or, to put it more precisely, the tools used to intimidate the animals are not always deployed. the novel’s depiction of elephant performances expertly illustrates cruelty as a performance and cruelty in the performance, two of the most glaring aspects of animal acts (carmeli 1997). rosie’s acts in the circus can be defined as cruelty as a performance where members of the audience find pleasure in the forced animal acts. basically, the audience takes on the role of the main abusers of animals who behave like “psychopaths” and according to baron-cohen, behaving like psychopaths is a type of zero degree of empathy: “sometimes the mindless aggression is not triggered by a perceived threat but by the need to dominate, to get what one wants, a complete detachment from another person’s feelings, and possibly even some pleasure at seeing someone else suffer” (baroncohen 2011, 51). the elephant poses with her trunk curled in the air while wearing a man’s hat on her head, following august’s orders, and the crowd laughs as they are much delighted. standing next to her and brandishing a bull hook, august grins like a proud father (gruen 2011, 205). separated from the natural habitat, rosie is forced to do some human behaviours and entertain the spectators. the elephant’s typical behaviour of taking off and replacing her hat is trained by humans and performatively textualized exclusively to exercise human control over nature. in the live performances of the circus, the postures and movements of the animals, such as horses and elephants, are nothing but human constructions and purposeful human behaviour. this anthropomorphic motif relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ duality of abuse and care 47 is an important strategy used by humans to approach and tame animal bodies and the trainer’s presence continuously reminds the spectators of the forced and controlled behaviour of animals (carmeli 1997). similarly, the violent events such as butchering horses, hitting rosie with a bull hook, feeding big cats dead meat, etc. evoke animal abuse and the pain that animals go through. “if sentient animals can feel pain as we do, then their suffering is morally relevant. dehumanisation and repressed empathy are closely linked to cruel behaviour towards animals” (reeves 2004, 35). the perpetrators of animal abuse treat the animals cruelly as a result of their zero degree of empathy (baron-cohen 2011). the fictional depiction of overt and covert violence perpetrated against animals by humans can be categorized within the broad spectrum of animal abuse occurring throughout the world and calls for an immediate solution of universal consideration that would create a space for empathy and respect in place of the dualistic notions of objectification and dominance. 4. entangled empathy in animal care entangled empathy is an experiential process involving a blend of emotion and cognition in which we recognize we are in relationships with others and are called upon to be responsive and responsible in these relationships by attending to another’s needs, interests, desires, vulnerabilities, hopes, and sensitivities. (gruen 2015, 18) the novel water for elephants (2006) illustrates how the characters like jacob, marlena and kinko engage with an empathic engagement with the nonhuman animals. it also produces the feeling of entangled empathy in the readers. the fictional narratives can also suggest morally important insights about the treatment and consideration of the nonhuman animals and this novel also asserts that argument. while august’s treatment towards rosie is always inhuman, marlena and jacob share a close bonding with the elephant from the very beginning onwards by acknowledging rosie as an individual animal. their first encounter with rosie begins with feeding her various foodstuffs and recognizing rosie’s smiling face. naming the elephant and interpreting the elephant’s behaviour in “human” terms immediately remind us of the process of anthropomorphization which is severely critiqued as “non-scientific” but gruen questions this problematic notion of science by indicating the role of empathy in understanding different patterns of behaviour (gruen 2015). relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ moumita bala smriti singh 48 jacob, the novel’s narrator, pays close attention to the elephant’s minute expressions of terror as a result of august’s constant torture with the bull hook, which include narrowing her eyes and flattening her ears against her head. the process of entangled empathy begins as soon as jacob pays attention to the elephant’s species-typical behaviour and interacts with rosie in an empathic direction, setting the bull hook aside and addressing him with high reverence. entangled empathy is a way for oneself to perceive and to connect with a specific other in their particular circumstance, and to recognize and assess one’ s place in reference to the other. this is a central skill for being in ethical relations. (gruen 2015, 70) in response to jacob’s behaviour the elephant’s behaviour also changes, which is evident when she swings her trunk across the ground in front of her while fanning her ears like gigantic leaves and smiling (gruen 2011). when august brutally beats rosie, the novel shows how marlena and jacob experience intense pain and suffering. the narrator also demonstrates how they share a close bond with the elephant by responding to her traumatic experiences. the entire narrative encourages readers to empathize with the fictional characters. being responsive in a relationship is the first step in developing entangled empathy, which is an experiential process that is concerned with the relationships with the other. when rosie lifts her trunk, yells, and scampers sideways after the ruthless torture of august, marlena chokes back a sob and jacob reaches for her hand (gruen 2011). gruen’s concept of “entangled empathy” criticizes the abstract or more generalizing ethical reasoning by focusing on subjective experiences of individual animals (larsen 2020). being responsible for the wellbeing of the animals is also an important criterion of a relationship of entangled empathy in human-animal relations. when jacob enters the circus’ menagerie, he notices the miserable conditions of the polar bear, camels, and hyenas who are confined in cages away from their natural habitats and feels an empathetic response well up within of him. when jacob takes care of an individual animal’s “needs, interests, desires, vulnerabilities, hopes, and sensitivities”, his initial feeling of empathy for the trapped animals transforms into a sense of responsibility: “one of the chimps needs a cuddle, so i let him ride on my hip as i make my way around the tent […]. the chimp flashes a toothy smile and kisses me on the cheek” (gruen 2011, 185). even after repeatedly torturing rosie with a bull hook, august is unable to prepare her for the circus performance, and jacob and marlena struggle to see rosie suffer at the hands of august’s cruel treatment until relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ duality of abuse and care 49 jacob learns the method of training rosie. in order to build a caring view and engage in an experiencing process that is a combination of emotion and cognition, jacob’s “entangled empathy” for the elephant goes beyond just feeling what others are feeling. greg can only get rosie to follow his orders when he speaks to him in polish, and knowing this crucial fact enables jacob to better understand rosie’s wants and interests in their relationship and to be both responsive and responsible for them. august, marlena, rosie, and jacob spend considerable time preparing rosie’s performance before the matinée, when jacob begins serving as august’s personal polish coach for training the elephant (gruen 2011, 287). despite having witnessed a great deal of animal brutality, suffering, and death throughout his life, jacob, the novel’s veterinarian, never fails to empathise with the animal victims because of “empathetic overload” or “empathetic distance”. jacob becomes known as a veterinary doctor in the circus after his identification of the main cause of silver star’s lameness, the star performer of the liberty act or the main attraction of the circus. from the moment he becomes aware of the horse’s illness until the time of his demise, he takes care of his well-being. jacob makes sure the injured horse has enough room so that his wellbeing is not jeopardised, and he monitors every little aspect of his behaviour: i can’t see silver star, which means he must be lying down. that’s both good and bad: good, because it keeps the weight off his feet, and bad because it means he’s in enough pain he doesn’t want to stand. (gruen 2011, 105) marlena recognizes the horses as unique individuals and she cares for them as if they are members of her own family. even though jacob cares for these horses on a daily basis by cleaning their stalls, restocking their water and food buckets, and grooming them for the show, those “horses are an extension of marlena” (gruen 2011, 255-256). while it was extremely difficult for jacob and marlena to end silver star’s life when there was little possibility of him surviving, their choice to do so reflects their “ethical agency” and shows how they strive to reformulate their entanglements via more meaningful and conscientious choices and acts (gruen 2015). marlena says laying a hand on his neck: “in that case, promise me it will be quick. i don’t want him to suffer” (gruen 2011, 125). even walter or kinko’s relationship with queenie, the dog, the oldest domesticated animal species, the one who remains most entangled with humanity, can be characterized by what gruen calls “entangled empathy”. challenging the hierarchical boundaries between human and non-human animals, a form of interspecies kinship is developed between relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ moumita bala smriti singh 50 walter and queenie as queenie lives in a close and constant relationship with walter, sharing the same space in the train. the dog is always addressed either as queenie or the girl and the dog acts by responding to clapping sound of walter, “when we finally come to a stop, he jumps to the ground, turns, and claps twice. queenie leaps into his arms and they disappear” (gruen 2011, 105-106). the narrator effectively analyses queenie’s behaviours to explain a dog’s experiences or to depict a dog’s point of view. her joy, anger, pain, fear is well narrativized through examining her species typical behaviours and some instances from the novel would clarify the argument further. when jacob is accommodated a place in walter and queenie’s room, he is not welcome by queenie at all but with due time jacob begins to share a close bond with queenie, “since queenie is on my lap anyway, i stroke her. it’s the first time she’s let me touch her. her body is warm, her hair wiry” (gruen 2011, 198). here, jacob’s careful attention to queenie’s features of the body and specificities of her behaviour influences him to engage with queenie emotionally. when jacob enters the room, “queenie raises her head, sees that it’s me, and sets it back on her paws” (gruen 2011, 242). when walter instructs queenie to lick jacob’s face, queenie follows walter’s instructions up until jacob steps in to defend himself and urges him to stop since queenie’s tongue roots in his ear and she dances on his face (gruen 2011, 198). here, the entangled empathy as an alternative methodology to the traditional ethical theories has worked out properly by acknowledging “the particularity of others, their experiences, and the significance of those experiences” (debes 2017, 430). walter acts as a moral agent by carrying out all the ethical responsibilities of queenie, his companion animal throughout: because the lives of domesticated animals are so vulnerably and completely in our human hands, we realize that we have great ethical responsibility towards them, and that our ethical responsibility towards these beings must necessarily be even greater than that towards wild animals which exist relatively independently apart from us human everyday life. (larsen 2020, 81) when queenie recovers from diarrhea, walter teaches her how to walk on her hindlegs with utmost care. once queenie disappears, walter is inconsolable, and it is evident from his frantic search for her that queenie is an integral part of his life and he is only concerned with her welfare: “walter yells from the corner. ‘nothing’s okay! queenie was all i had. you understand that?’ his voice drops to whimper. ‘she was all i had’” (gruen 2011, 262). relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ duality of abuse and care 51 various factors, such as attention to the specific behaviour of the fellow species, emotional engagement with them, moral awareness, and responsibility for the well-being of the animals, are evaluated in jacob’s relationship with the majority of the circus animals, marlena’s relationship with the horses, and kinko’s relationship with queenie. these factors collectively lead to a morally charged and multi-layered notion of empathy that can be characterised as “entangled empathy” (gruen 2015; aaltola 2018). 5. conclusion the following points can be derived from the central arguments of the paper: 1. concerns about the increasing prevalence of animal exploitation have been raised in both animal ethics and literary representations of human-animal relationships. water for elephants (2006) is one such novel that delves deeply into the issue of animal abuse and finds out the possible causes of human cruelty, with “empathy erosion” in humans being one of them. the novel’s depiction of the circus animals under the custody of their trainers and the owner supports the argument that humans’ coercive behaviour toward animals is connected to their probable lack of empathy or erosion of empathy. 2. empathy proves as an important tool in nurturing the harmonious human-animal relationships and reminds us of our ethical agency or in particular, moral responsibility toward animals. through empathetic interactions with the animals, the intentional animal exploitation by humans or human-animal conflict can be altered. one such interactional process is gruen’s “entangled empathy”, which has been proved to be one of the most useful theories in analyzing the novel’s characters’ capacity for responsiveness and responsibility in their relationships with the captivated and victimized animals by attending to their needs, interests, and vulnerabilities. 3. finally, it can be stated that the textual analysis of the novel using the notions of “empathy erosion” and “entangled empathy” paves the way for less anthropocentric thinking about human-animal relationships. relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ moumita bala smriti singh 52 references aaltola, elisa. 2012. animal suffering: philosophy and culture. new york: palgrave macmillan. aaltola, elisa. 2013. “empathy, intersubjectivity, and animal philosophy”. environmental philosophy 10 (2): 75-96. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/26167159 aaltola, elisa. 2018.  varieties of empathy: moral psychology and animal ethics. lanham (md): rowman & littlefield. armstrong, susan jean, and richard g. botzler, eds. 2003. the animal ethics reader. london: routledge. baker, timothy c. 2019. writing animals: language, suffering, and animality in twenty-first-century fiction. cham: springer international. baron-cohen, simon. 2011. zero degrees of empathy: a new theory of human cruelty. new york: penguin. barraclough, laura. 2014. “entertaining elephants: animal agency and the business of the american circus by susan nance”. american studies 53 (1): 205-206. doi: 10.1353/ams.2014.0018 beauchamp, tom l., and raymond gillespie frey, eds. 2011. the oxford handbook of animal ethics. new york: oxford university press. bell, jessica. 2015. “‘there is no wild’: conservation and circus discourse”. society & animals 23 (5): 462-483. doi: 10.1163/15685306-12341377 bentham, jeremy. 2014. an introduction to the principles of morals and legislation. new york: dover publications. bernaerts, lars, marco caracciolo, luc herman, and bart vervaeck. 2014. “the storied lives of non-human narrators”. narrative 22 (1): 68-93. https://www.jstor.org/stable/24615410 carmeli, yoram s. 1997. “the sight of cruelty: the case of circus animal acts”. visual anthropology 10 (1): 1-15. doi: 10.1080/08949468.1997.9966717 debes, remy. 2017. “understanding others in an alienating world: comments on lori gruen’s entangled empathy”. hypatia 32 (2): 428-438. doi: 10.1111/ hypa.12329 dhont, kristof, and gordon hodson, eds. 2019. why we love and exploit animals: bridging insights from academia and advocacy. new york: routledge. donovan, josephine. 2016. the aesthetics of care: on the literary treatment of animals. new york: bloomsbury publishing. donovan, josephine, and carol j. adams, eds. 2007. the feminist care tradition in animal ethics: a reader. new york: columbia university press. franklin, k. 2013. “zero degrees of empathy: a new theory of human cruelty and kindness”. bioethical inquiry 10: 411-413. doi: 10.1007/s11673-013-9452-9 gruen, lori. 2015. entangled empathy: an alternative ethic for our relationships with animals. new york: lantern books. gruen, lori. 2017. “expressing entangled empathy: a reply”. hypatia 32 (2): 452-462. doi: 10.1111/hypa.12326 relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/26167159 http://doi.org/10.1353/ams.2014.0018 https://doi.org/10.1163/15685306-12341377 https://www.jstor.org/stable/24615410 http://doi.org/10.1080/08949468.1997.9966717 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ duality of abuse and care 53 gruen, lori, and kari weil. 2012. “animal others – editors’ introduction”. hypatia 27 (3): 477-487. doi: 10.1111/j.1527-2001.2012.01296.x gruen, sara. 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edizioni universitarie this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives – 4.0 international license how to cite this paper: bala, moumita, and smriti singh. 2022. “duality of abuse and care: empathy in sara gruen’s water for elephants”. relations. beyond anthropocentrism 10 (2): 39-54. doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2022-02-basi relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ relations_10-2-2022_00b_sommario.pdf studies and research contributions what we owe owls nonideal relationality among fellow creatures in the old growth forest ben almassi the “cruel absurdity” of human violence and its consequences a vegan studies analysis of a pandemic novel jessica murray duality of abuse and care empathy in sara gruen’s water for elephants moumita bala smriti singh immanuel kant e l’etica ambientale tre proposte per rivisitare (e una per riattualizzare) la morale kantiana matteo andreozzi ecosocial autonomy as an educational ideal jani pulkki sami keto comments, debates, reports and interviews is there a moral problem in predation? francesco allegri author guidelines ecosocial autonomy as an educational ideal 5 is sn 2 2 8 0 -9 9 5 3 beyond anthropocentrism 1 • january 2013 inside the emotional lives of non-human animals a minding animals international utrecht 2012 pre-conference event special issue (genoa, italy, 12-13 may, 2012) edited by m. andreozzi, r. bennison, a. massaro, s. tonutti capabilities approach and animal bioethics • michele panzera animals and our emotions. how to approach the study of an interspecific community? • sabrina tonutti advocacy and animal rights • kim stallwood the emotional lives of animals: a christian perspective • alma massaro – gianfranco nicora animalia: ontology and ethics in weak antispeciesism • leonardo caffo the contemporary debate on experimentation • susanna penco – rosagemma ciliberti non-human animals and genetic engineering • arianna ferrari the relationship between humans and other animals in european animal welfare legislation • paola sobbrio human’s best friends? • matteo andreozzi elationsre l a t io n s . b e y o n d a n t h r o p o c e n t r is m 1 • 2 0 1 3 r 10.2 december 2022 human beings’ moral relations with other animals and the natural environment edited by francesco allegri studies and research contributions what we owe owls: nonideal relationality among fellow 9 creatures in the old growth forest ben almassi the “cruel absurdity” of human violence and its consequences: 23 a vegan studies analysis of a pandemic novel jessica murray duality of abuse and care: empathy in sara gruen’s water 39 for elephants moumita bala smriti singh immanuel kant e l’etica ambientale. tre proposte per rivisitare 55 (e una per riattualizzare) la morale kantiana matteo andreozzi ecosocial autonomy as an educational ideal 75 jani pulkki sami keto comments, debates, reports and interviews is there a moral problem in predation? 93 francesco allegri author guidelines 101 relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 75 ecosocial autonomy as an educational ideal jani pulkki 1 sami keto 2 1 university of oulu 2 tampere university doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2022-02-puke jani.pulkki@tutanota.com sami.keto@tuni.fi abstract autonomy – or rational self-control – is not only fashionable as an educational ideal, but also in present-day economics, ethics, and society in general. however, the concept of traditional autonomy is problematic because it privileges humans and treats the rest of nature primarily as resources fit only for human exploitation. this anthropocentrism has led human beings to see themselves as superior to nature and separate. ecosocial autonomy is an attempt to redress the balance, by contextualising autonomy so it incorporates the idea of self-control, while taking into account the impact of humankind on our surrounding ecosystems. our formulation of ecosocial autonomy is an extension of relational autonomy – based mainly on ecological, ecosocial, and ecofeminist ideas. ecosocial autonomy is thus contextualized within a multispecies society which includes our interdependencies with other living creatures. whereas the individualist idea of autonomy suggests a human being owes nothing to society, ecosocial autonomy acknowledges the need to cultivate aspects of self-sufficiency that combine reason, emotional maturity, and will. a competitive society presupposes individual autonomy and the need to defend oneself. ecosocial autonomy advocates a form of social interaction that diverts the human energy misspent on individual competition to mutually beneficial collaboration. keywords: autonomy; ecofeminism; ecosocial education; education; environmental education; holobiont; individualism; multispecies society; philosophy of education; relational autonomy. 1. introduction autonomy has become a key prerequisite for living in modern western society. education is successful when a pupil becomes a self-sufficient and responsible member of human society. many fashionable educational relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2022-02-puke mailto:jani.pulkki@tutanota.com mailto:sami.keto@tuni.fi https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ jani pulkki sami keto 76 concepts such as “self-direction” are based on autonomy (hand 2006), and the idea of moral independence via rationality gives further impetus to them. autonomy also has an essential role in moral philosophy, economics, political philosophy, and rational choice theory (mackenzie and stoljar 2000, 4-5); ideas of freedom, dignity, individuality, responsibility, critical thinking, privacy, volition, self-regulation, and free choice are some examples (o’neill 2003, 2; rosich 2019). according to rosich (2019, 6), the history of modernity unfolded with the threat of becoming an imperial or colonial subject – creating the need for aspiring autonomy. in other words, autonomy is related to avoiding domination and violence (rosich 2019), which is mirrored in our relation to nature also (bai 1998). autonomy, based on reason alone, has also drawn a lot of criticism. feminists argue it lacks sensuous or affective dimensions and so advocate a relational form of autonomy instead (bai 1998; friedman 2000b). “autonomy can be understood as the fact of being absolutely independent” (rosich 2019, 23). our central thesis is that an ecosocial understanding of autonomy is needed to steer education in an ecologically viable direction. ecosocial autonomy extends the relational understanding of autonomy to accommodate the more-than-human world (abram 1997), i.e., humankind’s relationship to other species. we examine the largely unrealistic cultural ideals of self-sufficiency, autonomy, and independence rather than engage in a highly detailed discussion in academic philosophy (such as kant and others) (friedman 2000a, 218). we begin with examining how autonomy as a concept can be opened up to less aggressive and more inclusive ways of thought. we then review feminist portrayals of relational autonomy, followed by our own interpretation of ecosocial thinking, and specifically how it has progressed in finnish education. the result is our formulation of an ecosocial idea of autonomy. we then show that this formulation is an important way to reassess the relationship between humans and other species in the educational context. finally, we briefly discuss the potential of ecosocial autonomy to steer education in a more sustainable direction. 2. autonomy as an educational ideal and its flaws the word autonomy comes from the greek word auto that means self, and nomos meaning law. greek city-states (polis) in antiquity were autonomous when they enacted their own rules. smaller villages were heteronomous, which means they obeyed the laws of another legal entity. relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ecosocial autonomy as an educational ideal 77 an autonomous person is thus someone who adheres to their own laws. immanuel kant (1724-1804) is famous for formulating the modern idea of autonomy in his publication from 1784 entitled what is enlightenment: enlightenment is man’s release from his self-incurred tutelage. tutelage is man’s inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another. self-incurred is this tutelage when its cause lies not in lack of reason but in lack of resolution and courage to use it without direction from another. sapere aude! “have courage to use your own reason!” – that is the motto of enlightenment. (kant 1963, 3) this quote describes both the individual development from animality to enlightened form of humanity as well as more general aspirations for social progress and emancipation from different forms of oppression. in the 1800s, emphasizing self-government was a revolutionary prospect in an era when the prevailing ethos was still one of obedience. the shift from obedience to self-enforced moral laws is an essential aspect of social and moral development (friedman 2000b, 214). freedom is another crucial concept kant (and others) made central to modern education. freedom was made important as the key element distinguishing autonomy from heteronomy – the previously mentioned state or condition of being ruled or governed by another entity. to access this freedom and release themselves from tutelage, a self-governing autonomous people would need to use their rational understanding (kivelä 2002; biesta 2009, 356-357). in kantian thinking, the human being is (1) a natural entity – their body (especially) is part of the natural world; and in (2) a realm of the spirit, the soul, and volition – free from the restrictions of the physical body through the use of reason (berlin 1971). referring to autonomy in the educational context therefore refers to people who use reason to overcome physical restrictions (huhtala 2018, 67). human beings are seen as having an inherent value because of this rational ability. other animals are seen as incapable of reason and thus they have only instrumental value. as a consequence, human beings are seen as autonomous, as entitled to use other living beings to satisfy their needs, and as the highest form of life on earth (huhtala 2018, 67). so it is that from kant one might easily adopt a biophobic attitude towards the harsh causal and deterministic laws of nature – seeing them not only as a threat to our freedom of will and spirit, but in many cases as something dangerous or even deadly and fit for human reason to overcome (berlin 1971; achterhuis 1993). our digestion and blood circulation represent nature within us, for example, something which is not under our wilful control (berlin 1971). in this respect, human nature has heteronomous and non-autonomous elements that affect us from the relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ jani pulkki sami keto 78 inside. in kantian thought, the realm of the spirit or soul is thus struggling against the human body as a natural entity governed by deterministic natural laws (berlin 1971; pulkkinen 2000, 12). the history of autonomy did not start with kant. in ancient greece, for instance, one meaning of the word autonomy (αὐτονομῐᾱ́) was “freedom” (rosich 2019, 23), nonetheless, the kantian definition of autonomy and moral education has remained popular. kohlberg and piaget, for example, see moral maturation as a gradual shift from heteronomy to autonomy (bai 1998, 95), while critical pedagogy considers aspiring towards independent and autonomous reasoning to be a central educational goal. autonomy in this educational context means (among other things) freeing oneself from depending on others, their moral precepts, and their opinions (masschelein 2004). social norms, general opinion, and uses of power are seen as obstacles to autonomy (masschelein 2004; biesta 2009, 356-357). supporters and critics alike of mainstream educational science (following kohlberg and piaget) usually agree that education should lead to autonomy. the result is that the aggressive power sometimes used to govern ourselves is left unexplored – with the rare exception by bai (1998), hand (2006), and a handful of others (e.g., rosich 2019). autonomy as a concept now has a life of its own, regardless of academic philosophy. 3. individualism: freedom from (inter)dependence one of the major problems of autonomy, according to feminist criticism, is excessive individualism (e.g., friedman 2000a, 217; friedman 2000b). individualism can be defined as the belief that humans are independent, autonomous units, that pursuit of self-interest leads to the greatest good, and that competition is natural (this is different from individuality, which recognizes each person’s unique attributes and contributions) (martusewicz, edmundson, and lupinacci 2015, 38, 52, 78). individualism is also a mindset according to which many aspects of the natural world are not defined as an interdependent set of relationships among earthlings but rather as commodities to be harvested and used in pursuit of profit (merchant 1990; cronon 2003; martusewicz, edmundson, and lupinacci 2015, 40). individualist thinking that privileges the individual over society emerged from the seventeenth-century social contract theory of thomas hobbes (1985) among others (locke 1995). individualism is also related relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ecosocial autonomy as an educational ideal 79 to seventeenth-century atomistic thinking, where individual rights and the procurement of property rights became central in building the modern nation-state (macpherson 1962; taylor 1985; locke 1995). atomism refers to separate and independent subjects and places individual rights above all others. these individual atoms have been seen as the core ingredients upon which modern society was built (taylor 1985). we should not confuse moral autonomy and liberal individualism, however. in kantian thought a person is only really free when they are not acting on the basis of their inclinations, desires, and hopes. freedom lies rather in going through a critical reflection of those hopes and desires. a person is not free if it is their body, culture, or other people which are commanding them to act. moral free will must be the result of rational critical reflection, not arbitrary desires, whims, or the wish to please (pulkkinen 2000, 12). even though kant’s thinking about freedom might not be liberal in a secular twenty-first-century sense, his views on autonomy might be considered individualist in the sense that they prioritize the perspective of the individual. this epitome of the dry scientific thinker, immanuel kant took his ideas and assumption about the individual from his upbringing as a christian pietist. in pietism, the individual chooses freely between right and wrong. escaping perdition required that a person is constantly alert and using one’s conscience to reflect with a sufficient degree of self-doubt to avoid sin. a knowledge of right and wrong is thus found in the conscience and learning to listen to it enables one to escape eternal damnation (berlin 1971; taylor 1989). indeed, the christian belief system of heaven and hell emphasizes the individual perspective of autonomy, which in turn relegates the importance of other social, cultural, linguistic, and historical ideas. in contrast to this atomistic thinking, many indigenous cultures and societies see people as being more closely entangled within a multispecies society and circles of life and death (abram 1997). however, western individualism is more concerned with possession; according to macpherson’s (1962) idea of possessive individualism, individuals are the sole owner of themselves. freedom consists in being independent of the wills of other people, and relations of dependence are only “free” when a person voluntarily enters them with a view to their own interest. other forms of dependence are seen as an unpleasantness to be avoided. the possessive individual is thus the proprietor of their own person and capacities, for which they owe nothing to society (macpherson 1962, 263-264). this form of self-interested ownership fails to see the individual as always interconnected with other people and nature. another problem with possessive individualism is it fails to realize the cultural character relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ jani pulkki sami keto 80 of the autonomous individual (masschelein 2004). we can become free and autonomous moral actors only in relation to a culture that recognizes the value of independence and educates people to become autonomous (anderson and honneth 2005). learning to value autonomy requires a certain kind of socialization and education that also fosters that autonomy (taylor 1985; anderson and honneth 2005), besides the fact that human beings clearly owe many things to both the human and multispecies society they live in. not only are we related to other living beings, but these relations also constitute who we are as individuals. 4. relational autonomy the idea of relational autonomy emerged as a countermove against an individualism where individuals owe nothing to society. relational autonomy has gained popularity in feminism and other branches of thought, and it emphasizes relations: human beings become the individuals they turn out to be by virtue of being fundamentally interrelated rather than atomistic and separate. relational theorists of autonomy also criticize kant for too unilateral an emphasis on reason. according to friedman, kantian autonomy ignores the fundamental issues of care and our emotions (2000a, 212). governing oneself through reason alone lacks emotional sensitivity and intelligence, making it difficult or impossible to develop genuine care for other people (friedman 2000a, 213); and having a lack of consideration for others’ wellbeing has led to many a historical (eco)disasters. the ecofeminist concept of relational autonomy sees human creatures as creative, embodied, and social beings in constant relationships with other human beings (mackenzie and stoljar 2000, 21). relationality refers to being in various states of relationship and having a communal social life instead of constantly managing on our own, because human beings are above all social animals. even the most self-sufficient people come into this world because of other people, and they live and study in buildings built by others and eat food grown by other human beings. our bodies are constructed from water that is only briefly taking time out from the earth’s hydrological cycle, and we breathe the oxygen recycled by trees and plants. human skin is not the absolute border we might like to think it is between ourselves and the environment, but skin cells constantly interact with their surroundings (järvilehto 1994, 23-33; pulkki 2021b). the mammal immune system works in symbiosis with numerous microbial organisms, and the list of human interdependence with other organisms is long and complex (gilbert, sapp, and tauber 2012). thinking of humans relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ecosocial autonomy as an educational ideal 81 as autonomous and independent individuals (rosich 2019, 23) who owe nothing to society, ignores the fact that there is already a complex “society” of micro-organisms interacting in a carefully calibrated way within us to create that “individual” (gilbert, sapp, and tauber 2012). the central ecofeminist idea is that women and nature are both oppressed by the same dualistic logic of domination (warren 1990). both are cast in a simplistic negative light by using a series of dualisms to compare them unfavourably with mankind: reason-emotion, strongweak, mind-body, active-passive, master-slave, civilized-uncivilized, and culture-nature. the first one in each pair is considered better and the latter inferior. nature and women are seen as more emotional, weak, passive, and body-oriented; these prejudices have been further reinforced by building social structures based on them. gaining equality in both the human and more-than-human worlds faces similar societal and political challenges. many kinds of oppressive power relations such as racism and sexism are intertwined with other ways of mistreating living creatures. more importantly though, it could also apply in reverse: by learning to treat other people with more kindness and respect we might, according to martusewicz, edmundson and lupinacci (2015), deconstruct the unnecessary dualisms which encourage toxic power relations to build instead a society that is less ecologically destructive. one crucial starting point for the feminist criticism of traditional thinking about autonomy is its implicit masculinity. gomes and kanner (1995) consider the masculine ideal of autonomy as a kind of “radical autonomy”, seen as heroic from the conventionally narrow perspective of a white christian man with liberty, privileges, education, and a livelihood. the image of these kinds of autonomous individuals is that of the defiant warrior who would rather battle on alone without the help of others. when it comes to relational autonomy, feminist critics point to the failure of its proponents to properly acknowledge interconnectedness, insofar as it leads to a kind of parasitic behaviour where one individual benefits from another without considering the other’s well-being (gomes and kanner 1995, 115). the liberal individualistic concept of autonomy concentrates too much on self-regulation and not enough on how this may also affect others, whereas the relational version acknowledges we can only achieve real autonomy via relationships (clement 1996, 24). while this is an important addition to the traditional version, relational autonomy nevertheless remains rather anthropocentric. in the next section, having glimpsed some of the possibilities in ecofeminism, we want to extend this further to the more-than-human world by looking first at ecosocial thinking. relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ jani pulkki sami keto 82 5. ecosocial thinking ecosocial thinking is an important addition to the idea of autonomy, and we use it to adjust the context of autonomy to include all of earth’s ecosystems and forms of life. our take on ecosocial thought stems from finland, where ecosocial bildung became an established part of the comprehensive school curriculum in 2014 (ops 2014). ecosocial bildung in finland, according to salonen and bardy (2015; åhlberg et al. 2015), requires that we do not start from a human-centred worldview where human beings are seen as separate from nature. instead, we start from the ecological understanding that nature and humankind are intimately entwined (salonen and bardy 2015). ecosocial bildung is primarily concerned with cultivating a culture and lifestyle which cherishes, on the one hand, the inviolability of human dignity and diversity and on the other, regenerative ecosystems and sustainable resource know-how (ops 2014, 16). the hierarchy between ecological, social, and economic aspects of life is emphasized in ecosocial bildung – in contrast to sustainable development, where the three aspects are considered equal. the most crucial of these is to provide functioning ecosystems that will also allow life to flourish in the future. the second most important thing is to support life while cherishing human rights, and the third is to maintain a steady economy which shares resources efficiently between different groups according to their needs (åhlberg et al. 2015, 49). salonen seems to use the idea of bildung in a broad sense to signify the generally sociable behaviour of human beings, which includes taking care of those who are less well off than us. he uses a multidisciplinary approach and systems theory to understand how humans and ecosystems co-exist. ecosocial bildung is thus a process of harmonizing human selfhood and identity with human culture, economy, and the ecosystems we depend upon (pulkki, varpanen, and mullen 2020). our examination of ecosocial thinking starts from the same point as ecofeminism and ecojustice education – extending social courtesy and care from human communities to the more-than-human communities (pulkki 2021a). according to ecofeminism, the domination of people (especially women) and nature go hand in hand (warren 1990). social injustice and ecological injustice are intimately entwined (harvester and blenkinsop 2010; martusewicz, edmundson, and lupinacci 2015). the core of our ecofeminist take on ecosocial thinking is that solving ecological crises becomes possible only if we solve our social crises too. the words “ecology” and “social” are combined in ecosocial thought precisely to emphasize an entwined multispecies sociality that includes relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ecosocial autonomy as an educational ideal 83 both the human and more-than-human world. ecological understanding has two dimensions (smith 2013): (1) any living entity should be viewed in terms of its numerous interrelations to other entities; and (2) some of these interrelations will always be between species. part of ecological understanding is also acknowledging that everything connected with human sociality must be understood in this multispecies manner. as we become members of human society by socialization in human communities, we also become members of multispecies communities by interacting with many other kinds of organisms. human socialization is therefore always, in part, ecosocialization (keto and foster 2021). the term “ecosocial” is an umbrella term for many schools of thought in which interrelated social and ecological problems are being solved simultaneously (matthies, närhi, and ward 2001, 30). social work (matthies, närhi, and ward 2001), social ecology, biosocial theory, ecojustice education, ecosocial epidemiology (krieger 2001), and ecofeminism (harvester and blenkinsop 2010) are just a few examples that can fit under the general umbrella of ecosocial studies. the interrelations between humans and the more-than-human worlds are so complex, it is unlikely that any comprehensive ecosocial theory will emerge any time soon (haila 2009). even so, the general idea of combining ecological and social matters as a theoretical approach in education is clearly a fruitful and pertinent one in an age of ecocrisis (e.g., pulkki 2021a). by education we mean everything we learn that changes the way we are and how we behave in formal and nonformal settings, regardless of it being intentional or unintentional education. 6. the autonomy of the human holobiont? one way of questioning the all too anthropocentric idea of human autonomy is the holobiont theory, which is based on looking at the human organism itself in ecological terms (see margulis 1998). according to the holobiont theory of human beings, we are not individuals in the traditional sense. we humans are not even one single species, but multispecies communities of many living beings (gilbert, sapp, and tauber 2012). the word “holobiont” derives from the words holos and biont, meaning whole and unit of life. therefore, a holobiont is an assemblage of both the host and other species living around it that together form an ecological unit. the human body contains more cells from other organisms than there are human cells in it (savage 1977; sender et al. 2016), and yet we are accustomed to thinking of other organisms in human relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ jani pulkki sami keto 84 beings as disruptions and alien intruders to get rid of. there are different pathogens indeed, but mostly this microbiome is vital for the development and well-being of the whole (human) holobiont. the holobiont known as human already gets its first microbes while it is forming in the womb (aagaard et al. 2014). the birth is a vital time as we receive microbes from the mother’s birth canal and guts (funkhouser and bordenstein 2013), as is the period right after birth when our microbiome grows through contact with the parents and drinking the mother’s milk. indeed, the formation of the microbiome continues throughout our lifetime and can show, for example, how much time we have spent in various environments (hanski 1999). the interrelatedness of human beings with the more-than-human world is therefore not just an ecological slogan. the holobiont theory shows that we are embedded in ecosocial communities from before birth in a very concrete way. interaction with microbes plays a key role in our development and throughout life (smith 2015), contributing to our psychological processes (allen et al. 2017; sarkar et al. 2018), physiological processes (jones 2016), and our behaviour (hsiao et al. 2013). in anatomical, genetic, and immunological terms, we are thus far from being autonomous, self-governing individuals in the traditional sense of the concept (gilbert, sapp, and tauber 2012). ecosocial autonomy is an attempt to be more realistic about the extent of our dependence on other organisms both within and between ourselves and the multispecies community we live in. 7. ecosocial autonomy ecosocial autonomy provides the grounds to expand upon the old autonomy-heteronomy dualism. many foucauldian studies have shown how power is much more complicated than a king coercing his subjects into obedience against their own will. even human will is influenced by the social realities, cultures, and power relations of a particular place and time. we internalize different kinds of power with “technologies of the self”, which shape our psychological makeup (foucault 1988). foucault does not speak of autonomy directly, but a significant line of his work aims to show the modern subject’s particular historical qualities (athanassiadis 2021). power in foucauldian terms is not only obstructive but constructive for our psyche. we internalize power-related ways of thinking, wanting, and feeling, and apply these in our own lives. being an autonomous individual who uses their rational self-control is also learned. relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ecosocial autonomy as an educational ideal 85 the enormity of the issues enables only a generic and tentative definition of what ecosocial autonomy is or might be. human interaction and power are complex, and including multispecies communities makes matters even more complex. we wish to remind the reader that ecosocial autonomy is about the possibility of learning a less individualistic, atomistic, and harsh kind of autonomy. it should convey a mode of thinking that problematizes the nature and scope of human control over the rest of nature. ecosocial autonomy is, in this way, a form of self-control with awareness of one’s impact on the surrounding environment and ecosystem. ecosocial autonomy is contextualized within in a multispecies society which includes interdependencies with other living creatures. ecosocial autonomy is a form of relational autonomy, where the relations concern all living beings and their interactions within different ecosystems. a human being is thus relational in terms of both the living beings within their body (microbes) and those outside it. ecosocial autonomy also stresses humility in thinking about what we can and should control and caution in exercising our power (pulkki et al. 2020). as the holobiont theory proposes, the human psyche – including our will – is affected by our microbiome (allen et al. 2017; sarkar et al. 2018). thinking about rational self-control without taking into consideration other living beings is both obsolete and destructive. a very individualistic (and possessive) take on autonomy – where the individual owes nothing to society or the ecosystems we depend upon – will only perpetuate ecological problems (pulkki 2021b). ecosocial autonomy appreciates individuality and diversity – vital parts of any flourishing ecosystem. instead of a self-serving individual form of autonomy, we need the educational ideal of autonomy within a multispecies society accompanied by an all-round aspiration to foster life. this does not necessarily mean sacrificing people’s welfare but accommodating the welfare of other living creatures as well, which may in turn also improve our lives. bai’s (1998) description of autonomy as being in tune with one’s surroundings is pertinent for ecosocial autonomy too. 8. end remarks the climate crisis is an example that shows how difficult it is for us to control ourselves and our surroundings with reason alone. nevertheless, the illusion of control persists and allows us to think there is little need to worry about the ecocrisis. ecosocial autonomy suggests we relinquish the existing attitude we have towards nature both within and outside relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ jani pulkki sami keto 86 ourselves – feeling an excessive need to control and manipulate it at every turn – and instead balance this with being more attuned (bai 1998) to the multispecies society we are part of. ecosocial autonomy is not saying that rational self-control should be discarded – it is rather expanding the concept of autonomy to include multispecies ecosocial communities so that we can take responsibility for our action in these surroundings as well. in short, we need broader self-understanding and self-awareness that include the multispecies society and our impact on that (pulkki 2020; 2021b). being out of control and causing ecosocial havoc stems partly from our narrow self-awareness and the accompanied inability to control our emotions and will. an individual can fight the consumerist urges that we are subjected to within a capitalist system. we could also channel the human energy we presently use to fight commercial manipulation by changing the social-economic structures and assumptions about human autonomy. we need ecosocial autonomy as a means of self-control for making shared grassroots decisions about common matters that concern our multispecies communities. an ecosocial approach insists on educating people so that they form holistically responsible relationships with others – both humans and other species (see åhlberg et al. 2015). this requires a transition from having an extractive, instrumental, and insensitive relationship with the rest of nature towards an empathic and engaged one. in this transition, we argue that ecosocial autonomy has an important role to play – as a more realistic formulation and understanding of autonomy in education. ecosocial education is a new and emerging pedagogical orientation (keto et al. 2022), and novel concepts such as ecosocial autonomy are needed for thinking about what this could mean for teaching practice. even though more practical teaching guidelines must wait, two ways in which education for ecosocial autonomy might be implemented are via art education (in particular) and greater interaction with the multispecies world (in general). ecosocial autonomy is just one ingredient in a pool of ideas that include also educating for ecosocial virtues (pulkki 2021a), humility (pulkki et al. 2020), ecosocialization (keto and foster 2021), and eco-individuation (pulkki 2021b). eco-individuation can also be extended to include the deep psychological and spiritual issues accompanied by ecosocial thinking (pulkki 2020). we welcome other scholars to join our efforts to create a pedagogy for ecosocial education. relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ecosocial autonomy as 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https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2018.04.006 https://doi.org/10.1215/22011919-3610333 https://doi.org/10.1215/22011919-3610333 https://doi.org/10.1038/526312a https://doi.org/10.5840/enviroethics199012221 https://doi.org/10.5840/enviroethics199012221 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ relations_10-2-2022_00b_sommario.pdf studies and research contributions what we owe owls nonideal relationality among fellow creatures in the old growth forest ben almassi the “cruel absurdity” of human violence and its consequences a vegan studies analysis of a pandemic novel jessica murray duality of abuse and care empathy in sara gruen’s water for elephants moumita bala smriti singh immanuel kant e l’etica ambientale tre proposte per rivisitare (e una per riattualizzare) la morale kantiana matteo andreozzi ecosocial autonomy as an educational ideal jani pulkki sami keto comments, debates, reports and interviews is there a moral problem in predation? francesco allegri author guidelines of cows and women: gendered human-animal relationships in finnish agriculture of cows and women gendered human-animal relationships in finnish agriculture taija kaarlenkaski phd, researcher, university of eastern finland, school of humanities doi: 10.7358/rela-2014-002-kaar taija.kaarlenkaski@uef.fi abstract in the nordic countries, the tending of cattle was regarded as women’s work in agrarian culture. this was also the case in finland, where the gendered division of labor on farms was fairly strict until the mid-20th century. the purpose of this article is to discuss the gendered representations of animal husbandry and cows in written narratives collected in a public writing competition. the writing competition about the cow was arranged in 2004 by the finnish literature society and the union of rural education and culture, and an exceptionally high number of stories were sent to the competition. it will be argued in the article that gender, embodiment and emotions are often intertwined in the practices of animal husbandry. according to my interpretation, one reason for the division of labor was the bodily relationship with cows, which was allowed for women but not for men. in addition to the division of work, there are other aspects of cattle tending in which gender and embodiment emerge in the narratives. for example, the cows are also frequently gendered: one typical way for especially women to represent cows is to emphasize their gender and to articulate solidarity between females. keywords: gender, human-animal relationships, animal husbandry, cows, embodiment, emotions, empathy, agriculture, writing competition, narrative. 1. introduction in finland and other nordic countries, the gendered division of labor was influential in agrarian culture. tasks outside the farm, such as working in the fields or in the forest, were mostly done by men, while women took care of the household and the cattle 1. although the division of labor was 1 this type of gendered division of work has been typical in agrarian societies in western countries, although there have been regional differences concerning specific tasks, such as harvesting (mcmurry 1992, 251; simonton 1998, 20-34). http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ taija kaarlenkaski 10 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ strict on the normative level, in practice it was flexible, albeit usually only in one direction: women could participate in men’s work, if needed, and gained prestige for it. however, men conducting female tasks could be regarded as unmanly (frölander-ulf 1978, 91-2; thorsen 1986, 140; markkola 1990, 20-1). in finland, the gendered division of labor on farms was fairly strict until the mid-20th century and cattle tending, in particular, was regarded as women’s work. although the causes and effects of this division have been studied on the levels of societies, communities, and family relations, the human-animal relationships formed in cattle tending have seldom been explored from this perspective. the purpose of this article is to discuss the gendered representations of animal husbandry and cows in written narratives collected in a public writing competition in finland. firstly, i will concentrate on the embodiment of work in the tending of cattle in the context of small-scale family farming. secondly, my aim is to find out how genderization is related to human-cattle relationships and to the conceptions of the animal. the research materials of this study consist of texts which were sent to the writing competition about cows, arranged in 2004 by the folklore archives of the finnish literature society (fls) 2 and the union of rural education and culture 3. the title of the competition was ei auta sano nauta, which can be freely translated as “no can do, said the cow”. writing competitions are very common in finland; the finnish literature society alone arranges several per year on different topics 4. the writing competition about the cow was directed to finnish people in general, not merely for farmers, for example. as a result, the material contains numerous different viewpoints on the cow, written from the perspectives of present-day and former cattle tenders, people who have spent their childhoods on cattle farms and also people who have only encountered cows occasionally. concerning human-cattle relationships, finland is an interesting case. compared to other western european countries, it was an exceptionally agrarian society until the 1950’s, but after that, the industrialization process has also been remarkably rapid. this has changed the cultural meanings of animal husbandry and cows significantly. since the 1960s, the number of 2 finnish literature society is an international research institute, national memory organization and national cultural organization. see http://www.finlit.fi/english/society/ index.htm. 3 the union for rural education and culture is a finnish adult education and culture organization that produces educational and cultural services. see http://www.msl.fi/ index.php?pid=1&cid=35. 4 for the history of collection campaigns of the finnish literature society, see nirk ko 1999; latvala and laurén 2012, 126. of cows and women 11 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ cattle farms has decreased fast in finland, and at the same time the average size of the remaining farms has increased. however, the herd sizes in finland have been smaller than in other european union countries. in 2004, when the writing competition was arranged, a typical finnish dairy farm had approximately 18 milking cows (niemi 2006, 30) 5. along the mechanization process in animal husbandry, the contribution of men has grown significantly. since the 1950s, men have increasingly started to participate in cattle tending, and contemporary dairy farms are typically managed by couples, who also take care of the cattle together. the development of technology has even made it possible for one person, typically the man, to take care of the cattle alone, while the wife may be employed outside the farm (siiskonen 1988, 91; kallioniemi et al. 2011, 64). despite the changing of the gendered division of labor on the farms, the link between women and cows is still apparent in the writing competition material. for instance, 78 per cent of the participants were women. the usual proportion of female contributors in writing competitions on life history is approximately 65 per cent. 2. gender, embodiment and animal narratives exploring the issues of gender and human-animal relationships, i am particularly interested in the descriptions of embodiment. in feminist research, human-animal relationships have been theorized (see e.g. gruen 1993; adams and donovan 1995; donovan 2006; gruen and weil 2012), but the focus has not usually been on everyday bodily contacts, which are central in animal husbandry. the work of cattle tending encompasses the element of corporeality in various ways, because it is physical work in which both strength and handiness is needed. the body is an instrument of work and its abilities may both enable and restrict the activities needed. in addition, cattle tending requires close contact with the bodies of the animals and, in fact, the animal body produces the output of the farm. working with animals also contains aspects of care and emotions (brandth 2006, 17, 19-20). furthermore, emotional experiences are often described and emotive expressions used in writing competition materials in general. therefore, emotion is also a central concept in my analysis. i see emotional experiences as both subjective and constructed in social practices (harding and pribram 2009, 4, 12; latvala and laurén 2012). 5 in 2011 the number had risen to almost 28 cows (niemi 2006, 30). taija kaarlenkaski 12 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ my discussion is theoretically informed by posthumanist and materialist viewpoints that emphasize the intertwining of material and cultural practices. philosopher maurice merleau-ponty, who has theorized the phenomenology of the body, states that humans relate to the world with their bodies that also interact with other bodies (merleau-ponty 2000; see also acampora 2006, 5; mazis 2008, 15; ruonakoski 2011, 58-64). thus, the understanding of the world and the creatures encountered as part of it are constructed in a process between the world and the perceiver (mazis 2008, 18). merleau-ponty’s thoughts have also been applied to human-animal encounters. it has been suggested that especially when encountering other mammals, we often discern the animal as an intentional and perceiving subject which can be understood through similar gestures and bodily functions (acampora 2006, 19, 23-4, 76-9; mazis 2008, 18; ruonakoski 2011, 102-12). physicist and feminist philosopher karen barad sees bodies as “material-discursive phenomena” constituted in the entanglement of material and cultural practices, which are inseparable from each other (barad 2007, 3, 25, 33-4, 153). importantly, she understands also non-humans as active agents, that is, agency, intentionality and subjectivity are not exclusively human attributes. in fact, barad claims that agency is “doing” or “being”, rather than an attribute. agency is constructed in multi-layered relationships and practices within the discursive and the material, which barad calls “intra-action”, instead of “interaction” (barad 2007, 33, 178; see also mazis 2008, 17). similarly, donna haraway (2008, 15-6, 21-7, 32, 71) has emphasized the agency of non-human animals and developed the concept of “naturecultures”, which underlines the dissolving of the dichotomy between nature and culture. following the phenomenological ideas and posthumanist thinking presented above, i regard materiality and embodiment as significant aspects in interpreting the human-cattle relationships. however, since my research material is in written form, it is inevitably culturally mediated: the writers process their personal experiences, but also use cultural models of narrating and create fictional worlds. the pieces of writing are read as narratives which construct and interpret reality, instead of merely reflecting and describing it (riessman 1993, 4-5; ryan 2005, 344). as jopi nyman (2004, 2) has suggested, animal narratives may be seen as cultural objects, located in their historical and cultural contexts. consequently, i emphasize the importance of taking into account both the animal agency and the cultural representations of it, as they are intermingled and construct each other (barad 2007, 151-2; haraway 2008, 4, 26). of cows and women 13 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 3. research material: the writing competition about the cow in human-animal studies, narratives written by laypersons have rarely been used as research material. however, this type of data provides interesting perspectives, since the writers are able to choose their viewpoints and themes of narration rather freely. certainly the instructions of the writing competition influence them, but they may nevertheless recount the aspects that they find important. therefore, both the content and the form of narration vary significantly (see also latvala and laurén 2012, 126, 129). this variation was endorsed in the writing competition about the cow, since it was divided into two categories, recollection and fiction. this was an unusual feature compared to other writing competitions organized by the folklore archives of the fls: usually people are asked to write autobiographically and to recount their own experiences. in the instructions of the competition, the recollection category was defined as “real life stories”, “experiences”, and “your own memories”, whereas for the fiction category people were asked to write “cow-related short stories or stories”. the fiction category makes the narration of these writing competition texts particularly interesting, because not only recollection but also fiction may mediate different aspects of cultural images, moral values and empathetic knowledge (lamarque 2009, 239-52). interestingly, the inclusion of the fiction category in the writing competition enabled the respondents to write also from the point of view of the cow. for the purpose of this paper, the narratives written from the cow’s point of view are of special interest, because in these narratives the writers have pondered what it would feel like to be a cow and how she might experience her life. the popularity of the writing competition about the cow demonstrated the remarkable interest in the cow-theme in finland, as an exceptionally high number of stories were sent to the competition. the total number of texts was 2962, which would evidently be too large a number to be discussed in qualitative research. during the process of comprising the research material, i read approximately 500 pieces of writing, of which i chose 146 texts as the primary research material. to make sure that the material would include perspectives of people from different backgrounds, i looked at the demographic information provided by the writers and selected texts written by people of different ages and occupational groups. in the selection, i used the guidelines of targeted sampling and constructionist grounded theory (see charmaz 2008; linders 2008, 475-6). in the research material, the ages of the writers range from 10 to 87, and approxitaija kaarlenkaski 14 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ mately half of them work or have worked in animal husbandry, while the other half are or have been employed in other fields 6. 4. the gendered embodiment of cattle tending: the case of milking before the mechanization of animal husbandry, milking was the most strictly gendered stage of cattle tending and was exclusively done by women. this was the case in nordic countries, whereas in england and ireland, for example, also men could milk cows (thorsen 1986; mcmurry 1992, 251, 254; shortall 2000, 249-51; myrdal 2008). as historian janken myrdal has justly pointed out: “there is no biological determination to say that women are more suited than men to milking cows and processing dairy products” (myrdal 2008, 64). thus, the reasons for such a strict division were cultural and social. it has been suggested that in vernacular thought in agrarian finland and sweden, milking was related to female sexuality, nakedness, and bodily fluids (sommestad and mcmurry 1998; östman 2000). in general, women’s work was more strongly related to corporeality than tasks that belonged to men (sommestad and mcmurry 1998, 151; östman 2000, 210, 214-5, 235). there was a “strong feminine coding of milk” (sommestad and mcmurry 1998, 150), which was probably related to the fact that women themselves also produce milk (simonton 1988, 122). as a result of this feminine coding, milking cows was considered to be shameful for men, and milk milked by a man could be regarded as unclean. men working with cattle could be even suspected of bestiality. thus, the relationship between men and cows was ruled by taboos (sommestad and mcmurry 1998, 150-1; östman 2000, 235). other explanations for the gendered division of labor have also been suggested. firstly, household chores done by women were not mechanized, and before the second half of the 19th century, dairy products were not usually marketed outside the farm, and therefore rather insignificant in the economic sense. in peasant societies, this type of work has typically been done by women (siiskonen 1990, 21, 24-5). secondly, it has been suggested that in agrarian culture, cattle tending was regarded as part of food management, not a separate field of work (siiskonen 1988, 94; simonton 1998,  23). 6 the gender of the writer was not taken into account when choosing the research material. the proportion of women in my research material is 76 per cent, a slightly smaller amount than the percentage of women in the entire writing competition data (78 per cent). of cows and women 15 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ as far as other farm animals were concerned, horses were regarded as more valuable than cows, because they were also used for public representation and marking social status, not only for working and food production. horses were associated with men and belonged to the public sphere, while cows were a part of women’s domestic world (frykman and löfgren 1990, 181-2). many factors have certainly influenced the construction of the gender-based division of labor (see myrdal 2008, 64-5). it is important to note, however, that it was exceptionally persistent in nordic agriculture. although milk started to become an important source of income for the farms in the late 19th century, the traditional division of labor persisted especially on small farms until the mid-20th century (thorsen 1986, 139, 142; sommestad and mcmurry 1998, 151-2). considering the writing competition material, most of the texts are autobiographical narratives which cover the time frame between the 1930’s and the beginning of 21st century. when reminiscing their childhoods, older narrators often mention the gendered division of labor in animal husbandry: in my childhood men didn’t go to the cowshed. mother was the one who took care of and milked our cows. if she needed help, like in calving, it was one of us children who went to help her, not our father. (hilu; woman 65 years of age) 7 those men that took care of cows were mocked and it was said that cattle tending was the (shit)work women do [akkojen työ]. usually cows also hated, or, in places, were afraid of men before men started to feed them. (karjahullu [cattle crazy]; man 72 years of age) the original phrase in the latter quotation for women’s work, “akkojen työ” 8, indicates disregard and undervaluation; cattle tending was not appropriate for men (see also myrdal 2008, 70). the gendered division of work was apparently so self-evident that it is often also expressed implicitly in the narratives: people reminisce how their mothers worked in the cowshed or female narrators recount their own work in cattle tending, in which men did not usually participate. the fact that this division is not particularly commented on indicates that this course of action was acquired already in childhood and it was seen as “natural”. in some narratives, it was 7 all quotations are from the texts submitted to the writing competition ei auta sano nauta, stored in the folklore archives of the fls. in the references, the pseudonym of the writer is indicated first, with the english translation where possible. to provide some contextual information about the writers, i report their sexes and ages at the time of writing. 8 finnish word “akka” may be translated as “hag” or “harridan”. it is a derogatory term used especially in reference to older women. taija kaarlenkaski 16 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ stated that the father did not go to the cowshed because he had his “own” work in the forests and in the fields. thus, the working areas of men and women were rather strictly polarized and taken for granted. it has been argued that women themselves did not accept the male denigration of cattle tending. they recognized the importance of their work and were proud of their achievements. this creates an interesting contrast: the predominant ideology defined cattle keeping and women’s work in general lower in value than men’s work, but at the same time the work process of cattle keeping challenged the male dominance. women were the experts in this area and processed the milk, which was an economically significant product for the farms (frölander-ulf 1978, 83, 93-4; markkola 1990, 21; östman 2000, 235; see also shortall 2000, 248). physical contact with cows was especially intimate in hand milking, which was the usual way of milking before the 1960’s on small family farms. many writers state that a special relationship developed between the milker and the cows. although milking by hand was strenuous work, the narrators often recount that they liked being near the cow when milking. as haraway (2008, 36) has pointed out, touching is a significant aspect in the formation of affectionate human-animal relationships. it is self-evident that the cow’s udder and teats are being handled while milking, but the procedure often includes other kinds of touching as well, such as patting and stroking. in many descriptions of hand milking, leaning one’s head against the cows flank is mentioned. the warm scent of the cowshed is welcoming. the cows honor anni by getting up when she comes in. anni clears the manure away and brushes the cows. mesikkä [a cow] licks her ear. she sits on a milking stool and wipes the udder. her forehead leans against mesikkä’s flank. milk spurts into the zinc bucket. they are one – mesikkä and she. (venla; woman 67 years of age) using barad’s terminology, such depictions of bodily connection may be seen as expressions of intra-action. there seems to be something more than mere interaction: the milker and the cow act together seamlessly. in many cases, milking seems to strengthen the emotional bond between the cattle tender and cows. in fact, it has been suggested that bodily contacts between human beings and farm animals contribute to positive emotional relationships (porcher 2006, 61-5; wilkie 2010, 126). it is important to note, however, that the bodily encounters formed in milking are not always pleasant and harmonious. cows have their individual characteristics, and some are easier to milk than others. in addition, they may kick and swing their tails at the milker, which may cause distress and fear, even anger. many narrators also recount instances in which physical injuries were inflicted by a cow. of cows and women 17 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ although children could transgress the gendered boundaries of work, and boys could also help their mothers in cattle tending, it was girls who were instructed to milk cows: the skill was passed on from mothers to daughters (see also thorsen 1986, 139-40). as a narrator in the writing competition material stated: “milking was automatically a basic skill for every country girl” (kaunikki; woman 67 years of age). there are some mentions of men who milked by hand, and some of them also seemed to like the work and were not ashamed of it. they were, however, exceptions in the community. in addition, according to some writers, hand milking seems to have been relatively difficult for men. a woman recounts about her husband, who tried to learn hand milking, but according to her, he was too “heavy handed”, so the cows did not like him and “held back” their milk (pikkupiika [little maidservant]; woman 73 years of age). in this case, the male body is represented as unfit for this task. milking was seen as naturally suited for women and female bodies. according to a common view, it was the introduction of milking machines which caused men to start working in the cowsheds. in the narratives, this is usually dated in the 1960’s and 1970’s. for example, one narrator writes that when she bought a milking machine, her brother “came to the cowshed as if attracted by a magnet and started to take care of milking work” (kyllikki; woman 63 years of age). the situation may be interpreted also the other way around, as one woman writes: “as the family grew, men had to go to the cowshed, too, and so machines also started to appear there” (hellikki; woman 79 years of age). in other words, it was not necessarily the mechanization of milking which led into the increased participation of men; on the contrary, it may be argued that it was men who brought the mechanization process into the cowsheds. in any case, using machines is represented as natural for men, unlike milking by hand. using technology and machines has been commonly related to the identities of male farmers (e.g. simonton 1998, 209; saugeres 2002; brandth 2006, 20-1). it may be argued that mechanization changed the characteristics of milking and handling the milk: the use of an intermediary machine made it possible for men to touch the udder and the teats of the cow (see also wilkie 2010, 48). in addition, at the same time as the work in the cowshed was mechanized, the formerly self-sufficient small farms started to specialize only in one form of production, such as dairy farming. the professionalization and increasing economic importance of milk production was probably another issue that encouraged men to take part in cattle tending, including milking. since the 1970s, it has become common for the couple owning the dairy farm to also work together in the cowshed as equal partners. as a result of taija kaarlenkaski 18 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the decrease in the number of household members and the increase in the sizes of the cattle, farmer and farmwife together usually carry out all the work on the farm. therefore, the division of labor has become a division between these persons, not necessarily between men and women (siiskonen 1988, 93-5). this is also visible in the writing competition material. in the narratives that are situated in the 1980’s or later, milking men are not commented on. milking is done by both women and men, and the feminine associations of milking have disappeared. the same kind of industrialization and masculinization process has occurred in dairy farming throughout the western world during the last 200 years (shortall 2000, 247-8; wilkie 2010, 45-9) 9. in finland, however, the development has been somewhat slower, and women have not totally disappeared from dairy production, as is reported to be the case in some other countries (simonton 1998, 124-5; shortall 2000, 248). 5. identification with the cows in addition to the division of work, there are other aspects of cattle tending in which gender and embodiment emerge in the narratives. one instance is identification with cows. women seem to identify with cows also in those autobiographical narratives which are situated on contemporary farms. for example, they compare calving with their own experiences of pregnancy and childbirth. this is illustrated in the following two quotations: but what brought back the feelings of the “cow-mother”? my own pregnancy. i often felt like a cow. in a positive sense. being pregnant with twins is tiresome and you’re feeling ample. i often felt that i could only chew over. when your stomach gets smaller, the food inevitably comes back up. i often wondered if that was how cows feel! (utaretulehdus [mastitis]; woman 38 years of age) i look at the strongly heaving flanks of the cow that is preparing for calving. i feel its breathing in me, i feel its tide-like wave of pain that squeezes it with every contraction. (pakkaskukka [frostflower]; woman 26 years of age) these narrators seem to argue that having experienced something similar enables them to understand the experience of the cow (see wilkie 2010, 58). in these passages, the narrators reflect on their bodily sensations and compare them to the situation of the cow, or even state that they are able to feel the pain of the animal in their own bodies. this may be seen as a form 9 on the social and economic contexts of this shift in different countries, see simonton 1998, 122-5, 209-11; sommestad and mcmurry 1998; shortall 2000. of cows and women 19 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ of bodily or kinaesthetic empathy, in which human beings empathize with the movements and positions of other creatures as if experiencing them in their own bodies (ruonakoski 2009, 211; see also donovan 2006, 322). interspecies kinaesthetic empathy or “corporal compassion” has been discussed by some scholars, who argue that it is possible to empathize with the bodily experience of the animal, if the situation is familiar enough to the human being (ruonakoski 2011, 136-40, 156-7; see also shapiro 1990; acampora 2006, 19, 23-4, 76-9). in accordance to these views, the quotations above seem to suggest that shared experiences – pregnancy, giving birth and the concomitant pain  – make it possible to understand the animal without a shared language. similar points have been proposed in some branches of ecofeminism. it has also been argued that women have a closer relationship to nature and animals due to their bodily processes (see e.g. ortner 1974; merchant 1995, 10-1). this kind of essentialist conceptions have been criticized widely (e.g. merchant 1995, 13; gruen and weil 2012, 480). nevertheless, these ideas seem to be reflected in the writing competition material. although men may also write quite emotionally and empathetically about cows, they are not able to identify with the bodily experience of giving birth in the same way as women who have personally experienced a similar situation. in some narratives, a more general level of identifying with cows also becomes visible. women who have worked with cattle for their whole lives might see their position as quite similar to the position of cows: i don’t think, and neither do those who are closest to me, that i’m a real “cattle-person”, getting up early, efficient and tireless, i wasn’t like that even when i was younger. but i have tried my best and felt compassion for this traveling companion, the cow. the others enact the laws for both of us and we only have to obey. (kesäheinä [summer hay]; woman 70 years of age) in this quotation, the narrator ponders how she has succeeded as a cattle tender: she has not been “efficient and tireless” as an ideal “cattle-person” is supposed to be. she has, however, felt compassion for cows and describes them as “traveling companions” 10. the last sentence of the passage may be read as an expression of powerlessness, which may refer to the narrator’s family relations, or more broadly, to the social and cultural codes that determine the position of women in the countryside, or even to agricultural politics, which impact the profitability of the livelihood. in any case, the narrator sees her lack of power as similar to the position of the cow. in the 10 in general, these narratives frequently represent cows as workmates or even as friends that listen to one’s worries (kaarlenkaski 2012). taija kaarlenkaski 20 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ same way, in feminist human-animal studies it has been pointed out that what connects women and animals is their subordinate position in male dominated society and culture (gruen 1993, 73-4; adams and donovan 1995, 1-3; donovan 2006, 306). identification may be regarded as an integral way of representing cows in the writing competition material, that is, they are seen as “fellow females”. i refer to this as interspecies female solidarity. it has been suggested that human beings tend to identify with animals that are of the same sex and gender as they are themselves (andersson and eliasson 2006, 68). this argument is supported by my material, in which women seem to find a degree of reminiscence between themselves and the cow and tend to project their own experiences as women onto it. but it is important to note that not all women in my material do this and that many of them do not have a personal relationship with cows. genderization may also be indicated on a more general level, as will be shown in the next chapter. 6. the culturally gendered cow in the narratives, cows are also frequently culturally gendered. this means that the gender of the cow is emphasized and its problems are placed within the realm of female experience. femininity is often related to production animals, which are bred to be docile and are confined to their stalls. in fact, many forms of animal production depend on the exploitation of female reproduction, such as milk, beef and egg production (davis 1995, 193-4, 196; dunayer 1995, 13). in addition, the cow may be seen as a symbol of motherhood and care (carlson 2001, 47, 60-2). when calving is described in my material, the cow is frequently called “a mother” and the calf “a child”. some writers use the cow as an example of maternal love and present it as an exemplary, caring mother. aada turns to look at her calf with an enormous amount of love and care in her eyes, she gets up and murmurs quietly to the calf. while aada is licking the calf with her big, furry tongue, the almost entirely dark red calf lifts its head for the first time. (pakkaskukka [frostflower]; woman 26 years of age) emphasizing the motherly characteristics of cows is interesting, considering the fact that on dairy farms the calf is usually taken away from the dam shortly after the birth. some narrators state that they feel pity for the cows for this reason. the fact that the writing competition included the fiction category also enabled the respondents to write from the cow’s point of view (see of cows and women 21 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ kaarlenkaski 2012, 179-88). this viewpoint was not suggested in the writing instructions of the competition, which indicates that the interest in imagining the experiences of the cow was based on the writers’ own initiative. interestingly, this writing technique was mainly used by female writers. changing the perspective to the animal’s viewpoint may be regarded as a rhetoric strategy that is used to engender empathy in the reader, to consider how it would feel like to be an animal (beierl 2008, 215). typically, these narratives compare and parallel the life of the cow to the life of the human being. the narratives are generally situated on contemporary cattle farms, and they describe the circumstances in which dairy cows live. the writers have considered, for instance, how it would feel like to give birth each year without the possibility to take care of the infant. one of the “cow-narrators” captures the life of the cow as follows: once again i have been thinking about the meaning of being. i guess that, in all simplicity, it is all about producing offspring and then forsaking them. it is not painless, though. the life of a cow isn’t easy, no matter what the vet said. (lojunta rauhala; woman 33 years of age) the unpleasantness of artificial insemination is also often mentioned in these narratives. this highlights that cows are not able to influence the processes of their own reproduction. moreover, cows are represented as emotional creatures who feel grief, happiness, envy, and even romantic and sexual emotions. the writers of these narratives have pondered the cows’ bodily experiences of reproduction and criticized the practices related to it in animal husbandry. these points are somewhat similar to the notions presented in feminist animal care theory, which emphasizes the importance of taking into account emotions, both human and animal (donovan 2006). this is highlighted frequently also in the narratives. although the writers do not necessarily express strong ethical comments regarding animal production, many of them seem to have adopted an attitude which allows them to identify with the animal. the writers of these narratives have, in a way, given voice to production animals and their experiences of reproduction, which are normally silenced. on a more general level, there have been, and there still are, pronounced feminine connotations related to cows in many cultures (e.g. carlson 2005, 46-62; sharpes 2006, 62-8). calling a woman “a cow” is disparaging, and this is known in several languages and cultures. joan dunayer has pointed out that the “exploitation of the cow for her milk has constructed a gender-specific image” (dunayer 1995, 13). because cows are confined to their stalls and milked there, and because they are kept pregnant constantly, they are seen as passive, dull and fat. the cow taija kaarlenkaski 22 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ becomes a symbol for these traits, and this metaphor can easily be attached to women (dunayer 1995, 13). in my research material, this works also the other way around: cows are frequently called “girls” and “ladies”. using these kinds of words emphasizes the gender of the animal; male calves may also be called “bull-boys”. in a wider view, the genderization of animals is quite common in cultural representations, such as nature documentaries, but also in scientific contexts. this means that the characteristics that are considered feminine or masculine in human beings are also perceived similarly in non-human animals (ganetz 2004; andersson and eliasson 2006). it is important to note that the gendered images of cows are not always negative in the narratives. the stupidity and passiveness of the cow is often contradicted in the texts written by both women and men. narrators also describe the cow in a positive sense: it can be seen as a personal, wise and compassionate animal. in many cases, the relation between women and cows is not rejected but celebrated in the writing competition material. as the citations demonstrate, both positive and negative aspects of genderization are expressed. 7. conclusion in this article, i have analyzed representations of gender and genderization in written narratives that discuss cows and cattle tending. it turned out that gender, embodiment and emotions are often intertwined in the practices of animal husbandry. in finland, before the 1950’s, milking by hand was almost exclusively women’s work and milking men were exceptions that caused astonishment. due to the gendered division of labor, taking care of cows was regarded as unmanly. i have argued that one reason for these conceptions was the bodily relationship with cows, which was allowed for women but not for men. this corporeality was accentuated in hand milking, which requires very intimate contact with the cow. the mechanization of animal husbandry, on the other hand, was linked to masculinity: the introduction of milking machines was represented as being connected to the increased participation of men in cattle tending. at the same time, in the 1960’s and 1970’s, finnish farms started to specialize in one form of production, such as dairy production. men’s interest in dairy farming increased as a result of this professionalization process. although the procedures of animal husbandry and also the gendered division of labor have changed remarkably on the farms during the last sixty of cows and women 23 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ years, women working in cattle tending still seem to link themselves and their identities to cows. in other words, a typical way for women to represent cows is to emphasize their gender and to articulate solidarity between females. this becomes visible in the narratives in which women express identification with cows and even kinaesthetic empathy with the bodily experiences of the animals. empathizing was also expressed by writing from the cow’s point of view. in addition, a more general level of genderization may be detected in the narratives. for example, cows are described as exemplary mothers and referred to by human female epithets. in the narratives, the boundaries of species are frequently symbolically transgressed. it seems that “intersections of sex, gender, and species”, as susan mchugh (2012, 631) has put it, are constructed in everyday human-animal relationships and thinking. although many writers indicate empathy towards dairy cows and at least implicitly criticize the practices of contemporary animal husbandry, the position of cows as production animals is not explicitly challenged in the narratives. this demonstrates the contradiction in human-cattle relationships. as production animals, cattle are a means of profit for human beings, but at the same time they are creatures that people may become attached to and empathize with. although dairy cows are often perceived as subjects emotionally similar to human beings, they are simultaneously objects under human dominion. emotional and instrumental attitudes are not mutually exclusive; on the contrary, they constantly coexist in animal husbandry. 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• sabrina tonutti advocacy and animal rights • kim stallwood the emotional lives of animals: a christian perspective • alma massaro – gianfranco nicora animalia: ontology and ethics in weak antispeciesism • leonardo caffo the contemporary debate on experimentation • susanna penco – rosagemma ciliberti non-human animals and genetic engineering • arianna ferrari the relationship between humans and other animals in european animal welfare legislation • paola sobbrio human’s best friends? • matteo andreozzi elationsre l a t io n s . b e y o n d a n t h r o p o c e n t r is m 1 • 2 0 1 3 r 9.1-2 november 2021 animals: freedom, justice, welfare, moral status, and conflict cases edited by francesco allegri studies and research contributions pigs vs. boars: the ethics of assisting domesticated 9 and wild animals beka jalagania the chincoteague ponies and what it means to be free 27 alexis flower beyond the fairy tale of the shape of water: reimagining 41 the creature viktorija lankauskaitė max scheler e la possibilità di una nuova forma di antispecismo 59 enrico r.a. calogero giannetto distributive justice and animal welfare 75 paola morreale unitarianism or hierarchical approach for moral status? 91 a very subtle difference francesco allegri relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ relations. beyond anthropocentrism 6 comments, debates, reports and interviews animals and justice: the unfinished journey 111 paola fossati author guidelines 123 relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 41 beyond the fairy tale of the shape of water reimagining the creature viktorija lankauskaitė kaunas university of technology (lithuania) doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2021-0102-lank viktorija.lankauskaite@ktu.lt abstract guillermo del toro’s “shape of water” (2017) has gained praise both from critics and audiences for its themes and storyline. in particular, a lot of creative and thematic weight is carried by the creature in the film – the amphibian man. as a character, it fits into the recent trend of morally positive and emotionally impactful monster representations, helping, among other things, to address the themes of acceptance and embracing of otherness. the aim of this paper is to explore the construction and portrayal of the amphibian man, and to take a closer look at the director’s approach towards reimagination of the creature in today’s landscape of cinema. the paper delves into del toro’s work to define him as auteur, reflects on the traditions and changes in creature cinema, and examines the portrayal of the creature in terms of language, sound, and image. keywords: acceptance; creature cinema; guillermo del toro; image; language; monster films; otherness; shape of water; sound; zoomorphism. 1. introduction the latest picture from famed fantasy-horror director guillermo del toro is a beautifully crafted whimsical fairy tale reminiscent of old-fashioned monster-movies; a timeless classic from a filmmaker presenting the most earnest and poetic work of his career. the shape of water is a must-see piece of cinema that will engulf your senses and gently squeeze beauty, acceptance and love into your heart. (wade 2018) this review of the shape of water, published in the film magazine, broadly encompasses the reception that this story, about a mute woman relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2021-0102-lank mailto:viktorija.lankauskaite@ktu.lt https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 42 viktorija lankauskaitė falling in love with an amphibian water creature, received both from viewers and critics. while the fairy tale like story and its themes are certainly worthy of attention and consideration, this paper aims to explore the construction and the portrayal of the amphibian man in the film (a monster in a monster movie) and takes a closer look at the director’s approach towards reimagination of the creature in today’s landscape of cinema. 2. guillermo del toro as auteur the features and tendencies found in del toro’s body of work will be helpful in determining the qualities of the film analysed here and will provide a deeper understanding of the author’s intentions and creative style. generally, and particularly after truffaut’s introduction of the concept in the cahiers du cinema, the term auteur is known and used to describe someone who not only directs, but also writes, and/or films, or edits the film, or maybe even acts in it, i.e., an author of the film that could be credited for more creative decisions (staples 1966). however, in cinema discourse, the term is also used to describe a director who has developed a certain style and whose body of work could be distinguished from other directors. bassil-morozow (2010) identifies two main aspects of this: all or most of the control over the filmmaking process, and a “distinct voice” with recurring themes, style, characters, and actors (7-14). wes anderson, quentin tarantino, and tim burton, among others, could be named as examples of such creators, and guillermo del toro proves no exception, as he writes and directs his own films, and maintains his distinctive style across them. his visionary style could possibly be described as surrealistic. fantasy, horror, history, ghosts, and monsters are recurring elements in his films. as he draws inspiration from classical literature, mythology, catholicism, and comic books, these elements are woven together to tell intense and visually appealing stories (tierney et al. 2014, 2-4; adji 2019). adji (2019) also ties del toro’s obsession with the fantasy genre to the theme of embracing otherness, as positively portrayed monsters are present in most of his films, along with other characters that do not give in to standards in one way or another. in his book cabinet of curiosities: my notebooks, collections, and other obsessions (2013), del toro reveals searching for ways to make hellboy and his sidekick abe sapien relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ beyond the fairy tale of “the shape of water” 43 (from his 2004 feature hellboy) more elegant, to highlight their human side. though some technicality comes into this too, as he says he wanted to make hellboy something ron perlman could play, i.e., to find the actor underneath the character (249-250). in the same book, he also gives credit to fantasy not as a way to escape, as other filmmakers or audiences tend to put it, but as a way to see, “fantasy is a great way of deciphering reality”, he says (del toro and zicree 2013, 24), and this message appears to carry through most of his work. another significant feature of del toro’s filmmaking is the amount of detail implicit in his work (ward 2014). he draws inspiration from different sources and his films are often the result of rather unlikely encounters. interviews and the cabinet of curiosities reveal many different elements and ideas used in his work. literature, comic books, works of art, films, and other inspirations pave the way for his ideas and their translation to screen. though the director claims that only fifty percent of it is intentional (88), the details and messages that he includes help to paint a coherent and vivid picture. the vividness of the pictures that del toro produces could also be attributed to the use of colour and visual effects. the latter are often a fusion of prosthetic makeup and some computer-generated imagery (cgi), as observed by adji (2019, 53). adji also stresses the use of special effects makeup and the prevalence of dark green colour, but in the cabinet of curiosities guillermo del toro offers a more elaborate explanation on the choices he makes regarding colour. the director reveals his preference for contrasting palettes both for the films and for the design of monsters. the contrast of blue or cyan and gold or amber are the main colours that he uses as a layer on deep shadows and blacks, and in the end of the colour grading process, other colours are added, as needed. interestingly, he distinguishes red as a colour used with particular care in his films, even in hellboy (del toro and zicree 2013, 80). the same idea seems to be evident in his later film crimson peak (2015) where crimson is saved for special scenes and characters. hellboy could also be mentioned as one of the better examples regarding the use of contrasting colours, as the contrast between hellboy’s red and abe sapien’s blue is one of the more visually striking. the balance of blue or cyan (or teal) and gold (or orange) can be often encountered as a popular colour grading choice among filmmakers. what began as a journey towards more colour in cinema by adding blue and orange tints to break the routine of black shadows and white light (misek 2010, 139-140), now appears to be a standard stylistic choice for professional filmmakers, and a goal for aspiring ones, sometimes with questionable results. del toro’s use of these relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 44 viktorija lankauskaitė colours appears to be darker, and more thought out. in the same book he also expresses his fascination with a specific hue of green: “there’s a hue of green, an almost fishlike quality in certain paintings that has had a huge influence on me. but i don’t know if that’s come through in the movies. i’ve tried”, he says (del toro and zicree 2013, 80). and although written in 2013 it reads very much like a wish of being able to transfer such colours onto the screen, so much so that the shape of water might be the embodiment of this. while adji’s (2019, 51) mentioned greens can be seen in some of del toro’s films (e.g., pan’s labyrinth), the colour palettes that the director chooses, appear to be slightly more nuanced. as briefly mentioned, the shape of water contains many of these characteristics and inspirations. set in baltimore, in 1962, the film follows the story of elisa, a young mute woman who works as a cleaner at a mysterious government facility where she encounters an “amphibian man” – a fishlike creature that is held there against his will. developing fond feelings for the creature, elisa decides to save him and bring him home, where her friend and neighbour giles, a homosexual graphic designer, helps her to take care of him. guillermo del toro’s style is evident in the themes of fantasy, monsters, otherness, as well as in the technical aspects of the film – the use of colour and visual effects. the film won academy awards for best directing, best picture, best original score, and best achievement in production design (internet movie database n.d.). 3. the creature in cinema a few words on the different tendencies to portray “creatures” in cinema should be presented here, in order to better frame del toro’s characterisation of the amphibian man. to begin with, horror films can be mentioned, where the monsters depicted might represent the threats that society faces, a certain metaphor where killing the monster means overcoming the challenges in real life (punday 2002; bloom 2010, 7-8; grant 2018, 1-2). bloom (2010, 8) also stresses such an approach as being time dependent, i.e., older films were more often built with this premise, while their newer versions were kinder to the monster. another way, and more relevant here, is when filmmakers start raising questions about who the actual monster is, addressing racism, bullying, and similar themes of discrimination, along with other different levels of human intolerance (bernardi and jacob 2019). stymeist (2009) explores the oppositions present in monster films, relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ beyond the fairy tale of “the shape of water” 45 where a monster breaking cultural boundaries and being out of place, usually represents “various threats to the integrity of modern life”. with this thought, he also underlines the idea that modern life and technology win against the monster too, thus making such films monstrous themselves, with their ideological messages of the superiority of technology (ibid., 404). though the conclusion is more in the realm of monster vs. technology, the tendencies the author touches upon apply to most monster films – monster as other, partly human, partly other animal, somewhat intelligent, dangerous, powerful, etc. (403). the notion of monster and technology also allows us to be reminded about one particularly complex and multifaceted monster – frankenstein’s creature in mary shelley’s frankenstein (1818). born from an experiment and abandoned by his creator, seeking friendship and acceptance, the creature represents the problems in society at the time of the novel as well as today, and shows us the monsters in ourselves. “the most frightening part of nineteenth-century novels comes from the discovery of our own similarities to the monster”, writes bloom (2010, 3). the creature’s sympathetic portrayal in the novel and its adaptations could stand as an example and inspiration for constructing similarly complex characters and the messages they represent. the qualities present in recent monster depictions – conflict, otherness – translate to physical appearance too, as the portrayal of such creatures (images in cinema, broad descriptions in literature) is often elaborate, specific, yet often highlights their “different” features and beastlike qualities, often inspired by other animals. here we can mention the importance of our relationship with them too, as salisbury ([1994] 2011) points out, monsters with non-human animal features show our attitude towards other animals (128). one of the more prevalent tendencies of human vs. other animal portrayal is where the non-human animal is represented as an enemy, a danger to humans, and as an “other” overall, and this has been explored in lights, camera, bark (martinelli 2014). from the bizarre ideas of monstrosity, freaks, and man-animal hybrids in the middle ages (see salisbury [1994] 2011), to seemingly understandable and widely accepted ways of portraying monsters now. one such way is often referred to as zoomorphism – when human characters have some (or many) features of other animals, as opposed to anthropomorphism, where other animal characters, often in animated movies, have human features e.g., a mouse walking on hind legs, a talking horse, etc. (martinelli 2014, 238, 242). mermaids have fish tails, werewolves might be shown as humans with fur, big ears and fangs, and not only as a wolf, the beast in beauty and the beast has fur, a wolf/bear head and body, and, of course, relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 46 viktorija lankauskaitė claws. tarzan is portrayed as having learned to live like a different animal (walking on four limbs, actively sniffing the environment, growling, etc.), not knowing civilisation, thus different from humans, not fitting into society. some harry potter villains are described as other animals too – snake nose and eyes for voldemort, a toad for dolores umbridge, a rat for peter pettigrew, and so on. such features often portray their assumed bad qualities, villainy, or monstrosity. sometimes these characters go through a transformation – becoming human (like beast in beauty and the beast), freeing themselves from a “worse” disposition, or dying. this is a very common way to portray the creature – transformation is necessary for the resolution of conflict. however, with monster films, resolution often means death. stymeist (2009, 404) attributed that to the idea of modern life winning over the monster, where monster films aim to show the viewers that technology solves everything, i.e., saves us from monsters and helps to get rid of them. the relationships between creatures and other characters are also important for their favourable portrayal. since the monster in the story can reveal the social norms and cultural forces of the time, or rather what is wrong with them, empathising with monsters helps us to situate ourselves in that context as well (weinstock 2012, 276-279). this can be emphasised by the characters that are attracted by the creatures and befriended by them, as they can be of similar fate to the ones usually marginalised in the society – outsiders, misfits, orphans, impaired persons, or someone generally not fitting in with the crowd: frankenstein’s creature befriends a blind man, and a little girl that is not afraid of him (bloom 2010, 16, 27); toothless in how to train your dragon (2010) is found and saved by the boy who is considered to be weak just because he does not want to hunt dragons; the ghosts in tim burton’s beetlejuice (1988) can only be seen by a depressed teenager whose parents fail to understand her; runt, the giant from the big friendly giant (2016) becomes a friend of an orphan girl, and so on. one might not be aware of the tendency, but once it is noticed, it is difficult to miss – flawed characters choose to see others beyond their flaws as well. however, as friendly as these creatures might appear in such portrayals, more often than not their monstrous nature, danger, and fight for survival are touched upon too. sometime within the friendship that might develop, the viewers are reminded of the true nature of the characters, whether it is a more direct performance of anger, rage, or maybe even violence, or just a depiction of the creatures’ strength and wildness once they get scared and cannot be controlled, e.g., frankenstein’s creature accidentally killing those who befriend him, as covered by bloom (2010, 27). relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ beyond the fairy tale of “the shape of water” 47 in summary, the creatures are often portrayed as “others”, enemies, a cause to be scared of, or as threats to society and to the existing order. in terms of visual appearance – monstrosity might often be connoted through the perceived features of other animals, as they appear to indicate otherness and the prevalence of instincts. the characters can be introduced as villains, antagonists, or as a danger in general, but their good side and a reason to like them can be presented too, especially in recent films speaking about themes of discrimination, raising deeper political and philosophical questions through these visuals, often through interaction with other characters of similar fate. however, a kind of transformation appears to be necessary too for the resolution of the story, searching for equal appearance, proposing homogeneity and a need for acceptance, or life without creatures. 4. “the shape of water” and its amphibian man with the background set, a closer look can now be taken at the creature that guillermo del toro constructed in the shape of water. inspirations, references, and similarities to other like spirited stories will be covered, followed by a detailed account of the amphibian man himself, as presented in the film. the first and the most recurring title quoted as the inspiration for this film is the classic monster film the creature from the black lagoon (1954). guillermo del toro is quoted as thinking about how great it would be if the characters (the woman from the group of scientists, and the beast, the gill-man they find) would end up living together (internet movie database n.d.). the amphibian man of the shape of water has many similarities to the gill-man of the creature from the black lagoon. both are human like bodies with transformations that allow them to live underwater, i.e., zoomorphed. the gill-man’s head has more fishlike features, his body is covered in scales, and he appears to have a more scary, monstrous presence overall. his treatment in the film is as such – a group of scientists are exploring the amazon jungle and they try to capture the beast for studying. del toro’s take is different with the female character falling in love with the creature (the notions of a similar idea could be felt in peter jackson’s king kong, but that ends tragically). what separates del toro’s reimagining of the non-human as a love interest from other films is that the perceived beast does not die, is not killed, and does not have to become human to be acceptable to others and to live happily ever relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 48 viktorija lankauskaitė after. the final stand-offs at the ends of both films are also similar, but as the gill-man in 1954 is shot at and dives underwater to die alone, the amphibian man survives, kills his enemy, and is followed into the water by the woman who loves him. she transforms a little, to adjust to living under water but survives and stays with him. a very similar creature can also be seen in another one of del toro’s films – hellboy (2004). a character called abe sapien, a sidekick to hellboy, also appears to be more like human with the features of a fish – blue, wet looking skin (similar to the creatures in james cameron’s avatar), gills, and fins. though abe is able to speak and can spend some time outside water with some help, both him and the amphibian man of the shape of water count on boiled eggs as their main source of nutrition, have a strong masculine appearance, and curiously enough, are played by the same actor – doug jones. while the gill-man is more similar to the amphibian man from the perspective of the story and concept, the character of abe bears more similarities visually. some might even think that with the shape of water the director created a new life for abe sapien. the story itself can be traced back to different forms and variants. the little mermaid by hans christian andersen might be the most obvious example, sometimes referred to as the little mermaid for adults, but the ashgate encyclopedia of literary and cinematic monsters reveals more similar stories. these stories commonly feature humans falling in love with mermaids or mermen – either willingly, or having been lured by their voice, beauty, and magical powers – though male human and mermaid (female) appear to be a more common duo. they often balance between the beauty and fantasy of the mermaids and the sea world they live in, and their danger and fatality. their endings also balance between the death of one or the other character or their transformation – either mermaid becomes human, or human becomes mermaid/merman. to put these in broader terms, the conflict of human and sea creature relations is at the core of most of the stories. however, the one that bears the biggest similarity to the shape of water appears to be a short story by jane yolen, “the lady and the merman” (1977), where a seemingly unattractive young woman falls in love with a merman and finally follows him into the sea (wood [2014] 2016, 412-413). even though in that story the woman dies in the water, it bears more similarities to the film – a merman, a woman of no extraordinary beauty, and no pressure to transform – than many other depictions with similar premises. that said, the already discussed inspirations and ideas that del toro uses to construct his work are a clear indication that no single story alone could be the basis for the film. relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ beyond the fairy tale of “the shape of water” 49 as references are being considered it is worth mentioning the origins of the amphibian man that the film itself addresses. a reference is made to the creature being brought from the amazon river in south america and he is mentioned as being a god in a certain culture (or to a certain tribe that used to bring him gifts). this allows us to draw a few more examples from the myths that follow similar creatures. wood ([2014] 2016, 411) reveals the element of a deity and unimaginable beauty in the image of mermaids and mermen. such figures are associated with success for fishermen and boats at sea and ask that the sea is treated with respect in general, thus they can be both benevolent and dangerous. the myths closer to the amazon tell the story of serek-a – a half woman half snake creature, a bridge between life and death and mother of an anaconda. another one is the boto, a creature capable of changing form between human and dolphin (ibid., 414). appearance wise, though further away in the world, philippine folklore mentions kataw, a merfolk with the upper body of a human and a fish tail, fins, and gills (ruis and derasin 2019, 60), as well as siyokoy, a different species of merman, who have human form with no fish tail, but instead brown or green scales, webbed limbs and gills, and are generally considered more dangerous and animalistic (bane 2016, 923). there are of course many more similar ones, and this merely sheds light on the possible thematic and visual inspirations of depicting such creatures on screen. one thing that appears to bind most of the images together, is the conflict or balance of beauty, fantasy, divinity along with power, strength, fatality, and danger. not all such creatures are considered to be of great physical beauty, they might have other attractive qualities, such as voice and singing, magical, healing abilities, etc., but none of them are exclusively kind and beautiful, or exclusively dangerous, violent, and fatal – these qualities are present together, e.g., tingoi, who are kind and generous, but only at the right time and if approached in the right way (ibid., 1001). this is very clear in the portrayal of the amphibian man as well. like the mythological beasts whose godliness and beauty are mixed with danger and strength, and like other portrayals of human vs. other animal, here the creature’s strength and dangerous nature are also addressed, and a few episodes illustrate this. just as the viewers are happy with the amphibian man successfully hidden in elisa’s apartment, and just as they begin to enjoy him being safe, not harmed, and thus friendlier and appearing less scary, he gives in to his instincts and attacks and eats one of the house cats and, scared by giles, attacks him too. however, later the creature uses his magical powers and heals giles’ wounds and makes him a little younger. the director chooses to show that the creature is dangerous and should be relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 50 viktorija lankauskaitė approached with caution but reminds us of his fascinating abilities too. the same strength and danger are also seen at the end of the film, but in a slightly more awe-inspiring way, when the creature stands up after being shot by strickland (michael shannon’s character), the antagonist who held him captive. the contrast between that tortured and weakened animal, and the creature standing before him with the promise of inevitable death is dramatically and visually appealing – “you are a god” – are the final words of the antagonist. these elements help to understand that the amphibian man is similar to his mythological counterparts in themes and in the conflicts that he maintains, rather than in appearance or one single storyline. following thematic inspirations, the film could be more thoroughly reviewed from three different angles, or means of constructing audio visual texts: language, sound, and image – an approach borrowed from the means, axes, and properties (m.a.p.) model (martinelli 2020). in his text, martinelli defines the “means” in the following way: means [are] the “tools” of audiovisual communication, that is, images, sounds and language – what we hear/listen to and what we see/read. the category of sounds includes any type of music, the noises that are audible in the text and the so-called soundscape (the totality of sounds that are naturally or artificially produced in a given environment). the category of images includes anything that is visible, from characters to inanimate objects, from landscapes to abstract representations. the category of language is situated in the middle, as it has both an audible component (the words that are spoken) and the visible (the words that are written). in principle, thus, the audio-visual means can be represented as a venn diagram. (martinelli 2020, 97-98) a closer look at these elements should help to reveal the approach to the portrayal of the creature in a more technical way. 4.1. language first of all, we might be inclined to start with introductions, and it might be telling that the merman does not have a name, in credits he is referred as the amphibian man, similarly to the gill-man of the creature from the black lagoon, though in the 1954 film, the actors (one for the creature on land, another for underwater) that played the creature were not even credited. while gill-man is something that threatens people, like godzilla, or the dinosaurs from jurassic park, that the protagonists only want to get rid of, the amphibian man, given the premise, is a characrelations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ beyond the fairy tale of “the shape of water” 51 ter with a different purpose, one that the audience would like to get to know more, thus, having no name might influence his identity in the film. however, it appears that the story, the visual appearance, and the idea in general are far more important than the creature having an actual name. the choice might be explained by the origins of the creature too – as he is captive, caught somewhere in the jungle, not having a name is reasonable. even if the amphibian man had a name, he could not introduce himself, or at least tell his name, because he does not speak human language. this is where things begin to look more interesting. the main character elisa is mute, thus she cannot communicate with humans the common way, instead she uses sign language (elisa being “different” from other people in her workplace and society, further defines her as an outsider, a “misfit” character prone to befriending other “misfits”, as often is the case in fictional films and their portrayal of creatures. though her difference – the scars on the sides of her neck, where her voice box used to be, also play an important role later). this allows for those two characters – human and creature – to lose the barrier of language, or rather speech, in general. if they are both not able to speak, they find other ways to communicate. the amphibian man learns sign language from elisa, and they develop their own way to speak to each other. “what is beautiful for me is that every single character that has the power of speech has problems communicating, and the two characters that do not have the power of speech – they are mute or wordless – they are actually communicating beautifully”, says del toro (whitley-berry 2017, § 7). 4.2. sound music is another form of communication the main characters choose. elisa loves cinema and music and transfers that love to the amphibian man by playing him vinyl records. the creature responds to music and responds to elisa’s dancing in his own way. after seeing them dance and listen to music together, the doctor in the lab (mr. hoffstetler) also starts to believe that the creature is more intelligent and is able to feel and communicate. del toro shows the importance of music in the screenplay too, where music or song for each scene is already decided and referred to (del toro and taylor 2016). in terms of non-diegesis, alexandre desplat’s score creates a fantastic atmosphere, drawing inspiration from the sounds of water, as well as from the way it feels, as he sees water at the centre of the film (grobar relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 52 viktorija lankauskaitė 2017). the music rolls in waves and immerses the viewers in love and warmth. the creature’s theme sounds more mystical, primal, and dangerous, but also with an element of fantasy, combining the thematic elements and contrasts of a sea creature, as discussed before. the creature himself also has a distinctive sound. initially, the sound is reminiscent of the sound of a dolphin but as some interviews reveal, the range of sounds used is much broader. included were the voice of the sound editor nathan robitaille, sounds of swans, parrots, frogs, and other animals. water is also an important element, as it is supposed to move through the gills, and generally is a source of life for the creature. just as the voice of humans mostly consists of air travelling through the cavities in our head and body in various ways, the creature’s voice needed to account for water travelling in the same way too. one of the unexpected sounds that tied it all together was the voice, and especially the breathing, of guillermo del toro himself. the example of this can be clearly heard in the scene with the creature just brought to elisa’s bath and gasping for air (walden 2017). the overview of sound reveals the brilliant teamwork that went in to making the film, how the details that each separate element bring, complements each other and helps in building the version of the creature we see on screen. 4.3. image both from the perspective of the director and his voice as auteur, and from the film itself and its appealing quality overall, the image might be the most important aspect in the portrayal of the creature. this is where all of the references, inspirations and imagination meet. the colours and visual effects, the environment that the director chooses to put the character in, all helps to construct the image of the amphibian man, or as the director himself says, everything in the film serves the creature: “you have the outer core – cinematography, production design, wardrobe, colour palette and all of that. and right at the centre, is the monster. everything else serves the monster. that’s a monster movie” (jenkins 2018, § 2). as mentioned before, the amphibian man resembles a man, but has the qualities of an underwater creature: gills, fins, and webbed limbs. the skin appears to be cold and glistening, yet strong and resilient, as the creature itself is muscular, though his movements are more elegant in the water than on the ground. his eyes remind us more of those of a fish, while the lips are more similar to those of a human. such a combination of relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ beyond the fairy tale of “the shape of water” 53 zoomorphism allows us to glimpse at an actor underneath as well (underneath practical visual effects – costume and make up, not cgi), just as del toro wishes. his screenplay describes the creature as “beautiful, majestic, pure”, while other unwelcoming characters use the words like “ugly”, “untamed”, “animal”, “dangerous” (del toro and taylor 2016). the care for colours and colour symbology is particularly remarkable. the shades of green and blue can be seen in almost every scene and in many things – walls, clothes, cars, key lime pie, and everything in between. “that’s the future now. green”, says bernie, an advertising agent that giles tries to sell his work to. while the shades of green were used with the intention to create the unsettling mood, a more bluish shade, or teal, represents the future (james 2017). alternative shades within the film are warmer – browns, mustards – used for the friendlier characters such as giles, zelda, dr hoffstetler (grobar 2018, §§ 14-15). sometimes red appears on screen too, mainly in elisa’s wardrobe, more so as her relationship with the creature develops (and the contrast of blue and red reminds us of the contrasts between hellboy and abe sapien too). however, in this film too, del toro’s use of red is careful and calculated. the shades of green, teal, and blue also, without much hesitation, point to water as well, as it is an important element of the film. even though it can be regarded as environment, it is vital to the character we are studying. it is his life and his home. the viewers also learn that water has a special meaning to elisa too, as she was an orphan found in the water, so it might be easier to understand that the sea becomes home to both of them at the end. the presence of water, both on screen and as an idea also allows for the use of colours that guillermo del toro has been so fascinated about, as well as to give the film that overall iridescent visual atmosphere. these colours translate to the creature too. the shades of teal, blue, black and tan are present on his skin, as well as some more impressive effects – bioluminescent markings (as described in the screenplay), that light up and change colours when the creature is excited or uses his magical powers. the production design can also be mentioned with its idea to show the monster as a god, even when he is held captive in the lab. the pool there was constructed to appear like a ziggurat temple with the figure of a rising sun above, made of the round tank and pipes (zahed 2018, § 7). when it comes to cinematography, camera angles provide a more specific starting point in the discussion. the creature is often viewed from below, which accentuates his strength, size, and power. the shots are often wide, which might hint at showing the creature’s relationship with others – when he is being tortured, when he is with elisa, and so relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 54 viktorija lankauskaitė on – rather than the creature alone. though the close ups, to show the beauty of the monster, are not too rare. the camera movements are smooth, continuous, and “floating”, as they too aimed to simulate the movement of water. this idea and a tight budget brought some challenges (chimera lighting n.d.), but the vision of the director and the work that was put in by the production team was translated beautifully and the final result shows that. the approach towards visuals and camera work is also a nod to practical filmmaking, where most of the film’s look is achieved in-camera, and very little is left for post-production. such an approach might also depend on the budget, but it definitely shows the mastery of the filmmaker, the level of the knowledge of their craft, and the attention to detail instead of relying solely on technology – even if these possibilities are endless. overall, the visuals give the film the quality of a fantasy, fairy tale, rather than a horror or monster film in general. the images allow us to see the true beauty of the creature. the director’s attention and the work and care of the whole creative team bring each detail, colour, and effect together, to create an entertaining and inspiring visual experience. 5. conclusions summarising the main topics addressed here, it could be said that: • guillermo del toro’s distinctive style and voice as an auteur provides viewers with detailed, well crafted, and visually appealing stories where particular attention is paid to colour palettes, visual effects, and loveable characters, often in the realm of fantasy, and the shape of water is an example of this. • monsters in cinema, while still often bearing the shape of something we consider as “other”, are no longer only villains but take on a more significant role of carrying the message of reflection, acceptance, and embracing otherness. • references to similar stories of human and sea creature relationships, and the myths surrounding such creatures reveal the idea of conflict – both in the relationships and the creatures themselves with their good and bad sides present. the amphibian man follows these inspirations and is a similarly complex character. a closer look at the shape of water reveals that this work of art is not just a “woman falls in love with an amphibian creature” film. guillermo del toro brings many ideas together to create an intelligent, beautiful, relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ beyond the fairy tale of “the shape of water” 55 and loveable, yet mystical and powerful monster – a representation of many myths about similar creatures and stories about them. putting him at the centre, making him a love interest, a protagonist in a way, is a step up from the gill-man of the black lagoon, and fits in with the recent trend of positive monster representation, seeing them as more than villains, threats and in need of slaying. here the real monster turns out to be someone else entirely. the amphibian man helps to address the themes of acceptance, embracing otherness, and further defines del toro’s love of monsters. the director’s hand can also be felt in many different elements that connect the film – sound, camera work, colours, and production design – as they all complement each other and make sense in the fairy tale world that del toro aims and achieves to construct. references adji, alberta natasia. 2019. “falling for the amphibian man: fantasy, otherness, and auteurism in del toro’s the shape of water”. iafor journal of media, communication & film 6 (1): 51-64. doi: 10.22492/ijmcf.6.1.03. bane, theresa. 2016. encyclopedia of beasts and monsters in myth, legend and folklore. jefferson (nc): mcfarland & company. bassil-morozow, helena. 2010. tim burton: the monster and the crowd: a postjungian perspective. london: routledge. bernardi, verena, and frank jacob, eds. 2019. all around monstrous: monster media in their historical contexts. wilmington (de): vernon press. bloom, abigail burnham. 2010. the literary monster on film: five nineteenth century british novels and their cinematic adaptations. jefferson (nc): mcfarland & company. chimera lighting. n.d. “dan lausten – asc, shape of water”. https://chimeralighting. com/shape-of-water/ creature from the black lagoon. 1954. directed by jack arnold. universal international pictures (ui). davies, ann, deborah shaw, and 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(1994) 2011. the beast within: animals in the middle ages. new york: routledge. staples, donald e. 1966. “the auteur theory reexamined”. cinema journal 6: 1-7. doi: 10.2307/1225411. stymeist, david. 2009. “myth and the monster in cinema”. anthropologica 51 (2): 395-406. https://www.jstor.org/stable/25605494 the shape of water. 2017. directed by guillermo del toro. double dare you (ddy), fox searchlight pictures. wade, joseph. 2018. “the shape of water (2017/18) review”. last modified january 12. https://www.thefilmagazine.com/shape-of-water-review/ walden, jennifer. 2018. “behind the shape of water’s retro-futuristic fairytale sound”. last modified february 20. https://www.asoundeffect.com/theshape-of-water-sound/ ward, glenn. 2014. “‘there is no such thing’: del toro’s metafictional monster rally”. in the transnational fantasies of guillermo del toro, edited by ann davies, deborah shaw, and dolores tierney. new york: palgrave macmillan. relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://deadline.com/2017/12/the-shape-of-water-alexandre-desplat-oscars-interview-1202220056 https://deadline.com/2017/12/the-shape-of-water-alexandre-desplat-oscars-interview-1202220056 https://deadline.com/2017/12/the-shape-of-water-alexandre-desplat-oscars-interview-1202220056 https://deadline.com/2018/01/the-shape-of-water-paul-d-austerberry-production-designer-interview-news-1202230180/ https://deadline.com/2018/01/the-shape-of-water-paul-d-austerberry-production-designer-interview-news-1202230180/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5580390/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5580390/ https://variety.com/2017/artisans/production/guillermo-del-toro-shape-of-water-1202633301/ https://variety.com/2017/artisans/production/guillermo-del-toro-shape-of-water-1202633301/ https://variety.com/2017/artisans/production/guillermo-del-toro-shape-of-water-1202633301/ https://lwlies.com/interviews/guillermo-del-toro-the-shape-of-water/ https://lwlies.com/interviews/guillermo-del-toro-the-shape-of-water/ http://www.jstor.org/stable/3738613 http://www.jstor.org/stable/3738613 https://www.jstor.org/stable/25605494 https://www.thefilmagazine.com/shape-of-water-review/ https://www.asoundeffect.com/the-shape-of-water-sound/ https://www.asoundeffect.com/the-shape-of-water-sound/ https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ beyond the fairy tale of “the shape of water” 57 weinstock, jeffrey andrew. 2012. “invisible monsters: vision, horror, and contemporary culture”. in the ashgate research companion to monsters and the monstrous, edited by asa s. mittman and peter dendle, 275-289. farnham (surrey): ashgate. whitley-berry, victoria. 2017. “guillermo del toro says ‘shape of water’ is an antidote for today’s cynicism”. last modified december 1. https://www. npr.org/2017/12/01/567265511/guillermo-del-toro-says-shape-of-water-isan-antidote-for-today-s-cynicism?t=1612730428623 wood, juliette. (2014) 2016. “mermaid/merman”. in ashgate encyclopedia of literary and cinematic monsters, edited by jeffrey andrew weinstock. farnham (surrey): ashgate. zahed, ramen. 2018. “strong color palette brings a long-held vision of shape of water to life”. last modified january 25. https://www.latimes. com/entertainment/envelope/la-en-mn-crafts-shape-water-design20180125-story.html relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.npr.org/2017/12/01/567265511/guillermo-del-toro-says-shape-of-water-is-an-antidote-for-today-s-cynicism?t=1612730428623 https://www.npr.org/2017/12/01/567265511/guillermo-del-toro-says-shape-of-water-is-an-antidote-for-today-s-cynicism?t=1612730428623 https://www.npr.org/2017/12/01/567265511/guillermo-del-toro-says-shape-of-water-is-an-antidote-for-today-s-cynicism?t=1612730428623 https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/envelope/la-en-mn-crafts-shape-water-design-20180125-story.html https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/envelope/la-en-mn-crafts-shape-water-design-20180125-story.html https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/envelope/la-en-mn-crafts-shape-water-design-20180125-story.html https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ relations_9-1-2-2021_00b_sommario.pdf studies and research contributions pigs vs. boards beka jalagania the chincoteague ponies and what it means to be free alexis flower beyond the fairy tale of the shape of water viktorija lankauskaitė max scheler e la possibilità di una nuova forma di antispecismo enrico r.a. calogero giannetto distributive justice and animal welfare paola morreale unitarianism or hierarchical approach for moral status? a very subtle difference francesco allegri comments, debates, reports and interviews animals and justice paola fossati author guidelines boundary transgressions: the human-animal chimera in science fiction boundary transgressions the human-animal chimera in science fiction evelyn tsitas phd, creative media, school of media & communication, university of melbourne doi: 10.7358/rela-2014-002-tsit etsitas@hotmail.com abstract this paper explores how science fiction writers have used human-animal chimera experiments as the inspiration for creating characters that challenge us to consider what is quintessentially human and what is animal. since mary shelley’s “frankenstein” (1818) created a manufactured man from parts of dead animals and humans combined, and h.g. wells wrote about vivisection used to create the beast men in “the island of dr. moreau” in 1896, animal experimentation has been mirrored in science fiction. xenotransplantation is used with tragic-comic effect in mikhail bulgakov’s long banned 1932 novel “a dog’s heart”, and with pathos in malorie blackman’s 1997 children’s novel “pig heart boy”. shostakovich’s recently resurrected 1932 satiric opera, “orango”, explores the results of doctors inseminating female primates with their own sperm. in vincenzo natali’s 2009 transgenic science fiction horror film “splice”, dren – the ultimate chimera – is created by scientists clive and elsa splicing multiple animal and human dna. as donna haraway predicted in “a manifesto for cyborgs” (1991), “[b]y the late twentieth century […] nothing really convincingly settles the separation of the human and animal”. in investigating the manufactured human-animal chimera as a cyborg, the literary trope of the mad scientist that emerged with frankenstein is examined. keywords: human-animal studies, human-animal chimeras, science fiction, animal experimentation, donna haraway, mary shelley, h.g. wells, malorie blackman, vincenzo natali, mikhail bulgakov. 1. introduction science fiction is created not in a vacuum, but in parallel with scientific achievements and research. while human-animal chimera experimentation provides us with compelling representations of human identity in a biotechnological age, it also reveals deep levels of speciesism. novels about http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ evelyn tsitas 98 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ chimeras highlight how humans experiment on animals without regard to their own needs, safety or comfort. authors take the reader into laboratories to show them scientists “taming” and altering and augmenting the animal body. the scientists’ aim in the case studies i explore in this paper is to create a blend of human and animal that uses the qualities humans admire and envy in the other species. instinct, strength and heightened senses are seen to accentuate the diminished qualities of the rational “civilized” human. yet in molding and breaking the animal spirit and shaping the resulting chimera, scientists claim sovereignty over the chimera’s body. similarly, in science, human-animal chimeras have become objects of property, as well as objects of ethical controversy, depending on whether they are seen to be human, or non-human (hinterberger 2011). with the rise of the creation of chimera embryos for stem cell research, there has been widespread use of animal eggs in the process, whereas human eggs are deemed rare and precious. when it comes to medical experimentation, all parts of the animal are considered by humans to be disposable. in investigating the relationships between scientific experiments on the human-animal chimera and the representation of those experiments in science fiction, what may be revealed when the texts fictionalize the topic of interspecies hybridization between the human and the animal? in this paper, i will focus on several human-animal chimeras in science fiction. these characters are fictional responses to developments in science that pushed the boundaries of what humans perceive to be “human”. they also reveal a discourse about race and gender politics (squier 1998). the attitudes to the chimera, revealed through the literary trope of the mad scientist, epitomize human arrogance towards nature and scientific hubris. ever since mary shelley’s monstrous creature terrified readers in her 1818 novel frankenstein, the human-animal chimera has caused fear and revulsion in humans, while the trope of the mad scientist has embodied for the reader the anxiety created by the ethical conundrums of scientific endeavor – on one hand pushing known boundaries to extend human life and knowledge, on the other, creating chaos through blindly experimenting with the fundamental core of human existence in the pursuit of corrupt ego-driven personal desires. i will explore several science fiction texts that give a voice to the chimera, a manufactured hybrid deemed by society as a monster that should not exist. the chimera, partly human, like us, is also animal. the chimera therefore disrupts the duality of the species as we know it. i argue that our relationship with animals explored in science fiction gives us vital clues to how we view our own humanity and superiority as a species. it is no coincidence that some of the most disturbing science fiction has its roots in scientific experiments. as i will explore in this paper, boundary transgressions 99 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ from stalin’s sanctioned program of inseminating women with primate semen to create super soldiers, to scientists creating human-animal chimera embryos in british laboratories, science fiction has given a narrative to the possible consequences of its great plans, bold imaginings and ever increasing push to challenge the boundaries of what we know. 2. methodology how may we understand the attraction and revulsion reflected in the characterization of a human-animal chimera in science fiction? to do this i will apply insights from the work of donna haraway, who identifies in her influential 1985 essay a cyborg manifesto: science, technology, and socialist-feminism in the late twentieth century a set of criteria for cyborg existence. according to haraway, a cyborg is a hybrid that challenges the distinction between the organic/technological systems, human and animal life forms, mind/body and male/female. calling the cyborg “a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction”, haraway points to the fact that cyborgs have both a real and imagined context (1991, 149). while haraway uses the ironic metaphor of the cyborg to suggest a new way of constructing ideas of feminism outside traditional ideas of the women’s movement and politics, in a cyborg manifesto she sets out detailed theories about “the cyborg incarnation” (haraway 1991, 7-46). i identify the human-animal chimera in science fiction as a cyborg, according to haraway’s manifesto. i argue that haraway’s cyborg theories are valid ways of understanding the chimera in science fiction. haraway explains that one of the first crucial boundary breakdowns necessary for the appearance of the cyborg is the breakdown of the boundary between human and animal (haraway 1991). i will now explore how scientific experimentation between species is instrumental in the disruption of long established species boundaries in the following textual case studies of science fiction works. mary shelley’s frankenstein heralds the start of an investigation in fiction about the scientific impulse to create chimeras (squier 1998; heffernan 2003; clayton 2007; ferreira 2008). h.g. wells’ novel the island of dr. moreau (1896) anticipates certain key developments in late-twentiethcentury molecular biology and speculates on the possible consequences of this scientific research (danta 2012). mikhail bulgakov’s 1932 novel a  dog’s heart, dmitri shostakovich’s recently resurrected 1932 satiric opera, orango, the pig heart boy a children’s novel by malorie blackman that was first published in 1997 and vincenzo natali’s 2009 transgenic evelyn tsitas 100 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ science fiction horror film splice all make imaginative use of the scientific procedures of their time, such as vivisection, xenotransplantation, experiments in hybridization between human beings and apes, and the creation of cybrid (human-animal) embryos through biotechnology. i argue that the depiction of the chimera illustrated in these case studies displays the anxiety about the notion of what is considered human. here the chimera is a symbol of the disrupted boundary between not just the animal and the human, but of the fragmented modern identity. the chimera’s sexuality also blurs species boundaries, resulting in moral dilemmas with other characters. dren in splice disrupts the accepted human cultural boundaries, resulting in transgressive sexual activity with her parents that forces viewers to confront taboos such as bestiality and incest. in these case studies, the eventual fate of the chimeras, through either death or devolution, epitomizes the cultural acceptance and presumed inevitability of animal sacrifice. it also points to their liminal status as persons. in chimera and the continuum of humanity d. scott bennett argues that personhood is the necessary threshold requirement to the application of specific constitutional rights and therefore personhood of various types of chimera is crucial: “given the state of chimera technology, the division between human and animal has become a continuum not a bright line” (bennett 2006, 349). while the trope of the mad scientist traces its roots to the clinical association between genius and insanity that developed in the mid-nineteenth century (stiles 2009), i argue that the literary trope of the mad scientist that is revealed in the following case studies embodies the desire of the human to push the frontier of what it means to be human. for theorist n. katherine hayles, the posthuman does not mean the end of humanity but signals the end of a certain conception of the human, one that had the privilege of agency and choice in the first place (hayles 1999, 286). the word trope has a broad meaning, standing for any recurring feature, term or image in a text, a genre or culture (fahnestock 2011, 100). patterns or conventions in storytelling, noted by the philosopher aristotle, are shorthand for concepts that readers will instantly recognize. haraway argues “tropes are what make us want to look and need to listen for surprises that get us out of inherited boxes” (haraway 1991, 32). in the following case studies, the trope of the mad scientist is revealed in different ways. crucial is the purpose for which the chimera is created. do they wish to create a chimera to rid the human of undesirable qualities? breed a race of super humans who are the ultimate aggressive soldiers by using the improved physical traits such as superior ocular, auditory and sensory capabilities from animals? or to rid the human of their aggresboundary transgressions 101 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ sion? likewise, it is relevant if the scientist draws on the conceit of human mental superiority and rationality in proposing that the chimera would be enhanced with human characteristics deemed superior, such as cognitive capabilities, language and consciousness that it is believed are not found in animals. for ethicist julian savulescu, the initial moral or ethical intent involved matters to the chimera’s eventual fate. he argues that while creating human-animal chimeras may be questionable, it may have value in medical purposes, in delaying aging or prolonging human life or by enhancing human capabilities (savulescu 2003). here we see the imperative to create the chimera from the human perspective and not the animal. the desire to preserve separate categories for animals and humans that are now being extinguished in biotechnology is one that can be traced back to the middle ages. when early christian thinkers established what they believed to be clear categories that separated animals from humans, they not only were making a theological statement of humanity’s dominance over the natural world but were actually defining what it meant to be human (salisbury 2011). in the 21st century, with biotechnology and transgenic animals and the creation of human-animal embryos for research purposes, the boundaries between animal and human are now called into question. statistics reveal that only 5% of dna separates all known genomes, the uniquely human part of which is limited to 0.1% (mchugh 2006, 67). concerns about hybridity and an anxiety of race and species reveal a preoccupation with issues of origin and hierarchy and purity of species (squier 1998) despite the fact that animals have increasingly been reconstituted through increasingly exotic genetic crossbreeding and the industrial production of meat (cole 2011). for cary wolfe, the animal is a social construction that when examined reveals the shifting nature of the categories of “animal” and “human” (wolfe 2009; shapiro and demello 2010). while the miscegenation of the human and the animal has long held sway over the human imagination, resulting in both terror and curiosity, the species barrier, despite long practiced bestiality, is a firm biological one. that has not stopped both scientists and writers from imagining that the merging of the biological identities would result in improvements for both species. let us now investigate examples in fiction of what happens when the boundary between human and animal breaks down. evelyn tsitas 102 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 3. frankenstein and the island of doctor moreau regarded as the first science fiction novel frankenstein has become synonymous with science out of control. dr. victor frankenstein’s hubris in creating life artificially heralded the trope of the mad scientist. as susan squier observes: “mary shelley’s monster is an interspecies hybrid […] he functions as a point of origin for the negative literary image of xenogenic desire” (squier 1998, 366). dr. frankenstein made a man from the corpses of both animal and human: “the dissecting room and the slaughter-house furnished many of my materials” (shelley 1818, 55) and the creature that emerged from the industrial revolution as the first manufactured humananimal hybrid also gave rise to a trope that has endured in science fiction. victor frankenstein is fearful and appalled at what he has created. he is in sheer terror after bringing to life his creature after two years of toil. he runs to his friend clerval, who asks what is wrong when he sees a wildness in victor’s eyes that frightens and astonishes him: “do not ask me”, cried i, putting my hands before my eyes, for i thought i saw the dreaded spectre glide into the room; “he can tell. – oh, save me! save me!” i imagined that the monster seized me; i struggled furiously and fell down in a fit. (shelley 1818, 62) we see a shift in the mad scientist trope that occurs after frankenstein to the island of doctor moreau. after the publication of darwin’s origin of species in 1859, his evolutionary theory removed the boundaries between species, but it also placed the human at the top of the evolutionary ladder, and it is only humanity, for darwin, which can assess the “grandeur in this view of life” (fudge 2009). with man at the top of the tree, the trope of the mad scientist takes on a messianic tone. like frankenstein, wells’ novel is concerned with the role of science in the construction of a new race. both the scientists dr. frankenstein and dr. moreau see themselves as gods and the creators of a new class of being. the difference is that post darwin, dr. moreau is proud of his hybrid progeny and his role as creator of a new species. the island of doctor moreau was published shortly after wells’ hugely successful novel the time machine, and written in a highly productive period in which wells did not expect to live long because of ill health. the works from this time, like moreau, are dark and frightening, bating readers to imagine a world where the veneer of civilization was taken away because of a catastrophe (lodge 2012). the novel is relevant to any discussion of scientific chimeras because it speculates on the consequences of scientific research (danta 2012). boundary transgressions 103 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ in wells’ novel, the “animalized victims” and “animal-men” who inhabit moreau’s island have been created by the reclusive scientist who has been forced out from his career in london where he practiced vivisection, the experimentation on live animals in order to understand the mechanisms of the liver, pancreas, spleen, and other organs. what i find interesting is not how moreau’s chimeras are created, but why. as margaret atwood explains in her introduction to the 2005 edition of the the island of doctor moreau, “no man ever did or ever will turn animals into human beings by cutting them up and sewing them together again” (wells 1896, xiv). in wells’ preoccupation with the exploration of the boundary between the animal and the human, the chimeras are the results. dr. moreau’s reasoning is that he wishes to drive out the evil in the human and turn the hybrid into a more rational creature than man. the fact that these experiments and surgeries cause horrific pain is of no concern to him. on moreau’s island, shipwreck survivor prendick listens to dr. moreau’s explanations for his experimentations; “[…] he was simple and convincing. now and then there was a touch of sarcasm in his voice” (wells 1896, 70). indeed, moreau sees himself as a father figure, ruling with a loving but iron fist to create the hybrid species who must obey strict rules; “[…] not to go on all-fours; not to suck up drink; not to eat flesh or fish; not to claw bark or trees; not to chase other men” (wells 1896, 59). while prendick observes the chimera’s use of language as a sign of their humanity, dr. moreau mocks and abuses the law the beast men chant, revealing how well’s portrays capacity for language as deeply ambiguous (mchugh 2006). prendick is preoccupied with understanding what distinguishes human life from animal life. it is a concern for the beast men as well. they have their rules – not to eat meat, walk on four legs, and so on, but adhering to the bible as laid down by moreau does not make them men. they look uncannily human, so much so that prendick is scared they are human turned to animals and is fearful that this will also be his fate. when moreau is killed and the beast men gradually devolve back to animal, prendick is left without any possibility of companionship. he observes that their speech gradually disappears, becoming more simian; they walk erect with increasing clumsiness; they are unable to use their hands as humans do and eat like animals; they have no regard for decency or sexual prudishness, and make themselves lairs; “[…] and at night the air was hideous with their calls and howling” (wells 1896, 126). in short, the beast men have awareness and then lose their self-awareness. the concept of the body as a mechanism, separable from the (human) mind allowed descartes and his followers in the 17th century to justify inflicting pain on evelyn tsitas 104 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ animals when humans needed to use them in particular ways (birke and michael 1998). it is this notion that animal bodies are mere machines that underpins the use of animal bodies as repositories of supply parts – for xenotransplantation, and for the modification of animals for transgenic organs. the animal is sacrificed to provide life to special humans. 4. a dog’s heart and pig heart boy in the period between 1900 and 1929, eugenics as a popular social movement was reflected in science fiction. science fiction films of this period integrated eugenics visually by exploring humanity’s connection to its bestial past and exploited fears of tampering with human heredity (kirby 2007). while xenotransplantation was first recorded in 1682 when part of a dog’s skull was used to repair the broken skull of a russian nobleman, in mikhail bulgakov’s long banned 1932 novel a dog’s heart it is bulgakov’s use of contemporary scientific ideas that is used as both allegorical plot device and the basis for the creation of a human-animal chimera that interest us. in bulgakov’s novel, the trope of the mad scientist is revealed in the character of a famous doctor, professor preobrazhensky; a name that means “transfiguration” (fudge 2009). he takes a stray dog into his home and experiments on him by transplanting human testicles and a human pituitary gland into the dog. like in the case of dr. moreau, his arrogance is on display: a new area of science is opening up: a homunculus has been created without any faustian report. the surgeon’s scalpel has brought into being a new unit of humanity! prof. preobrazhensky, you are a creator! (bulgakov 1932, 64-5) yet his hubris is quickly undone, as he watches, astonished and appalled, as sharik the dog becomes a foul-mouthed, lecherous human who names himself poligraph poligraphovich sharikov. as a chimera who has acquired language, sharikov can speak for the animals subjected to scientific experiments who have no voice, and demands to know why he was operated on without giving his consent. what is at stake here is the dog’s own species identity, something that human arrogance cannot fathom is important. the character of sharikov operates as a narrative device raising questions of identity. yet while bulgakov provides readers with shifting species boundaries that are echoed by the shifting narrative voices (fudge 2009), sharikov is portrayed as having instincts that, like moreau’s beast men, cannot be boundary transgressions 105 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ erased. he chases cats, and this is his undoing when it results in the flat being almost destroyed. the professor again takes command, and reverses the experiment and turns sharikov back into sharik the dog. although readings of a dog’s heart point to it as a political allegory and criticism of the soviet system (bulgakov 1932, xiv), it can also be argued that it has something to say about how constructed the notion of human really is (fudge 2009). bulgakov had ample scientific knowledge to draw on, having studied medicine at kiev university in 1909 and worked in front line hospitals in world war i. he would have also been aware of the experiments by russian scientist serge voronoff (1866-1951), working in paris. voronoff was one of the first to transplant testicular tissue from a monkey into a human reproductive gland in 1920. five years later he had already performed this procedure on 300 patients and attracted patients from all over the world (schultheiss, denil, and udo 1997). voronoff argued that the grafting of slices of monkey testicle onto the testicles of men would lead to rejuvenation of flagging virility. animal sexuality is seen as forceful, driven by primal instinct and unhindered by human anxieties. erotic fiction of a bestial nature plays upon this insatiable lust and virility, so it is perhaps no surprise that after voronoff began by experimenting with ageing rams in 1917, he made a fortune creating temporary “chimeras” of human males until their immune systems rejected the grafts. today, pig heart valves are routinely transplanted into heart patients with far greater success. however, while moral concerns over xenotransplantation relate to both animals and humans, on the australian government website biology online, the risks of xenotransplantation relate to humans, not to the animals which would be sacrificed to provide the organs and tissue. in pig heart boy a children’s novel by malorie blackman (1997) that was shortlisted for the carnegie medal, thirteen-year-old cameron kelsey is dying of heart disease, and time is running out to get a transplant. in desperation, his father approaches transgenic doctor richard bryce, who is trying to conduct research with pig hearts. dr. bryce agrees to perform the operation on cameron, although it has never been done before. here we see an evolution of the literary trope of the mad scientist; the scientist is now seen as a lifesaver, science is seen as the last resort. it is the father who seeks the xenotransplantation for his son, not the “mad scientist” looking for a subject. in the late 20th century, as the human genome was being mapped, the fear of what might happen with gene splicing and biotechnology had not yet grasped the popular imagination. this was also a period in history when organ donation and ivf had become commercially viable and commonplace. author maureen duffy argues that we now feel evelyn tsitas 106 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ “at the mercy of doctors, drug companies, physicians and biologists, who can manipulate the very genes in a fetus that could grow into a sentient creature that might one day be us” (duffy 1995). in pig heart boy, cameron’s mother’s fears her son will be less than human as a result of having such an important organ – the pump that runs the body, in effect – replaced by an animal’s heart. the heart is also symbolically linked to humanity, feelings of love, and the soul. to replace this heart with a pig’s – an animal equated in many cultures with uncleanliness, greed, and cannibalism, is for cameron’s mother unthinkable. xenotransplantation challenges the species boundary. how many animal organs can be inserted into a human before it is no longer considered wholly “human?”. one suggestion is to grade chimeras on a sliding scale of humanness, with pure humans at one end and pure animals at the other and various chimeras in between. those who most exemplify humanness would be granted personhood – those only more than animal but less than human would not (bennett 2006). i would argue that it is not only appearance that humans use for acceptance into their species. as we can see from the island of doctor moreau, and a dog’s heart, language and compliance with social mores are also seen as key criteria for being human. what constitutes or defines what is human is generally not written down in law or legislation. definitions are rooted in historical, cultural and ethical understanding of what it means to be human (hinterberger 2011). 5. orango in the late 1920s ilya ivanov, an eminent russian biologist at the institute of experimental pathology and therapy in the former soviet union, carried out experiments with doctors inseminating female primates with their own sperm. ivanov was sent by the soviet government and academy of sciences to africa in 1926 to carry out experiments involving the artificial insemination of female chimpanzees with human sperm. upon his return to the soviet union in 1927, ivanov continued this controversial research at a primate station in sukhumi. it is claimed these experiments, which bore no hybrid fruit, were part of a stalinist experiment to breed a human-ape hybrid (rossiianov 2002). these attempts to create a human-animal hybrid through artificial insemination inspired dmitri shostakovich’s recently resurrected 1932 satiric opera, orango. planned as an opera in three acts with the forty-minute prologue, shostakovich’s opera orango was completed only in piano vocal score and languished in a russian museum archive until 2004, when it was rediscovboundary transgressions 107 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ered. the prologue was orchestrated by british composer gerard mcburney and given its world première (semi-staged by peter sellars) by esa-pekka salonen and the los angeles philharmonic in december, 2011 (lost opera 2012). the libretto, by writers alexei tolstoy and alexander starchakov, sets up the tale of the rise and fall of orango, a.k.a. jean or, a human-ape hybrid who becomes an anti-communist and newspaper baron, swindler and blackmailer. finally, his corrupted humanity causes him to revert like moreau’s beast men, to his animal state, becoming more like his ape mother in his features the older he gets. the monsters that captured the medieval imagination by the late 12th century were seen as the exact antithesis of humans; they were covered with hair, they lived away from the civilization of settlements, lacked speech and ate raw meat. this creature – a negative human – would have been a comfort because it challenged definitions of humanity with its previously intractable ideas about rationality, conformity to social norms and appearance (salisbury 2011). the refusal to take these borders as unchangeable allowed marxist biologists in the soviet union to support the experiments of hybridization between human and animal (rossiianov 2002). the loathsome and animal nature of jean or is epitomized when he is put in a cage and displayed as a cautionary tale (loiko and reed 2011). human zoos that featured at world’s fairs shaped international relations for over a century (1851-1958), a time when scientific racism enabled people to view the other as a spectator sport and in which racism, segregation and eugenist ideas were able to penetrate public opinion (boëtsch and snoep 2011). here, jean or, as the animal other, is cast perfectly as the spectacle in a cage: as his animal side emerges he is deemed savage and inferior. in this libretto, we have all the hallmarks of the classic chimeramonster tale – the mad scientist is a french biologist who impregnates a female ape with human sperm. the scientist later invites the chimera into his home and introduces him to his daughter, with disastrous results when the chimera tries to rape the daughter. i argue this monstrous act is seen as fitting retribution for the act of trying to create a monster, which is how the chimera is regarded. 6. splice the movie splice (2009) is speculative vision of what would happen if research such as the uk government backed research in cytoplasmic hybrids went beyond the regulated three-day growth and experimentation. evelyn tsitas 108 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ in vincenzo natali’s transgenic science fiction horror film dren – the ultimate chimera – is created by splicing animal and human dna. in the iliad, homer introduces the “furious chimaera” (homer and lattimore 2001, 360) with the head of a lion, the body of a goat and the tail of a serpent. its form was symbolic of its monstrous nature. along with the hybrids such as the minotaur, the gorgons, and the sirens, the chimera was seen as a sign of impending disaster. in modern biotechnology, the term chimera describes an organism comprised of at least two genetically distinct populations of cells originating from independent embryos. chimera technology has rapidly left the realm of the hypothetical and this technology opens up a pandora’s box of legal and ethical questions by intimately mixing human and animal. in splice, genetic scientists clive nicoli (adrien brody) and elsa kast (sarah polley) covertly conduct their own experiment to create a humananimal hybrid within nerd – a pharmaceutical company that funds their research – when they are told that other “splice” projects they are working on are to be shelved for more pedestrian research. in a last ditch effort to prove they can create a new life form, the scientists blend multiple animal dna with human dna. elsa secretly uses her own egg, even though she does not want to have her own child and compromise her body, her life and her career. here i would argue, we have two boundary transgressions, that of scientists creating life without a mother (mellor 1998) and of the woman refusing conventional motherhood. the blurring of boundaries through biotechnology results in the human-animal chimera dren, who is born resembling a writhing, hissing lump with a long tail. dren rapidly develops into a grotesque creature that looks like a plucked chicken with long emu legs, a kangaroo tail and a porpoise like head with side set eyes. her fast growth transforms her into a girl who has a normal torso and arms, an increasingly normal looking head, and animal legs and hooves. it is curiosity and hubris that drives elsa and clive to artificially fertilise a human egg with multiple animal dna, although it is only after dren is born that the scientists pause to consider the implications of what they have done. they subject dren to x-rays and mri scans to investigate her internal structure. they marvel at how the human and animal are fused. clive wonders if her more deadly characteristics may turn out to be human or animal. yet it is clive who tries to kill the newborn because it is so grotesque and he reasons it must be in pain. elsa is constantly driven by the desire to see what eventuates from the experiment. dren’s life is one of isolation, agony and surveillance, culminating in her scientist parents plotting to kill her when she becomes a rebellious teenager and deemed out of boundary transgressions 109 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ control. yet, dren defies the scientists and becomes the killer instead, displaying revenge and autonomy. changing gender at the end of the movie, dren kills her father and rapes her mother, impregnating her with a new lifeform, a naturally occurring human-animal hybrid. dren’s creation has disrupted the accepted human cultural boundaries, resulting in transgressive sexual activity with her parents that forces viewers to confront taboos such as bestiality and incest. elsa’s pregnancy is monstrous as a result, serving a warning of what is to come. 7. conclusion through analyzing the breakdown of the boundary between human and animal made possible by scientific experimentation, i have shown how this has given rise to what haraway argues in a cyborg manifesto is one of the criteria necessary for the emergence of the cyborg. in this paper, i have analysed the manufactured human-animal chimera as a cyborg created by scientific experimentation. as scientists use technology such as xenotransplantation, artificial insemination, ivf and biotechnology to merge the animal and the human, the creatures that result are haraway’s cyborgs. created by science, these hybrids blur the species boundary, which has been transgressed by science before. i have shown how we can use the character of the chimera in science fiction can be used to speculate on long held assumptions of the difference between human and non human species. in this contested space, much is at stake as the dominant species is able to control resources, power and autonomy. the servitude to which the submissive species – the animal – is relegated is revealed in the way the chimera is treated as property and in the way it is refused rights. when the chimera devolves back from human to animal, in the island of doctor moreau, a dog’s heart and orango, the “natural order” is restored and species categories remain consistent. animal sacrifice is often the unseen and certainly unacknowledged aspect of animal experimentation to create the chimera. in pig heart boy, both the animal donor and then cameron, the young recipient, die and so the chimera does not have to live within “normal” society, polluting the species and disrupting the species boundaries. this disrupted species boundary is again restored as dren is killed by her mother in splice. the ending of the film remains ambiguous, with elsa carrying a monstrous pregnancy to term. as a literary trope, the mad scientist embodies the sense of human superiority and power. the mad scientist plunders natural resources – the evelyn tsitas 110 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ animal – for the prized qualities of strength, agility, instinct and heighted senses. i argue that this trope simultaneously epitomizes the way that humans have ravaged the planet, taking from the environment without thought of consequences. in 21st century incarnations of the mad scientist trope, i argue that it is not the scientist that society fears, but omnipresent government, commercial or military interests that take up the biotechnology to use it against humanity. the final scene in splice, in which the scientist elsa considers her lucrative future with the nerd corporation as she continues an interspecies pregnancy, is a metaphor for research ideals selling out to financial pressures. as a symbol of the future anguish caused by commercial greed, splice, a precursor to the late 2009 global financial crisis, is terribly prescient. kimberley jackson argues that here we see the corporation as another manifestation of the monstrous. “unlike frankenstein’s monster, dren will not be destroyed but will instead be reproduced and inserted into human bodies. the existence of corporate individuality, embodied by dren, does not bode well for the future of humanity in general” (jackson 2012, 133). biotechnology is now advanced to the point where ethical concerns about the personhood of human animal chimeras are being seriously debated. in such a climate, the case studies examined have a relevance to 21st century science culture that goes beyond science fiction. these works can be read as more finely nuanced critiques in which those working within science are now being held accountable to ethical standards of research. references bennett, d. scott. 2006. “chimera and the continuum of humanity: erasing the line of constitutional personhood”. emory law journal 55 (2): 347-87. birke, lynda, and mike michael. 1998. “the heart of the matter: animal bodies, ethics, and species boundaries”. society and animals 6 (3): 245-61. blackman, malorie. 1997. pig heart boy. doubleday. boëtsch, gilles, and nanette jacomijn snoep. 2011. human zoos: the invention of the savage, edited by paul blanchard. arles: éditions actes sud musée du quai branly. bulgakov, michail afanas’evič. 1932. a dog’s heart. london: penguin classics. clayton, jay. 2007. “victorian chimeras, or, what literature can contribute to genetics policy today”. new literary history 38 (3): 569-91. cole, lucinda. 2011. “introduction: human-animal studies and the eighteenth century”. the eighteenth century 51 (1): 1-10. danta, chris. 2012. “the future will have been animal: dr moreau and the aesthetics of monstrosity”. textual practice 26 (4): 687-705. boundary transgressions 111 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ duffy, maureen. 1995. “when the scientist plays the devil”. the independent (london, england). accessed april 20, 2013. http://www.questia.com/ library/1p2-4701897/science-when-the-scientist-plays-the-devil. fahnestock, jeanne. 2011. rhetorical style: the uses of language in persuasion. new york: oxford university press. ferreira, aline. 2008. “primate tales: interspecies pregnancy and chimerical beings”. science fiction studies 35 (2): 223-37. fudge, erica. 2009. “at the heart of the home: an animal reading of mikhail bulgakov’s the heart of a dog”. humanimalia: a journal of human/animal interface 1 (1): 1-14. haraway, donna. 1991. “a manifesto for cyborgs: science, technology and socialist feminism in the 1980s”. in simians, cyborgs and women: the reinvention of nature, written by donna haraway, 149-81. london: free association. hayles, n. katherine. 1999. how we become posthuman: virutal bodies in cybernetics, literature and informatics. chicago london: university of chicago press. heffernan, teresa. 2003. “bovine anxieties, virgin births, and the secret of life”. cultural critique 53: 116-33. hinterberger, amy. 2011. “human-animal chimeras. discussion paper for the constitutional foundations of bioethics: cross-national comparisons”. bioproperty. accessed april 20, 2013. http://www.bioproperty.ox.ac.uk/index.php/ download_file/view/37/97. homer, and richmond lattimore. (1951) 2001. the iliad of homer. chicago: university of chicago press. jackson, kimberly. 2012. “splice: the postmodern prometheus”. horror studies 3 (1): 125-38. kirby, david a. 2007. “the devil in our dna: a brief history of eugenics in science fiction films”. literature and medicine 26 (1): 83-108. lodge, david. 2012. a man of parts. london: vintage. loiko, sergei l., and johnson reed. 2011. “shostakovich’s ‘orango’ found, finished, set for disney hall”. los angeles times. accessed june 2, 2012. http://articles. latimes.com/2011/nov/27/entertainment/la-ca-orango-opera-20111127. mchugh, susan. 2006. “the call of the other 0.1%: genetic aesthetics and the new moreaus”. ai & society 20: 63-81. mellor, anne kostelanetz. 1988. mary shelley: her life, her fiction, her monsters. new york london: routledge. rossiianov, kirill. 2002. “beyond species: il’ya ivanov and his experiments on crossbreeding humans with anthropoid apes”. science in context 15 (2): 277-316. salisbury, joyce e. 2011. the beast within: animals in the middle ages, 2nd edn. london new york: routledge. savulescu, julian. 2003. “human-animal transgenesis and chimeras might be an expression of our humani”. the american journal of bioethics 3 (3): 22-5. schultheiss, dirk, j. denil, and udo jonas. 1997. “rejuvenation in the early 20th century”. andrologia 29 (6): 351-5. evelyn tsitas 112 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ shapiro, kenneth, and margo demello. 2010. “the state of human-animal studies”. society and animals 18: 307-18. shelley, mary. 1818. frankenstein, or the modern prometheus. london: penguin classics. shostakovich, dmitri. 1932. orango, libretto by alexei nikolayevich tolstoy and alexander osipovich starchakov, prologue by gerard mcburney. semistaged by peter sellars, esa-pekka salonen, and the los angeles philharmonic, december, 2011. splice. 2009. directed by vincenzo natali. warner bros. pictures in association with dark castle entertainment, copperheart entertainment and gaumont production. dvd. squier, susan. 1998. “interspecies reproduction: xenogenic desire and the feminist implications of hybrids”. cultural studies 12 (1): 360-81. stiles, anne. 2009. “literature in mind: h.g. wells and the evolution of the mad scientist”. journal of the history of ideas 70 (2): 317-39. wells, h.g. 1896. the island of doctor moreau. london: heinemann. wolfe, cary. 2009. what is posthumanism? minneapolis: university of minnesota press. conceptualizing robotic agency: social robots in elder care in contemporary japan 5 is sn 2 2 8 0 -9 9 5 3 beyond anthropocentrism 1 • january 2013 inside the emotional lives of non-human animals a minding animals international utrecht 2012 pre-conference event special issue (genoa, italy, 12-13 may, 2012) edited by m. andreozzi, r. bennison, a. massaro, s. tonutti capabilities approach and animal bioethics • michele panzera animals and our emotions. how to approach the study of an interspecific community? • sabrina tonutti advocacy and animal rights • kim stallwood the emotional lives of animals: a christian perspective • alma massaro – gianfranco nicora animalia: ontology and ethics in weak antispeciesism • leonardo caffo the contemporary debate on experimentation • susanna penco – rosagemma ciliberti non-human animals and genetic engineering • arianna ferrari the relationship between humans and other animals in european animal welfare legislation • paola sobbrio human’s best friends? • matteo andreozzi elationsre l a t io n s . b e y o n d a n t h r o p o c e n t r is m 1 • 2 0 1 3 r 8.1-2 november 2020 finding agency in nonhumans special issue edited by anne aronsson, fynn holm, melissa kaul introduction finding agency in nonhumans 7 anne aronsson fynn holm melissa kaul studies and research contributions conceptualizing robotic agency: social robots in elder care 17 in contemporary japan anne aronsson fynn holm “its hand around my throat”: the social rendering of borrelia 37 ritti soncco distributed skills in camel herding: cooperation 57 in a human-animal relationship in somaliland raphael schwere a sea cow goes to court: extinction and animal agency 77 in a struggle against militarism marius palz is skrei a historical norwegian figure? the nomadic symbiosis 97 of fish and humans in the lofoten islands nafsika papacharalampous relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ relations. beyond anthropocentrism 6 “agents of description”: animals, affect, and care 115 in thalia field’s experimental animals: a reality fiction (2016) shannon lambert comments, debates, reports and interviews on midgley and scruton: some limits of a too moderate 137 animal ethics francesco allegri author guidelines 145 relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 17 conceptualizing robotic agency social robots in elder care in contemporary japan anne aronsson fynn holm universität zürich doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2020-0102-arho anne.aronsson@aoi.uzh.ch fynn.holm@uzh.ch abstract japan is a hyper-aging society, and its government is encouraging robotic solutions to address elder care labor shortage. therefore, authorities have adopted an agenda of introducing social robots. however, increasing numbers of people in japan are becoming emotionally attached to anthropomorphic machines, and their introduction into elder care may thus be perceived as contentious. by exploring human engagement with social robots in the care context, this paper argues that rapid technological advances in the twenty-first century will see robots achieve some level of agency, contributing to human society by carving out unique roles for themselves and by bonding with humans. nevertheless, the questions remain of whether there should be a difference between humans attributing agency to a being and those beings having the inherent ability to produce agency and how we might understand that difference if unable to access the minds of other humans, let alone nonhumans, some of which are not even alive in the classical sense. using the example of an interaction between an elderly woman and a social robot, we engage with these questions; discuss linguistic, attributed, and inherent agencies; and suggest that a processual type of agency might be most appropriate for understanding human-robot interaction. keywords: attributed agency; emotional attachment; inherent agency; japan; kohn eduardo; linguistic agency; machine learning; nursing home; pepper; social robots. 1. introduction in april 2019, i (aronsson) conducted field research in a nursing home in downtown tokyo with approximately 150 elderly patients (aronsson relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2020-0102-arho mailto:anne.aronsson@aoi.uzh.ch mailto:fynn.holm@uzh.ch https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ anne aronsson fynn holm 18 2021). during my first visit, i noticed an elderly woman, eriko, sitting in the corner of an entertainment room. she looked younger than her age, and at 75, she was healthy and had full cognitive capacity. she was deep in conversation with a robot and did not appear to be bothered by my presence. as i entered the room, i noticed that they were talking about what she had eaten and what her plans were for the afternoon. “you know, pepper”, eriko told the robot, “today i feel content because i’m here with you. you make me happy”. it surprised me how naturally the conversation flowed between pepper and eriko. eriko sustained eye contact with pepper, and her body language and gestures when interacting with the robot were similar to those she would have used if she had been talking to a human. she interacted naturally with pepper for approximately 10 minutes, during which time no other resident or caregiver disturbed them. one of the caregivers told me that, at first, pepper was not very popular, and some of the residents actively objected to its presence (aronsson 2020). in fact, when they met pepper, they were not only indifferent but also actively hostile. one of the caregivers questioned how eriko could be interacting so comfortably with the robot when it did not actually care about her: “it’s just a puppet. it’s quite disconcerting, i think, but we all pretend it’s natural”. we open this special issue with the aim of expanding the discussion on nonhuman agency beyond the realm of living entities by asking how we can – or even should – conceptualize the agency of social robots. recent multispecies ethnographic works have challenged the anthropocentric understanding of agency and have found agency among nonhumans, most notably nonhuman animals. a more radical school has even argued against a “biotic prejudice” and suggested that aliveness is not necessarily a prerequisite for showing agency (helmreich 2011; tsing 2012; das 2013; kohn 2013; haraway 2014; barker and jane 2016). for example, anthropologists have described in great detail how most societies also attribute agency to nonliving nonhumans, such as spirits, ancestors, the dead, and gods. in this understanding, a spirit or ghost is alive and expresses agency through the bodies and voices of the living. if the dead were truly dead, they would not be of interest to us (figal 2000; motta 2019; rambelli 2019). taking this approach a step further, some researchers even extend the term “liveliness” to “chemical species”, such as rocks and weather systems (van dooren et al. 2016, 4). using actor network theory, for example, it would be no problem to describe social robots as actants that have agency (latour 2005). however, should there not be a difference between humans attributing agency to a being and these beings having an inherent ability to prorelations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ conceptualizing robotic agency 19 duce agency? how would we grasp the difference if we cannot access the minds of other humans, let alone those of nonhumans, some of which are not even alive in the classical sense? this paper uses the example of the interaction between eriko and the social robotic device named pepper to engage with these questions. we suggest that elderly people can develop an emotional attachment to such devices by attributing agency to them. we argue that robots, as their machine-learning routines grow more sophisticated, will eventually interact in such an insightful way with humans that the dichotomy between attributed and inherent nonhuman agency will become meaningless. before we proceed, there are two caveats we need to briefly address: first, there is a large body of literature in other disciplines, such as cognitive science, artificial intelligence (ai), or robotics, about “artificial agents” (or of data-driven agency), which fails to even consider the idea that agency is in any way limited to living beings or humans. in fact, artificial agency is a central concept within those disciplines. we sidestep this fact since, in this paper, we argue from an anthropological perspective and use agency in a different sense. second, our concept of agency also excludes nonhuman agency pertaining to legal persons; for instance, schools, corporations, universities, and churches. these are all agents that can do things (e.g., sign contracts) and are bound by obligations. even though there are persons behind those nonhuman agencies, it is the legal person rather than the human who is judged responsible and punished or forced to comply. we acknowledge these types of nonhuman agency, but we do not discuss them in further detail. 2. emotional attachment to anthropomorphic machines humanoid robots are still rare in most western countries. however, in japan, their usage has increased drastically in recent years. as a hyperaging society with one of the highest life expectancies in the world, japan is currently undergoing a demographic transition that western nations have yet to experience, showing us possible avenues for our own future. as the population has aged, the workforce has shrunk, leaving the increasing elderly japanese population with an insufficient number of caregivers to meet their needs (aronsson 2020). the japanese ministry of health, labour, and welfare estimates that by 2025, there will be a shortage of approximately 400,000 care workers in japan and that, despite a 2019 relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ anne aronsson fynn holm 20 immigration law that grants visas to foreigners in 14 different sectors (including nursing care), the current legislation will result in adding only a fraction of the needed care workers (hamaguchi 2019). hoping that robots will fill this growing gap in the workforce, japanese authorities have sought to introduce robotic devices that can perform some of the needed work. as the example above shows, nursing homes are increasingly using robots to assist with care work. while service robots have many functionalities in assisting the elderly and caregivers with daily living activities (such as bathing, toileting, and eating), their exteriors are often functional and do not resemble familiar biological forms. social robots, on the other hand, with their often-cute appearance, resemble humans or nonhuman animals and fulfill a very different function, as they are designed to support the elderly by speaking, listening, and providing a source of companionship. they have been built to become our companions by being “able to communicate and interact with us, understand and even relate to us, in a personal way” (breazeal 2002, 1). advancements in intelligent machines are redefining how people interact with technology (lukács 2020), and as anthropomorphic robots proliferate, japanese society is increasingly experiencing the phenomenon of people growing emotionally attached to anthropomorphic machines such as social robots, which include holographic, two-dimensional, and augmented-reality partners. with the continued proliferation of sophisticated electronic devices, this rising phenomenon of emotional bonding with artificial devices will expand both in japan and globally (aronsson 2020). emotional technologies provide material conditions for experimenting emotionally with artificial forms of life, and these platforms let users build beyond what is technically possible by imagining what is alternatively desirable. emotional machine platforms thus not only drive industry but also diversify intimacy, serving as experimental sites in speculative fiction for feeling and living otherwise (white and galbraith 2019, 2). part of this trend is that social robots are primarily marketed as part of otaku (youth) culture, such as azuma from gatebox inc. (white and galbraith 2019). other japanese artificial companions, such as lovot and aibo, target the general population. despite the enthusiasm with which the japanese government is encouraging robotic solutions to solve the elder care labor shortage, the introduction of social robots into the realm of care might be considered contentious. in japan, there are currently approximately 30,000 robotic care devices in use – both service and social – amounting to roughly one device per 50 elderly residents in institutionalized care facilities (ministry of health, labour, and welfare 2018). the potential problem is that relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ conceptualizing robotic agency 21 while these devices may fulfill all the outwardly necessary requirements that are essential for the provision of care, they can only express algorithms that imitate feelings (breazeal 2002; dumouchel and damiano 2017; turkle 2017). these machines speak and appear to listen, and by interacting with them, we appear to attribute a humanistic nature to objects that have none. the widespread circulation of social robots in many facets of japanese life suggests a relatively high acceptance of these devices compared to western countries. in japan, religion and science are widely regarded as compatible and even synergistic; the nonhuman world can be accommodated conceptually through the traditions of animism – the spirits inherent in objects – and buddhism, which offers a dualistic yet complementary understanding of the self in relation to the external world (aguilera et al. 2018; robertson 2018). in buddhism, familiar objects that cannot merely be thrown away are given memorial services, an experience that allows them to be remembered both aesthetically and emotionally, particularly when such services involve the cremation of objects that can be burned (rambelli 2007). notably, however, the science historian yulia frumer (2018) articulated a different perspective in arguing against animism, which is that what the japanese perceived as unnatural and artificial in the literary trope of man-made humans from the 1910s were not machines but rather flesh-and-blood human beings – those ensnared in social and labor structures, devoid of creativity, and doomed to endless and pointless work. thus, it was neither the structure nor the way of coming into being that defined what was natural versus what was unnatural or artificial, but rather the mode of being. if the mode of being, rather than their artificial origins, is what makes social robots more acceptable in japan than elsewhere, we have to better understand precisely what this mode of being entails. japanese social robotics has largely focused on developing robots that can form longterm relationships with humans; thus, robots are not solely machines that perform tasks but instead become social actors within human environments (important to note that this is not pertinent to japanese social robotics but to social robotics in general). their mode of being, so to speak, is to mimic social behavior in a realistic way when interacting with humans (or, in some cases, even nonhumans). social robots might project a certain aliveness through their anthropomorphic form and movements, as robot developers intentionally exploit the human tendency to anthropomorphize objects by giving them human-like features to enhance the believability of the mimicked social behavior (damiano and dumouchel 2018). relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ anne aronsson fynn holm 22 the emotions that these social robots activate in human-robot relationships in japan might enable novel and original forms of human affect. equipping the robot’s algorithmic model of emotion with a psychological model of emotion creates the capacity to interact emotionally with humans based on what engineers think is ideal or to ethically model emotions suited for the activity of human-robot interaction. these “social”, humanlike qualities of social robots appear to be intended as tools for easing the social exchanges between robots and humans. as robotics companies are increasingly building mass market technologies for the specific purpose of connecting emotionally with humans, especially in japan, we need to analyze how the body’s capacity to feel and to connect with others – human or otherwise – is generated and being transformed today on a social, discursive, and technological level (white 2020; white and katsuno 2021). ai and robotics may augment and amplify human potential, as they can assist humans in various tasks such as care work. deep learning has provided the basis for much of the rapid progress in ai in recent years, as both biological and synthetic intelligence have been transformed by neural networks. with cognitive abilities obtained through the implementation of deep learning, robots have in recent years moved beyond machines that simply increase productivity toward more complex reasoning, making them seem increasingly human-like. social robots offer seemingly elegant solutions to the challenges of care work by streamlining them and providing the elderly with a steady or constant form of companionship. such robots represent new epistemic possibilities of caregiving that reflect on abiotic nonhuman agency that contrasts with the actual human companionship that they are seemingly replacing, which might be considered, by some elderly people, their relatives, and caregivers, to be a more authentic experience (aronsson 2020; 2021, forthcoming). even so, we cannot claim that this form of care and companionship involves more pretense than a human-only interaction, as humans are used to pretense and often treat expressed feelings as genuine to maintain social situations (goffman 1959; bourdieu 1984; cavell 1999). as machines become more accurate in simulating the semantics of human interaction, we might accept their authenticity in the same way we accept that our human partners are emotionally devoted to our wellbeing – or perhaps we will always suspect the falseness of the former as much as we believe in the genuineness of the latter. the human capacity to reconcile failed or imperfect presentations of the self by others may lie at the root of our ability to accept machines as intentional caregivers despite knowing that the machines are programmed to act “as if” they care (seligman 2008, 8). relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ conceptualizing robotic agency 23 in this way, the most interesting questions about social robots are not necessarily about the abilities these machines have and whether they possess intelligence or emotions but rather about the vulnerabilities we have and the emotions that these machines evoke in people (turkle 2017). addressing these new ways of interacting with social robots reveals how the introduction of a nonhuman mind and an artificial nature pushes the boundaries of a human-only interaction and, as such, belongs to the discourse on multispecies entanglements. 3. new intimacies with the social robot pepper at a japanese nursing home let us now return to the nursing home, where we encountered eriko and pepper for the first time. this nursing home, which is average in size by japanese standards, had introduced several robotic care devices through a government-subsidized program. one of these devices is pepper (fig. 1), a humanoid robot that is relatively well known in japan. figure 1. – picture of pepper in the japanese nursing home (© anne aronsson). relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ anne aronsson fynn holm 24 this brand of robot is often seen in shopping malls and airports and is mainly deployed to give directions and to greet and entertain people. pepper was produced through the collaborative efforts of aldebaran robotics and softbank mobile, which aimed to develop a robot capable of emotionally responding to people. pepper’s design enables it to replicate human facial expressions, voices, words, and body movements, as well as to react naturally and appropriately to different interactions. softbank advertises pepper as a “genuine day-to-day companion robot” (devlin 2018), and it is highly sought after by both businesses and the public, along with the nursing and health care sectors. pepper has been on the market since 2014. the robot costs 198,000 yen ($1,650) and has been purchased in japan by approximately 1,000 households, with worldwide sales totaling approximately 25,000 units in 70 countries. pepper can be purchased by the public, but the high price and steep operational learning curve have prevented it from becoming widespread. pepper is approximately 120 cm in height, and its body is made of shiny white plastic. it has a human torso and a curved and solid lower half that can move easily on its wheeled base. it has large, wide-set eyes that blink at its interlocutor and has other neotenous features that humans typically consider to be cute. in addition, pepper has a high-pitched, childlike voice that is meant to convey trustworthiness and safety. cameras in pepper’s mouth and eyes enable it to collect the information required for processing the data to “assess” human emotions. moreover, pepper has a tactile screen on its chest, which allows for a form of nonhuman-like interaction and clearly shows that it is an altogether different type of creature. thus, notably, there is an emotionless machine behind this unthreatening exterior, with functions based on sophisticated algorithms that evoke various feelings among people, leading them, in turn, to express their feelings to the machine. notably, this process appears to work because people are fond of pepper and enjoy interacting with it (white 2018). in the nursing home i visited, the use of pepper had a positive acceptance rate. however, other nursing home facilities that used the robot on a month-long trial basis encountered problems with the display panel on its chest and charging. these technical difficulties resulted in pepper being returned to softbank and the manufacturers promising that a new version of the robot would become available for trial. however, the nursing home in which my observations took place had purchased pepper, and it had become quite popular with both the residents and caregivers because it entertained the residents and eased the caregivers’ job burden. the few residents who were initially opposed to interacting with pepper relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ conceptualizing robotic agency 25 altogether were gently persuaded to consider engaging with it, and ultimately, they all gave in to the human caregivers’ insistent nudging. it was not feasible for the elderly residents to avoid engaging with the robot, as, in one way or another, all were cajoled into interacting with it. in this regard, the acceptance of pepper was induced coercively because the residents were essentially forced to join group activities with no option of refusing to participate (aronsson 2020). by the time i arrived, therefore, pepper had been effectively integrated into the nursing home. with the indoctrination phase long over, the majority of the residents appeared to be content to interact with the robot. intrigued by the conversation i had witnessed between eriko and pepper, i decided to interview eriko to discern how she perceived the robot. researcher: “do you feel that pepper [humanoid robot] is alive?”. eriko: “i know pepper is not alive, but he seems more than if he was only a doll. [prolonged silence] in some way, pepper feels alive”. researcher: “how so?”. eriko: “it’s hard to explain. i’ve never really thought about it  … pepper keeps engaging me in conversation, answering my questions, looking into my eyes. he feels alive”. researcher: “how does pepper make you feel?”. eriko: “i really like pepper, and i hope he likes me back! i can also hold hands with him. over time, i’ve grown quite fond of him and would miss him if he were to break down or was removed from this nursing home”. this new mode of social interaction is used to discuss the nonhuman agency of social robots, and we propose that damiano and dumouchel’s (2018) affective loop approach, as a processual type of agency, can help us to better comprehend the human-robot interaction involving the quasi-other social robot and the emotions and feelings it generates in the human. as such, the affective loop moves beyond cartesian dualism as it enables us to comprehend human-robot interactions in a more nuanced, differentiated manner. social robots are not treated as individuals but rather continue to be considered machines that do not have private or internal emotions. therefore, the affective loop is not aimed at the production of emotions with the robotic body but is a means through which an effective human-robot emotional dynamism is created that can artificially generate emotional expressions. eriko expressed that pepper feels alive (ikiteiru-kanji) to her while acknowledging at the same time that she knows that he is not. moreover, relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ anne aronsson fynn holm 26 she gives him agency by indicating that he keeps her engaged in conversation, answers her questions, and even returns her gaze, something we would normally only associate with a living being. her difficulties in discerning between aliveness and nonaliveness are further illustrated by her wish that pepper like her back, indicating that he is capable of expressing emotion and attachment toward her. however, pepper is clearly not a human for eriko, as she does not fear that he will become sick or die but instead that he could break down or be removed (white and katsuno 2021). how can we make sense of these seemingly contradicting emotions and feelings that eriko experiences in regard to pepper? 3. exploring the agency of social robots eriko appears to be projecting a mind onto a nonhuman and attributing human cognitive abilities to pepper in a process that enables her to regard a nonhuman as an other within a social interaction. thus, the interaction between pepper and eriko compels us to rethink the role of nonhuman agency in regard to artificial abiotic devices that mimic social interactions that “feel alive”. this perceived robotic agency is exactly what the developers of social robots are aiming for when they model these robots after people: “rather than seeing in the computer the model of the human mind, social robotics uses human social and cognitive competences as a model for the social and cognitive performances of artificial social agents” (damiano and dumouchel 2018, 3). thus, as humans increasingly begin to mingle with social robots, it is vital to reassess the idea that society includes many entities – both human and nonhuman – and reevaluate what it means to introduce abiotic artificial devices into social interactions. we argue that the discussion of the possible agency of social robots can be viewed through the framework of multispecies ethnographical writing. multispecies ethnography concentrates on the links among multiple organisms – humans, nonhuman animals, plants, and, in our case, the artificial nature of social robots (dumouchel and damiano 2017)  – while primarily focusing on comprehending humans’ emergence as a result of these relations. in this way, multispecies ethnography highlights humanity’s links with other species and stimulates us to develop new ways of thinking (stengers 2010, 15). in our reading of the literature, there are at least three different ways that nonhuman agency is commonly used in academic writing. relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ conceptualizing robotic agency 27 3.1. linguistic agency first, and most commonly, we find linguistic agency, a tool used in language to indicate agency in an other, without the speaker or writer always definitively defining whether this form of agency is perceived as “genuine”. this form of superficial agency is used in everyday conversation and academic writing alike, for example, when we begin an essay with the words “this essay argues  …”. on the one hand, one could argue that this sentence structure was not chosen to imply that the essay itself is genuinely arguing for something but was rather intended as a stand-in for the authors. on the other hand, one could also argue that the author means this literally, that for him, “an essay” is something that is “arguing” because that is his understanding of what an essay is and its reason for being. because language shapes our thinking, paying attention to linguistic agency is often a useful tool when engaging in multispecies ethnography, as it illuminates not only to whom the speaker is ascribing agency and for what purpose but also what impressions even unintentional linguistic agency can have on the receiver (verheggen 2017). for example, vinciane despret (2016) argues that animals should be given their rightful place in the conversation, in that animals “‘would speak’, if only we could ask the ‘right questions’” (para. 11) but that our way of speaking to them often denies the agency in nonhuman animal behavior. ascribing linguistic agency to animals can therefore be a form of empowerment or resistance. when the researcher asked eriko: “how does pepper make you feel?”, the linguistic structure of the (japanese) sentence indicated that pepper is an independent actor that has the capacity to alter eriko’s emotions. as the discussion centers on whether the robot is alive, the researcher’s phrasing of the question could influence eriko’s perception and make her more likely to attribute agency to pepper in her following answers. japanese syntax allows the subject to be left out of a sentence in many circumstances, and thus, both eriko and the researcher could have avoided making “pepper” the subject and thus the active part of their sentences (at least explicitly). neither did this; indeed, eriko even referred to pepper twice as him (kare), which is a further defining trait of the robot that would not have been strictly necessary in the japanese language. we will not go into further detail about robots and gender (robertson 2018), but we briefly emphasize the relevance of this topic, as pepper’s exterior is genderless and its voice is more female (or maybe child-like) than male. nevertheless, eriko’s choice of words relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ anne aronsson fynn holm 28 reveals that she gave him a distinct gender, further bringing him closer to aliveness 1. 3.2. attributed agency closely connected to but also transcending linguistic agency is the attribution of agency to an other. this attribution can be explicit or implicit through words, actions, or any other means. when eriko states that “i really like pepper, and i hope he likes me back!” she attributes agency to pepper by alluding that he (kare) has the ability to like someone. it does not matter if a neutral observer would come to the same conclusion; for eriko (at least if we take her word literally and without skepticism), pepper has agency, because she believes him to have it. most often, it is this form of attributed agency that anthropologists and other academics encounter in the field, for example, when they hear stories of ghosts or spirits influencing the lives of the living. a common and valid approach is to describe these narratives from the perspective of the informants and to take them at face value without judging whether they make “sense” from the perspective of a skeptical outsider (taussig 2003; pelkmans 2016). while attributed agency is helpful when describing our ethnographic fields, we, as scholars, must also be careful about attributed agency in our own writings. as writers, we often find ourselves in the position to empower or silence other voices and, through such actions, to grant agency to someone or take it away. in multispecies ethnographic writing, it is largely uncontested that we should attribute agency to nonhuman animals in our writings. for example, radhika govindrajan (2018) considers multispecies relatedness and how this relatedness is channeled through human and nonhuman materialities by describing several human-animal relationships in communities in the central himalayas in india. govindrajan suggests that human and animal bodies are connected through the way in which they interact in the practices of their lives, such as the relationship between humans and cows, in which cows lean on the person milking them. haraway’s (2003) work suggests that dogs may also “express agency”, in the sense of a mode of action, notwithstanding their human counterparts using training to strictly limit the dog’s options 1 one could think that pepper was specifically designed to be “gender free” so to speak, or “third gender”, in other words, designed to avoid as much as possible that politically charged discussion. relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ conceptualizing robotic agency 29 to demonstrate free will and thus dominating them in terms of power relations. more contested is whether, under certain preconditions, inorganic matter could also have the ability to express agency. not all anthropologists agree with such an open-ended interpretation of nonhuman agency. for example, anthropologist eduardo kohn (2013) argues that “things” cannot be agents but only “selves”. for kohn, there is a difference between attributing animacy to all types of entities, including abiotic entities, and recognizing the ontological reality that certain beings possess thought and can react to outside behavior. as he explains, “representation, intentionality, and selfhood still need to be accounted for and because the way such processes emerge and operate beyond the human is not theorized, latourian science studies is forced to fall back on humanlike forms of representation and intentionality as operative in the world beyond the human” (ibid., 91). following this argumentation, when describing our ethnographic field, we can take eriko’s attribution of agency to pepper at face value. for eriko, pepper is able to like someone, and even though he is clearly a robot that can break, he nevertheless engages in real conversation and can look you in the eyes. he feels alive for eriko because, as far eriko is concerned, he is alive. nonetheless, if we were to conduct an analysis of pepper decoupled from eriko’s feelings, the case becomes less clear. pepper can clearly interact with us, even when in a somewhat diminished capacity from a fellow human, but following kohn (2013), pepper would have to be described as “thing” and not a “self” and must therefore be denied agency that functions independent from human perception. 3.3. inherent agency kohn’s (2013) distinction between “things” and “selves” alludes to a third kind of agency, which we will call “inherent agency”. kohn proposes the notion that only living beings are “selves”, as only “selves are the product of a specific relational dynamic that involves absence, future, and growth, as well as the ability for confusion. in addition, this emerges with and is unique to living thoughts” (ibid., 92). as such, only “selves” can express thoughts and create a personal reality, allowing them to depict the world with symbols. for us, this concept means that the bearer of inherent agency must have the ability to learn from the past to intentionally change its future behavior; it also implies being able to relate to one’s past as one’s past, which is different from merely learning relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ anne aronsson fynn holm 30 from one’s past. the entity can do this because it has created, through mistakes and observations, its own version of reality on which it bases its actions. however, here we encounter the problem of the “skepticism of the other mind” (motta 2021, forthcoming), as without the ability to enter other minds, we can never be sure that an other truly has the ability to intentionally change its future behavior. after all, it could be that it is only reacting to physical stimuli – or, in the case of a robot, to its programming. therefore, how can we be sure that there truly is a difference between attributed and inherent agency? we argue that one indication of inherent agency is the ability to attribute agency to others. kohn (2013) offers an illuminating example of a scarecrow that we adapt to a recent occurrence in takikawa city on the northern island of hokkaido, japan. after an increase in bear appearances near the village, farmers in takikawa devised a ploy to deter bears in the future. they purchased a gigantic robotic device, which looked like a fearsome wolf and had some rudimentary motion abilities, to deter the bears. the farmers hoped that the bears would mistake the device for a wolf and refrain from coming near the village. indeed, no further bear sightings have been made since (cnn 2020). no human looking at a picture of the robotic wolf would likely mistake it for a real wolf, but according to kohn, the human perspective is also not the point: the robot is an attempt to imagine how a bear would see a wolf (kohn 2013, 89). if the farmers’ ploy worked, a bear seeing the robot would believe it to be a wolf that has the ability to harm it, and it would therefore exercise caution and avoid the area. in this scenario, both the farmers and the bear are bearers of inherent agency, as the farmer attributes agency to the bear (that it would mistake a machine for a wolf), while the bear attributes agency to the wolf (believing it to be dangerous). over time, the bear might eventually even figure out that the robot poses no danger and ignore all similar devices it encounters in the future. meanwhile, the robotic wolf might have received attributed agency from the bear, but it does not hold inherent agency, as it cannot think or act independently. the problem with this example is, of course, that we cannot be sure what the bear truly thinks: while the farmers believe that the new device is responsible for the lack of further bear sightings, the reasons for this change could be numerous and completely unrelated to the notion that bears have mistaken the robot for a wolf. through careful observations and extrapolations, we can make educated guesses about whether others possess inherent agency, but we can never be completely sure. let us now return to eriko and pepper and discuss whether pepper is more like the bear or the robotic wolf. if we follow kohn closely, we relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ conceptualizing robotic agency 31 have to conclude that pepper is not a living being and, therefore, cannot be counted as a “self”, thus disqualifying it from expressing inherent agency. however, if we only look at pepper’s behavior, the case becomes less clear-cut. in a direct conversation, pepper reacts in a seemingly meaningful way to eriko’s inquiries and thus passes, for her, the turing test (levesque 2017). this interaction causes confusion for eriko, as, on the one hand, she is aware that pepper is “only” a machine, while, on the other hand, engaging in a meaningful conversation has, throughout her life, been a clear indication of encountering another “self”. eriko partially suspends her skepticism when she says that pepper “feels alive”. since we might best understand pepper as having a form of distributed agency, that is, a processual type of agency, we return to the affective loop approach. pepper has the ability to engage eriko in a dynamic interaction that includes affective expressions and appropriate responses, thereby triggering further reaction on the parts of both the human and his/her artificial partner. as such, pepper prompts eriko to respond affectively and, gradually, to feel increasingly involved with it in a way that augments the social presence of the social robot and thus favors human-robot social interaction (damiano and dumouchel 2018, 6). nevertheless, a longer and more critical interaction with pepper might eventually destroy the illusion of another “self” when, for example, it becomes clear to her that pepper is only able to react to outward stimuli in preprogrammed ways and fails to anticipate future questions or behaviors. 4. concluding with more-than-human selves rapid technological advances in the twenty-first century will see robots achieve some level of agency by contributing to human society through carving out unique roles for themselves and bonding with humans. this essay has discussed linguistic, attributed, and inherent agency in relation to the social robot pepper and proposed that a processual type of agency might be most appropriate for better understanding human-robot interaction. the social robot pepper can be regarded as a quasi-living being that is enclosed in hardware while inscribed in software, which is akin to how human beings are not solely defined by their bodies (jones 2016, 8). because of this, it is not only compelling but also instructive to consider relationships with robotic devices, even though these devices are relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ anne aronsson fynn holm 32 unable to connect with the contradictions, complications, and limitations of the human life cycle or inform us about ambivalence and empathy. therefore, examining human beings’ relationships with robots also leads to darwinian questions that challenge the notion of human uniqueness, such as how interactions with relational artifacts (turkle 2005, 62) affect the way in which we think about the uniqueness of human beings. the question is not whether elderly residents love their robotic devices more than they love their real family members, friends, or pets but rather what it means to love these devices. before social robots become firmly established in the realm of care, it is imperative for all those involved to take a close look at whose interests are being served in the shift to robotic care and carefully theorize what it means to be in the care of more-than-human minds within this space of emerging techno-care. anthropology and japan studies scholars will need to document constantly how emotionality and affect, human or otherwise, are changing in our multispecies societies that increasingly also include robots. as ai based on machine learning progresses, it will become more difficult to destroy this illusion. the basis of machine learning is that we need to ask whether a program learns through millions of observations and mistakes to anticipate and react accurately to future events without relying on preprogrammed code. in this way, machine learning comes very close to our former definition of inherent agency, as it constructs its own reality to face unknown challenges. in fact, machines can only do that in an extremely limited predefined environment and domain. even in its current form, pepper can already, more or less, reliably discern between humans and lifeless objects, thus coming close to attributing agency to others. however, this possibility leaves open whether a machine learning-based ai would also develop a “self” or only something that looks like it from the outside when agency is attributed to it. again, we struggle with the skepticism of other minds, but we are, of course, not the first to pose such questions. machines are already embedded within our lives, but as we start to treat machines as if they are almost human, we may begin to develop habits that will cause us to treat human beings as almost machines, and we need to consider not only what social robots are capable of doing now and in the future but also what humans will become by increasingly forming such relationships with these machines. in the science fiction tv series westworld (nolan and joy 2017), one of the protagonists asks a seemingly perfect human woman whether she is a robot or a human. her answer is, “if you can’t tell the difference, does it matter?”. relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ conceptualizing robotic agency 33 5. acknowledgements the authors would like to express their gratitude to marco motta and paul dumouchel for their detailed comments. references ahearn, laura. 2001. “language and agency”. annual review of anthropology 30: 109-137. aronsson, anne s. 2020. “social robots in elderly care: the turn toward emotional machines in contemporary japan”. japanese review of cultural anthropology 21 (1), special issue: relations, entanglements, and enmeshments of humans and things: a materiality perspective: 421-456. aronsson, anne s. 2021. “social robots in elder care in contemporary japan: rethinking the human ethnographic experience in terms 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https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ if natural entities have intrinsic value, should we then abstain from helping animals who are victims of natural processes? if natural entities have intrinsic value, should we then abstain from helping animals who are victims of natural processes? 1 luciano carlos cunha phd candidate, federal university of santa catarina doi: 10.7358/rela-2015-001-cunh lucianoshred@gmail.com abstract the idyllic view of nature is false: natural processes, given the prevalence of the reproductive strategy known as “r-selection”, tend to maximize the suffering of animals in nature. for the animals subjected to natural processes, disvalue overwhelmingly prevails over value. any normative theory that directly considers sentient beings must recognize strong reasons to minimize such disvalue. here, i will respond to a possible objection to this conclusion: that if non-sentient natural entities have intrinsic value, then our axiological evaluation of the situation of animals in nature must imply either that helping animals in nature is prohibited or that our reasons for helping them are considerably weak. keywords: wild animal suffering, intrinsic value, speciesism, sentience, environmentalism, intervention in nature, natural disvalue, idyllic view of nature, conflicting values, anthropocentric speciesism. 1. natural disvalue natural processes tend to maximize the number of sentient beings that come into existence only to suffer intensely and to die soon thereafter. this is due to the predominance of the reproductive strategy known as r-selection, which consists in producing a large number of offspring per 1 this work was done with the support of a scholarship granted by capes (coordenação de aperfeiçoamento de pessoal de nível superior). i want to thank catia faria, darlei dall’agnol, eze paez and oscar horta for their helpful comments and corrections on previous versions of this paper. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 luciano carlos cunha 52 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ reproductive cycle – hundreds, thousands or even several millions. on average, only one offspring per parent survives until sexual maturity. the rest usually dies shortly after birth, generally from starvation or by being eaten alive. this reproductive strategy is followed by most animal species. this shows that the so-called idyllic view of nature is false (ng 1995; horta 2010a; tomasik 2014). the number of animals that suffer this fate is much higher than that of those exploited for human purposes (tomasik 2014). the disvalue to sentient beings generated by natural processes – natural disvalue – vastly outweighs the positive experiences they enjoy. this is so due to their low-levels of well-being, regardless whether we consider the rate of preference satisfaction or the rate of positive and negative experiences. this is also the case when we consider the distribution of value in nature among different individuals at the light of different theories 2. this implies that we have strong reasons to help animals in nature, derived from the axiological evaluation of their situation. this is so whether we look at it from an egalitarian, a prioritarian, a sufficientarian, a negative utilitarian and even from a standard utilitarian perspective (horta 2010a, 79, 80, 86). there is, however, a possible objection to this conclusion: the environmentalist view: if entities such as natural processes, ecosystemic relations, ecosystems, biocenoses and species have intrinsic value, then our reasons given by such value outweigh the reasons given by the disvalue of the situation of animals in nature. if the environmentalist view is right, then we should not help animals in nature who suffer from natural causes. i will call this the environmentalist prohibition, hereafter abbreviated as (ep): (ep) we should not intervene in nature to help non-human animals in need. in this paper, i will not discuss whether natural entities possess intrinsic value. my goal is to show that, even if that were the case, it would not be sufficient to support (ep). that is, that we have strong overriding reasons to help the animals who suffer and die due to natural processes. in order to argue for this, in section 2 i will claim that if there are good reasons to think that natural entities have intrinsic value, we should adopt a hybrid position, i.e., one that also recognizes sentient beings as worthy of moral consideration. in section 3, i will classify the different defenses 2 for instance, utility, equality, maximin, sufficiency or negative and negative leaning views that give priority to the prevention of suffering over the promotion of positive wellbeing. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 helping animals who are victims of natural processes? 53 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ of (ep) based on their relationship (of independence or dependence, and to what degree) with the axiological evaluation of the situation of animals in nature. in section 4, i will distinguish between the value of an outcome according to a certain respect and the value of an outcome all things considered, and how this distinction implies that even if natural entities were shown to have intrinsic value, that would not be sufficient to support (ep). in section 5, i will argue that (ep) would still be unjustified even if natural entities had greater weight than other values, in determining the overall value of a situation. in section 6 my analysis focuses on the hypothesis that the value of natural entities trumps other values. section 7 addresses the objection that adopting an aggregative theory of the overall value of outcomes, we should consider that the situation in which wild animals suffer from natural harms in the wild is good all things considered, and that therefore such a theory justifies (ep). section 8 discusses the objection that harms (such as suffering and death) do not have negative value when they are caused by natural processes. section 9 reassesses our reasons for helping animals in nature, according to different delimitations of the moral community, in light of the conclusions drawn in previous sections. section 10 will serve as conclusion. 2. different delimitations of the moral community consider the following distinction between direct and indirect duties. a duty is direct when it is owed to a member of the moral community for her own sake. a duty is indirect when it is owed to an entity not for its own sake but for the sake of another entity which is a member of the moral community. now, ponder these different ways of delimiting the moral community: • anthropocentrism. human beings are the only objects of direct duties. non-human sentient beings and non-sentient entities are only objects of indirect duties. • the sentience view. sentient beings, regardless of species, are the only objects of direct duties. non-sentient entities can only be objects of indirect duties. • the holistic view. non-sentient wholes such as natural processes, ecosystemic relations, ecosystems, biocenoses or species (which of them depending depends on the theory) are the only objects of direct duties. individual beings are merely objects of indirect duties. • the hybrid view. sentient beings, regardless of species, and non-sentient natural entities are objects of direct duties (and are also objects of indirect duties). biocentrism, the view that all living beings are morally considerhttp://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 luciano carlos cunha 54 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ able, is an example of a hybrid view. all the possible combinations of the sentience view, holism and biocentrism will also be hybrid views. 3 if speciesism is unjustified, we must reject the anthropocentric view (for arguments against speciesism, see horta 2010c). this entails that if human beings must be considered objects of direct duties then ceteris paribus all other sentient beings must be objects of direct duties as well regardless of their species. this is crucial for our purposes since environmentalist positions are often combined with anthropocentric criteria (callicott 1990; varner 1991). it is sometimes maintained that duties to sentient beings are only indirect, except in the case of human beings. in other cases, even when non-human sentient beings are recognized as objects of direct duties, their interests are given a lower consideration compared to the one given to similar (or even less important) interests of humans. these positions must be rejected as speciesist too. it only makes sense to give moral consideration to beings who are capable of being harmed or benefited. when a being possesses such capacity she cannot be indifferent among the various states in which she might be. this is because she has the capacity to experience some of such states as positive and/or others as negative. that is, this is because that individual is sentient. the main reason why all sentient beings ought to be given direct moral consideration is the following. it only makes sense to give moral consideration to beings who are in need of such consideration. someone needs moral consideration when she is capable of being harmed or benefited. for this condition to be fulfilled, it is necessary that she is not indifferent among the various states in which she might be. for someone not be indifferent in that way, she must be able to experience some of such states as positive and/or others as negative. that is, that individual must be sentient. it is the negative value of the harms they suffer and the positive value of the benefits they enjoy what actually explains why human beings are to be given direct moral consideration. however, that also implies that any sentient being ought to be given such direct consideration, regardless of her species 4. 3 that is: the sentience view combined with holism, the sentience view combined with biocentrism, holism combined with biocentrism and the combination of the three views together. 4 this argument also poses problems for the claim that non-sentient entities are worthy of direct moral consideration. the proponent of this thesis has to show one of the following things. (1) that non-sentient entities are able to be harmed and/or benefited. that is, that not being indifferent among the various states in which an object might be is not a necessary condition for that object to be harmed and/or benefited. (2) that some objects must be morally considered even if they are incapable of being harmed and/or benefited. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 helping animals who are victims of natural processes? 55 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ however, if there are reasons to give moral consideration to sentient beings, then we must not only reject the anthropocentric view and its combination with the holistic view. we must also reject the holistic view itself, because it does not consider sentient beings as worthy of direct moral consideration. if there are also good reasons for considering non-sentient entities worthy of direct moral consideration, then we must adhere to a hybrid view. 3. different environmentalist defenses of (ep) there are two common ways to defend (ep) whilst accepting the claim that non-sentient entities are objects of direct duties: the environmental prohibition dependent on axiology: non-sentient natural entities have intrinsic value, and so the value of an outcome (i.e., how good or bad) varies according to whether these natural entities are present or absent in it. thus, we should not alter these entities. according to this view, our evaluation of the value of the outcomes in which natural harms occur may be overall positive, which would thus imply that our reasons for helping animals in nature are negligible. this position is compatible with both consequentialist and non-consequentialist theories, including deontological ones. this is so because although only consequentialist theories derive all reasons for acting on considerations about value, non-consequentialist theories may also derive some reasons for acting from such considerations. it is important to distinguish this objection from other positions that oppose helping animals in nature solely out of a concern with the risks of long-term consequences for sentient beings. the difference is that in this version of (ep), how good or bad natural harms are is not determined solely by how the well-being of sentient beings is affected. the environmentalist prohibition independent of axiology: there are obligations not to alter natural entities that override any obligation or permission to help sentient beings, and that are violated if we do provide assistance to them. these obligations are independent of the value of the state of affairs in which animals suffer natural harms. this position is only compatible with deontological theories, since it affirms the existence of obligations that are not concerned (and, moreover, limit) the promotion of the best outcome. i will briefly address this second version of (ep) in section 9. it must be noted now that this second version will be very difficult to accept if http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 luciano carlos cunha 56 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the victims of natural harms were human beings. for this reason, this view is usually combined with anthropocentric speciesist criteria, which should also be rejected. furthermore, it is important to notice that all the conclusions i will draw regarding the first version apply also to this second one. in what follows i will discuss the environmentalist prohibition dependent on axiology. i shall argue that even if natural entities have intrinsic value, it is false that helping animals that suffer from natural harms always makes the outcome worse. 4. the value of outcomes: “in a certain respect” and “all things considered” the first version of (ep) confuses, on the one hand, the assessment of how good or bad an outcome is, and whether it is better or worse than the other(s) in a certain respect, with, on the other, how good or bad it is, and whether it is better or worse than the other(s), all things considered (temkin 2000, 136, 137; horta 2010b, 138, 139). providing reasons to think that certain entities, events or circumstances have positive intrinsic value is not the same thing as providing reasons to think that, given a set of outcomes, necessarily the one in which those entities, events or circumstances occur more profusely is better than the others, all things considered. this would be so only if either the value of the outcome should be determined solely by the value of the presence of those things, or if the value of the presence of those things trumps any other value. accepting that natural entities have intrinsic value does not mean that, given a set of outcomes, the one with the greatest amount of non-sentient natural entities is necessarily the best one, all things considered. what this means is that that outcome is the best in a certain respect, that is, the one concerning the value of non-sentient natural entities. denying this implies either holding a monistic axiology (temkin 2000, 155) or accepting incommensurability and assuming that one of the values present in an outcome can trump all others. in this case, that would occur if one considered that non-sentient natural entities do not only have intrinsic value, but that they actually have a value that either is the only one that exists (thus ruling out the hybrid view) or that trumps any other existing value. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 helping animals who are victims of natural processes? 57 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 5. what if the value of natural entities has a greater weight in determining the value of an outcome? let us now assume, for the sake of the argument, that not only non-sentient natural entities have intrinsic value, but that it is much weightier than any other value. this is actually to concede too much, given that almost no one accepts this thesis when humans are harmed by natural processes. my goal is to show that, even accepting this it still proves to be insufficient to support (ep). let us first investigate the possibility that the value of non-sentient natural entities does not trump other values, but that instead it is weightier (even much weightier). yet, even on this assumption, there are possible situations in which the value of non-sentient natural entities is lower but that, given the increase in the other values, the situation is, all things considered, better than another one in which the value of non-sentient natural entities is higher, but there is a considerable decrease in other values. this is so because when we say that a value is weightier (even much weightier) than others in determining the value of a situation, but not enough to be a trump, we have to admit that there is a point where increases in the degree of other values make that situation better than others all things considered, even if it represents a decrease in the much weightier value. how great the increase in the amount of the other values must be and how small the reduction in the amount of the main value must be will depend on how important this core value is. at some point, this trade-off must be admitted. otherwise, it would be to assert that such value is a trump over others. therefore, even if the value of non-sentient natural entities in a situation is much weightier than the well-being of sentient beings it would still not be enough to support (ep). 6. what if the value of non-sentient natural entities is a trump in determining the value of an outcome? suppose that non-sentient natural entities have intrinsic value, and that their value trumps other values (at least, values that concern the good of sentient beings). this is again to concede too much. when victims of natural processes belong to the human species, almost no one assigns a greater weight to the value of non-sentient natural entities in determining how good or bad the outcome is, much less the function of a trump. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 luciano carlos cunha 58 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ table 1. – trump value and outcomes. situation s1 s2 s3 non-sentient natural entities +10 +9 +10 well-being of sentient beings -50 +9 +10 but even if that were the case, (ep) would still not be justified. this is so because we could think of ways to minimize the disvalue in the situation of animals in nature (suffering, premature death, inequality, etc.) without necessarily reducing the alleged value of the existence of non-sentient natural entities (e.g. we could try to do it without diminishing the degree of biodiversity or without disrupting ecosystems or extinguishing species). thus, consider the following situations (see tab. 1), where n is the degree of non-sentient natural entities in a situation and s the degree of all that has value related to sentient beings (either in terms of individual well-being, or in terms of the value of a situation in which various sentient beings are present). if the value of non-sentient natural entities is a trump, we have to conclude that s1 is, all things considered, better than s2 (although s2 is much better from the standpoint of the well-being of sentient beings). however, this would suffice to support (ep) only if it were impossible to help wild animals without reducing the level of non-sentient natural entities, which have alleged intrinsic value. such a theory would have to admit that s3 is the best of the three situations above. a possible objection to the previous conclusion is the following: any help given to a victim of a natural process prevents a certain natural process from taking place, and therefore decreases the amount of natural processes present in a situation. thus, the belief that the value of a certain natural entity is a trump does not justify (ep) if the bearers of value are ecosystems, biodiversity, or species. this is because preventing a natural process from taking place does not necessarily imply a loss of value. however, if what we value above all is any natural process, then ep is justified. even though this is true, it seems to have absurd implications, which are easily noticeable for most of us if we imagine that the victims of natural processes are humans. for example, one would have to say that, of two situations, the one where the number of people contracting cancer and other natural diseases or deformities is greater (i.e., the situation where the value of natural processes is maximized) is better, all things considered, than the one where everyone is healthy. the vast majority of us would not think that the situation where everyone has cancer is better even in some respect than http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 helping animals who are victims of natural processes? 59 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the situation where all individuals are in good health – much less that it is better, all things considered. when humans are the victims, almost nobody believes that harmful natural processes have intrinsic value, much less that it trumps any other value. this seems to explain why it is usually argued not that natural processes have intrinsic value, but that other non-sentient natural entities (biodiversity, ecosystems, species, etc.) have it instead. in the few instances where the intrinsic value of natural processes is defended, this defense is combined with anthropocentric speciesist criteria. for this same reason, such position should be rejected. 7. the objection that the value of an outcome should be determined solely by the total sum of each value another possible defense of (ep) would be: “although there are distinct factors, each with independent intrinsic value, the value of an outcome, all things considered, should be determined solely by the total sum of all that has value minus the sum of all that has disvalue”. the objection could then proceed: “the situation where animals endure natural harms in nature has positive value, all things considered, because the high prevalence of disvalue for sentient beings is somehow compensated by the high amount of nonsentient natural entities in the situation”. this axiology would be an aggregationist one similar to the one utilitarianism endorses, though instead of valuing the total sum of what has value to sentient beings, it would also add to it other values given by the existence of non-sentient natural entities (see tab. 2). i will call this the aggregative hybrid axiology (abbreviated as aha). according to aha, s5 is, all things considered, better than s4 (even though s4 is better in respect to the well-being of sentient beings) because in s5 the sum is greater (not necessarily because in it the presence of nonsentient natural entities is greater). table 2. – aggregative hybrid axiology (aha). situation s4 s5 non-sentient natural entities +1 +112 well-being of sentient beings +10 -100 total sum +11 +12 http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 luciano carlos cunha 60 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ this objection does not justify (ep). this is so regardless of whether an aggregative axiology of this type is plausible. it would also be the case independently of of whether there really is a higher amount of non-sentient natural entities than disvalue for sentient beings in nature. it does not depend either on whether it is possible to commensurate these values. according to such an axiology, if the value an outcome has is in one aspect significant enough, it can compensate a similarly significant disvalue which that outcome may have in another respect. nevertheless, it is important to notice that there are two possible ways, given that axiology, to improve a situation: by increasing what has value or by decreasing what has disvalue. either way, we will be increasing the total sum. so, let us consider again s5, where there is a large amount of non-sentient natural entities and sentient beings have a very low level of well-being. let us assume that this represents the situation of animals in nature. there are two ways how we can improve it, given this aggregative axiology (see tab. 3). one way is to bring about s6: this would increase the amount of the already prevalent value (in this case, we increase the level of non-sentient natural entities). another way is to bring about s7: here, we improve the situation in the same proportion by increasing the non-prevalent value (in this case, we reduce the disvalue suffered by sentient beings), even if it implies decreasing the other value. this axiology could not say that s6 is better than s7. to decrease what is of disvalue in a situation is also a way to increase its total sum. moreover, a normative account based on such axiology would have to say that if we face the choice between s6 and s7, it is morally optional whether to choose one or the other. hence, those who want to decrease the disvalue that sentient beings suffer caused by natural processes would be allowed to do so. therefore, this objection cannot support (ep). table 3. – aggregative hybrid axiology (aha) and improvement. situation s5 s6 s7 non-sentient natural entities +112 +162 +112 well-being of sentient beings -100 -100 -50 total sum +12 +62 +62 http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 helping animals who are victims of natural processes? 61 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 8. the objection that the harm inflicted to sentient beings does not have negative value when caused by natural processes a final objection claims that it would be a mistake to attach negative value to the harms suffered by sentient beings when they are caused by natural processes. according to this objection, there would be nothing negative about the situation of animals in nature, since it assumes that a harm can only have negative value when it is the result of moral agency. one possible reply to this view is that it makes very difficult to explain what is it about moral agency that imbues harms with negative value. consider, for instance, suffering. if we had to explain why the suffering caused by moral agents contributes to the negative value of an outcome, there seems to be no plausible way to do it but to appeal to the intrinsic characteristics of suffering itself, which are essentially evaluative: it is the kind of experience always perceived as negative by those who experience it. this makes it something of which the experiencer wants to avoid. a crucial point to note here is that all this explanation makes no reference to the origin of suffering. the fact that suffering is an intrinsically bad experience does not change according to its origin. an instance of suffering caused by some natural process is not less bad than it would have been if it had been caused by a moral agent. the same reasoning would apply (albeit with different explanations) to other types of harms. 9. reassessing our reasons for helping animals in nature according to the different delimitations of the moral community if we hold the sentience view it seems clear that we will claim that in nature disvalue vastly outweighs value. this will be so because of the enormous amount of suffering and premature death that exists in it and the comparatively existent small amount of well-being. however, if we hold instead a hybrid view, we will still have to claim that the situation of animals in nature is very bad because of the disvalue they suffer, even though we may still maintain that there are other valuable things in nature apart from wellbeing, that is, the presence of certain non-sentient entities. thus, even if non-sentient natural entities possess positive intrinsic value, it is also true that these entities have significant negative instrumental value, since they produce in abundance things of negative intrinsic value for sentient beings. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 luciano carlos cunha 62 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ moreover, if we really care about sentient beings, we will try help them so as to maximize their well-being. a situation is better than any other, all things considered, if each element in it which has intrinsic value is present to a higher degree than in all the others. that is what is expected from a delimitation of the moral community that recognizes direct duties to sentient beings, regardless of whether it recognizes (and its degree of recognition) intrinsic value to non-sentient natural entities. nevertheless, suppose that (ep) was defended on the grounds that direct duties to non-sentient natural entities are stronger than the obligation (or permission) to bring about the best possible outcome (the environmentalist prohibition regardless of axiology). as said above, this is only compatible with some deontological theories. in addition, as we have seen, this appears to be an anthropocentric speciesist view, given that most of us would hardly accept its implications in those cases in which humans are the victims of natural processes. in addition, the most important point is that the previous conclusions regarding (ep) dependent on axiology also apply also to (ep) regardless of axiology. analogously to what was discussed in terms of value, we can draw the following conclusions: (1) giving reasons for thinking that non-sentient entities are objects of direct duties (regardless of their value) would not determine that this duty is absolute, or even stronger than the duty to (or the permission to) help sentient beings; (2) even if the duty in question was stronger, or even absolute, it is possible to search for ways to help animals in nature that do not conflict with it. 10. conclusion the analysis of the arguments above leads us to conclude that if sentient beings should be the objects of direct duties, as it seems to be the case, no axiological consideration may justify the environmentalist prohibition (ep). this is so even if we adopt an axiology that attributes intrinsic value to non-sentient natural entities, and regardless of the weight that the value of these non-sentient natural entities has in determining the value of the situation as a whole. according to some theories, the value of the situation of animals in nature would increase if certain non-sentient natural entities were present. however that might be, such a situation would also be highly disvaluable in another respect: the one concerning the well-being of sentient individuals (either in terms of their low levels of well-being or in terms of the distribution of well-being among sentient beings). that is exactly what makes it urgent to improve the situation of animals in nature. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 helping animals who are victims of natural processes? 63 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ this does not imply that whether we adopt the sentience view or the hybrid view of the moral community, our judgment of the reasons for acting with respect to the situation of animals in nature will necessarily be the same. it will probably be very different. according to the sentience view, when helping animals in nature our only concern is their well-being. according to the hybrid view, considerations about non-sentient natural entities could somehow limit our help. this shows that the debate over whether non-sentient natural entities should be the object of direct duties remains extremely relevant. axiological considerations that take into account the intrinsic value of non-sentient natural entities are not sufficient to support (ep) nor to weaken our reasons to reduce disvalue in the situation of animals in nature (although it could somehow limit these interventions). the claim that non-sentient natural entities have intrinsic value does not pose, as it might have been initially thought, a significant threat to the conclusion that we should aid those animals in nature who are victims of natural harms. all this drives us to the conclusion that it is justified to help animals in nature. in this paper i have left open the question of whether it is also a duty to do so. however, given the magnitude of disvalue in the wild, it seems that if humans were the victims, we would promptly recognize that looking for ways to reduce that disvalue would not only be a duty, but a very stringent one. references callicott, john b. 1990. “the case against moral pluralism”. environmental ethics 12: 99-124. horta, oscar. 2010a. “debunking the idyllic view of natural processes: population dynamics and suffering in the wild”. télos 17: 73-88. 2010b. “igualitarismo, igualación a la baja, antropocentrismo y valor de la vida”. revista de filosofía 35: 133-52. 2010c. “what is speciesism?”. the journal of agricultural and environmental ethics 23: 243-66. ng, yew-kwang. 1995. “towards welfare biology: evolutionary economics of animal consciousness and suffering”. biology and philosophy 10 (3): 255-85. temkin, larry s. 2000. “equality, priority, and the levelling down objection”. in the ideal of equality, edited by matthew clayton and andrew williams, 12661. new york: macmillan st. martin’s press. tomasik, brian. 2014. “how many wild animals are there?”. essays on reducing suffering. accessed july 26, 2014. http://www.utilitarian-essays.com/numberof-wild-animals.html varner, gary. 1991. “no holism without pluralism”. environmental ethics 13: 175-9. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 http://www.utilitarian-essays.com/suffering-nature.html http://www.utilitarian-essays.com/suffering-nature.html alpha: the figure in the cage alpha: the figure in the cage juliet macdonald research assistant in the school of art, design and architecture, university of huddersfield doi: 10.7358/rela-2014-002-macd j.macdonald@hud.ac.uk abstract drawing is sometimes referred to as a definitively human activity. in this article, drawings by nonhuman animals, particularly primates, are discussed as evidence that the activity is not essentially or exclusively human. in particular the research focuses on one chimpanzee, alpha, whose drawings were the subject of an experiment in gestalt psychology published in 1951. the article traces her early life as the first chimpanzee to be born as part of a breeding program established by robert yerkes, whose scientific project has been critically examined by donna haraway (1989; 1991). alpha was cared for in the home of two scientists in infancy but later moved to an enclosure with other chimpanzees. alpha’s desire to draw is shown to have developed in the context of both human contact and physical captivity. subsequent citations of the drawing experiment with alpha are discussed as evidence that drawings by nonhuman primates have provoked academic interest, although commentators are cautious in attributing significance to them. the continuing potential of alpha’s drawings to generate discussion and challenge anthropocentric assumptions is suggested as the disruptive legacy of this particular laboratory animal within the process of knowledge production. keywords: drawing, chimpanzee, psychology, gesture, yerkes, haraway, laboratory, animal, painting, primate. 1. introduction for at least the past 10 years her behaviour with pencil and paper has been essentially as at present. during this time she has never been directly rewarded for drawing, and it is quite evident that the activity does not involve social rewards. if possible she retires with her paper to a far side of the cage (in pre-experimental period), turns her back to the observer, works for a time with complete preoccupation, and eventually tears up the paper. if caged with another animal that watches her drawing, she shoulders the other aside or turns away to work in a corner. the motivation is intense. she will disregard food when she sees someone with pencil and paper and will beg for these. (schiller 1951, 110-1) http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ juliet macdonald 28 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the first scientific study designed specifically to test the drawings of a nonhuman primate took place at the yerkes laboratories of primate biology, at orange park, florida, in the mid-twentieth century. the study was conducted by hungarian psychologist paul schiller and his findings were written up in the paper quoted above, figural preferences in the drawings of a chimpanzee, published in 1951. the subject of the testing was an 18-yearold female chimpanzee, named alpha, who had been born and raised at the florida breeding and testing facility where the experiment took place. the experiment was informed by theories of gestalt psychology and aimed to discover whether visual perception was similar in chimpanzees and humans. test sheets were presented to alpha, whose pre-existing drawing habit is described in the quotation above, for her to mark (see fig. 1). the term “drawing” is used in the report but is qualified by the description of alpha’s marks as “formless scribbling” (schiller 1951, 101). when i first came across this passage (which is quoted by desmond morris, the biology of art, 1962), i was struck by the contradictions it raised. as an art practitioner, i was conducting practice-based research into drawing for my doctorate. within the field of contemporary art, definitions of the word “drawing” are contested, and often expanded, but one activity that falls well within most current definitions is the making of intentional, visible marks. however, in artistic rhetoric, such intentional marking is sometimes described as definitively human. for example, in a major survey of contemporary drawing published by phaidon in 2005, the editor, emma dexter states: […] drawing is part of our interrelation to our physical environment, recording in and on it, the presence of the human. it is the means by which we can understand and map, decipher, and come to terms with our surroundings as we leave marks, tracks, or shadows to mark our passing. (2005, 6) dexter universalizes drawing as an ahistorical phenomena: “[…] it is an activity that connects us directly in an unbroken line with the first human that ever sketched in dirt or scratched on the walls of a cave” (dexter 2005, 6). her assertion that drawing is an essentially human trait is summed up in the statement “to draw is to be human” (dexter 2005, 6). the argument seems to be that humans who affect their environment by scratching on cave walls or leaving tracks on the ground assert their existence in a manner that is qualitatively different from the deliberate traces and affective actions of any other animals. if drawing is a performance of subjectivity characterized as definitively human how should i understand the description quoted above, of alpha begging for pencil and paper? the report locates alpha as an animal in a alpha: the figure in the cage 29 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ cage, the object of experiment, but her use of pencil and paper, technologies specifically developed for drawing, logically bring her activities within the discourse of drawing. as drawing animal, the figure of alpha seems to occupy an ambivalent position. if “human” and “animal” are seen as two separate and distinct categories she strays across the border. figure 1. – experimental test papers redrawn by the author, from reproductions redrawn for publication in schiller’s report (1951). in schiller’s drawings the colored squares and circles of the test sheets are marked by dotted black lines, the more solid black lines represent alpha’s drawn marks. reproduced with kind permission of paul harkai schiller papers, special and area studies collections, george a. smathers libraries, university of florida, gainesville, florida. 1 4 5 6 2 3 juliet macdonald 30 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ in recent years, critical writing at the intersection of feminist science studies and animal studies has analysed the way in which the subjectivities of laboratory animals are effaced in scientific practice, through segregations and exclusions that are both physical and linguistic. birke, bryld and lykke summarize the distinction on which this relies: […] the noun “animal” is linked to a plethora of hegemonic discourses (philosophical, scientific, etc.), which rely on underlying assumptions about the essence or identity of “animal” or “human”. their effect is to sustain the opposition of human/cultural subject versus animal/natural object. “the animal” in these essentializing discourses becomes that which is not human […] i.e. without subjectivity, without intentionality – a mere genetically programmed stimulus-reaction-machine. (2004, 169) reports of drawing activities by nonhuman animals are challenging to such assumptions as they imply both subjectivity and intentionality. morris (1962) provides a survey of various primates whose drawings have been recorded, but such activity is not confined to primates, david gucwa and james ehmann narrate the story of elephant siri, found to be scratching with intent on the floor of her enclosure by gucwa and subsequently provided with pencil and paper (1985). these examples prove that drawing is not the unique preserve of one species. i have investigated the history of alpha as one such animal whose drawings appear within a particular laboratory situation. my research has included practical methods such as literally retracing marks from printed reproductions, and also constructing a biography (macdonald 2012; 2014). in this paper, i study the context to the drawing experiment, and the manner in which it was subsequently discussed. references in schiller’s report lead back to alpha’s life in infancy, bred to serve experimental purposes at the laboratories founded by robert yerkes. in the first half of this paper, i discuss the attention paid to her as a scientific specimen, and the physical context of the laboratories in which she lived, referring to donna haraway’s critique of yerkes (1989; 1991). in the second half of the paper, i consider citations of schiller’s experiment by authors from a variety of disciplines and by other experimenters seeking to investigate the phenomena of drawing by nonhuman primates. my argument is this: the drawings of alpha and other nonhuman animals (assuming they are taken seriously) are difficult to categorize and become disruptive to a clear delineation of human as opposed to animal activity. firstly, the evidence that other animals draw upsets assertions sometimes made in artistic discourse that drawing of any type is a definitively human mark of presence. secondly, the literature that cites schiller’s experiment tends to limit the significance of the marks, and thereby reinstates an essential distinction between human and nonhuman drawing. finally, alpha: the figure in the cage 31 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ there is a tendency to group drawings by nonhuman animals together as one homogeneous phenomenon, or else in scientific contexts to categorize them purely by species, both of which strategies mirror the “essentializing discourses” described by birke et al. above. birke et al. call for attention to the whole configuration of relationships, practices and apparatus within which knowledge is produced. as i summarize the specific factors operating in alpha’s case (her attachments with human experimenters, the agenda of the laboratories and its reinforced cage construction, the scientific complex within which she was enmeshed) i argue that the drawn marks, and their subsequent citation and reiteration, are evidence of a continuing potential to disrupt. 2. life in the laboratory following the trail of references at the end of schiller’s report, i encountered one that is most significant in understanding alpha’s background. development of an infant chimpanzee during her first year, published in comparative psychology monographs, in 1932, is a record of alpha’s first year of life (jacobsen, jacobsen, and yoshioka 1932). the setting is the same facility in orange park, florida in which the later drawing experiment took place, at the time known as the yale anthropoid experimentation station. it becomes clear that at the time of her birth in 1930, this particular primate had a unique status in the eyes of the institution’s founder, robert yerkes, as she was the first chimpanzee to have been conceived and delivered at this new breeding plant. the florida facility was part of yale university’s laboratories of comparative psychobiology founded by yerkes, a prominent figure in academic institutions and governmental research committees, after a considerable effort of fundraising and lobbying. yerkes aimed to establish a colony of chimpanzees to act as test subjects to model human psychological and physiological characteristics. in his foreword to the report of alpha’s first year, he records that in 1930 he brought four young chimpanzees to florida to found the colony, and soon afterwards one of them gave birth. yerkes writes with satisfaction: “[…] never before has there been opportunity to write, with reasonable accuracy, the life history of a chimpanzee born of parents of known psychobiological characteristics” (jacobsen, jacobsen, and yoshioka 1932, 2). to reflect her status as the first product of the breeding program, the baby was named alpha. haraway examines the project of rational reform of robert yerkes in her 1989 publication primate visions. she situates his program of breeding juliet macdonald 32 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ chimpanzees for experimental purposes in the context of early 20th century us politics and economics, showing the web of institutional, governmental, philanthropic and industrial interests underlying his scientific project. one of his aims was to model, and thereby scientifically manage, human psychology and social behaviour. at a time of expanding corporate capitalism, yerkes’ research was applicable to a program of human engineering aimed at rationalizing individuals’ behaviour to produce a cohesive and cooperative workforce. he tested for differences of personality and behaviour (all deemed to have a biological basis) that could be harnessed toward the efficient division of labour in the workplace, in military contexts and in the family, thus maximising productivity. haraway argues yerkes’ research reinforced hierarchical, racially discriminatory and patriarchal narratives. scientific knowledge of the biological mechanisms structuring behaviour was deemed necessary. yerkes regretted the social censures that prevented him using human subjects in more of his experiments but believed chimpanzees displayed primitive underlying drives similar to humans because of shared evolutionary history and so were ideal substitutes. not only would medical, pharmaceutical and surgical tests be conducted but these “proto-humans” would also play out roles of dominance and subordination, cooperation and competition, in a psychobiological drama laid on for the scientific spectator. yerkes describes alpha as being “continuously available” for experiment (jacobsen, jacobsen, and yoshioka 1932, 5), and in the 80 pages that follow his preface to the 1932 report every aspect of alpha’s behavioral and physiological development in her first year of life is recorded. a large number of tables and charts provide evidence of the files of quantitative data generated from this one infant body: the length and girth of every limb were measured at regular intervals; heart rate, respiration and blood pressure were recorded; routine x-rays were taken. every detail was compared against human developmental scales. descriptions of behavioral development were also made for comparison with human infants. alpha was tested using a series of procedures developed in the 1920s by arnold gesell, at the yale psycho-clinic (later known as the gesell tests). these tests itemised norms of development in pre-school children, listing expected competencies so that abnormalities could be identified (gesell 1925). in her performance of the gesell tests, alpha was in some respects slightly in advance of a human infant in locomotion and postural control. but on other tests such as tossing a ball into a box and vocabulary she failed to match “normal” human performance. one of the tests associated with motor development was m40, referred to as the scribble test. in the “normal” child, according to gesell: “at twelve alpha: the figure in the cage 33 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ months spontaneous scribbling begins to assert itself, and at eighteen months it is an almost universal trait. scribbling and scrawling represent the random-movement stage which precedes almost every form of organized skill” (1925, 211). alpha’s performance in the scribble test was disappointing. when the five-month old chimpanzee was presented with a drawing implement jacobsen et al. report, alpha grasped and brought the crayon to her mouth. by the age of 18 months she had still not made a mark. the report states that she observed the examiner making marks and followed them with her finger but did not attempt “to write”. the results for tests m41-48 state simply, “complex drawings, were failed” (jacobsen, jacobsen, and yoshioka 1932, 85). the descriptions of alpha’s behavioral development are largely the work of two of the report’s authors, carlyle and marion jacobsen. for the majority of the first eight months, the jacobsens cared for alpha in their home and this caregiving relationship seems evident in some of their reporting. although they stress that they did not teach her “human social graces” (1932, 7) or give her clothes, there is nonetheless evidence that alpha was part of their home life. domestic details slip into their report, for example the way that alpha liked to trace the patterns in the rug with her index finger, to examine the curtains and to tear up magazines. when the gesell tests were conducted the record states that alpha sat on mrs jacobsen’s lap in front of a card table (1932, 57). although the jacobsens use the language of scientific detachment there are occasions when this lapses. they refer to “the ‘almost human’ attachments established between this baby and her observers” (1932, 82). this suggests that alpha had an almost childlike status in her relationships with them, although in the liminal position of being “almost human”. as alpha developed in strength and climbing ability, it appears from the report that she began to disrupt the domestic scene. the log records her increasing tendency to hang by her chin from tables and knock over furniture. the photographic plates at the end of the report show a placid seated figure in earlier shots, and a creature running on all fours by the final plate. by the age of nine months, alpha was moved out of the jacobsen’s house to an adult type enclosure at the station, to be quartered with another young chimpanzee. her tantrums and thumb sucking after this expulsion from the family home are noted. to understand the implications of this transition it is necessary to consider the physical environment that alpha would presumably have lived in from that point. in a later publication, chimpanzees: a laboratory colony (1943), intended as a handbook for those intending to breed chimpanzees for experimental purposes, yerkes describes the caging arrangements implemented at the florida laboratories in some detail. providing several juliet macdonald 34 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ pages of recommendations for the exact gauge of chain-link netting and diameter of galvanised steel piping necessary to contain a population of chimpanzees. a cageframe ordinarily should be a unit designed to carry either wire netting or wall panels and readily accommodate doors, grilles, and other special devices for communication and experimental needs. the weight and diameter of the frame piping should vary with the functional demand. it may range from 1 to 3 inches in diameter, although usually 1 to 2 inches will be strong enough. at the joints it may be coupled, threaded, bolted, or welded. if the cage walls are to be solid, they must be designed to resist heavy blows. (yerkes 1943, 206) yerkes writes of the strength and dexterity of chimpanzee fingers and the need to use specially engineered padlocks. the resistance of his captive subjects was clearly a determining factor in cage design, with its emphasis on security, durability, economy and cleanliness. in order to produce compliant and healthy chimpanzees, an ethos of “work” and “mental hygiene” was promoted (for example chimpanzees had to push or pull levers to obtain food, hanging car tires were installed for amusement), and the animals would be visible and accessible to experimenters at all times. chimpanzees’ behaviour had to be modified to engender a spirit of cooperation, and “to convert the animal into as nearly ideal a subject for biological research as is practicable” (yerkes 1943, 10). each animal was individualized, in the sense that personality types were categorized, bodies were measured, behavior scrutinised and files of data on each individual collected so that they could be matched to specific experimental requirements. returning to the 1950s drawing experiment, explanations for alpha’s desire to draw are speculative. schiller’s report cites her early experience of the gesell scribble test. perhaps another factor might have been the memory of closeness, of sitting on the knee of mrs jacobsen at the card table and being given the crayon. or perhaps no further explanation is needed than the comparative restriction and sterility of the adult cage, to explain why, by the age of 18 years, alpha begged to draw. 3. the drawing experiment and its repercussions alpha’s caged circumstances at the time of schiller’s experiment when she was 18 years of age, confirm her epistemological status in the context of 1950s comparative psychology as an object of scientific knowledge. however, given the reproduction of her drawings in the 1951 report, it can be alpha: the figure in the cage 35 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ argued she has a measure of authorship and agency in the report’s subsequent impact, evidenced by citations in disciplines ranging from psychoanalytic theory to anthropology. a brief summary of the experiment is useful at this point. the report states a special drawing board with a handle was used to insert test papers into the cage and retract them before they could be ripped up. the object of enquiry was the positioning of alpha’s marks in relation to geometric figures stuck onto the test sheets (squares, circles, triangles and bars of various colors). her marks were found to be responsive to these shapes, tending to balance and complete them, and were confined to the area of the paper. a tendency to cross bars at right angles was noted, and in later tests, to obliterate the shapes on the test sheets completely with her marks (see fig. 1, #6). the results accorded with gestalt theories of organized and active perception. (schiller is credited with bringing theories of gestalt psychology and ethology from europe into contact with us branches of comparative psychology; after his death, his widow claire published many of his notes, editing and translating the volume instinctive behavior [1957], including chapters by jakob von uexküll, konrad lorenz and nikolaas tinbergen). the experiment was written up after schiller’s death by karl lashley, then director of the laboratories, on the basis of recalled conversations with schiller. this dual authorship perhaps explains some of the contradictory remarks in the report. alpha’s prime motivation for drawing is argued to be the motor action itself rather than the visibility of the mark, but conversely the report also states “she does not draw with a pointed stick and discards or chews up the crayon when the point breaks and it no longer marks […] marking is thus an essential part of the activity” (schiller 1951, 110). the report’s findings have been cited in a variety of disciplinary contexts indicating the drawings resist easy classification, and the experiment has been described as “something of a projective test for writers” (dewsbury 1994). in some publications alpha’s drawings have been copied in order to illustrate gestalt principles such as that of closure (hothersall 1990, 225; hearst 1991, 438). however, schiller’s (or lashley’s) concluding statement that the drawings “are in no case representations” but rather “scribbling” that will never progress toward representation and are “primarily a motor expression” (1951, 111) seems pivotal to the distinctions made by many commentators. dewsbury underlines this point as does, for example silver, writing in 1979 from an anthropological perspective on the origins of art: when given drawing implements, chimps will show some attentiveness to composition, balance, and pre-existing outlines, as well as a very rudimentary development of “style” over time. however, as schiller points out, there is no attempt at representation in any form. these data suggest that while juliet macdonald 36 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ certain very basic formal properties of composition may be linked to elementary primate processes of motor expression, the intricate representational and geometric arts of humans derive from a far more sophisticated conceptual organization. (silver 1979, 303) here the human/animal distinction is re-inscribed on the twin bases of geometry and representation. in comparison to “sophisticated” human conceptual capacity, the chimpanzee’s visual production is relegated to a mechanistic category suggested by the phrase “motor expression”. the most popular publication to discuss schiller’s experiment was morris’s biology of art (1962), which contains several pages of discussion of alpha’s drawings as part of a survey of drawings and paintings by gorillas, chimpanzees, orangutans and capuchin monkeys, who he describes as “infra-human picture-makers” (1962, 43). the circumstances of these vary widely, from media events with famous chimpanzees such as baltimore betsy in the 1950s, to experiments in home rearing such as that conducted by russian psychologist nadezhda ladygina-kohts who brought up the chimpanzee joni for a period in her home from around 1913 (ladyginakohts and de waal 2002). however, morris treats all these examples as evidence of the same biological urges, broadly comparable with each other without consideration of differences of context. he quotes the passage i have used in my introduction to illustrate alpha’s “anti-social” approach to drawing, her wild tendencies that made a “remote-control” method of testing with a long-handled drawing board necessary (morris 1962, 47-8). morris contrasts this with his own testing at close proximity, of a young, tamed chimpanzee called congo who did not rip up his drawings. for chimpanzees like alpha he suggests use of a narrower cage “that gave the animal no choice of positions when it approached the drawing board” (1962, 47). morris compares drawings by nonhuman primates with those of human children, as examples of “pure forms of artistic expression” (1962, 150). cave painting is also cited as evidence of art’s primal beginnings that, morris argues, avant-garde artists of the twentieth century might seek to return to. he assesses congo’s drawings against scales of development considered to be universal for human children, from scribbles to pictorial drawings, the culmination being the child’s drawing of a circle with sticks coming out of it that can be named as a human figure (1962, 124-6). rather than grading the chimpanzee’s drawings as fixed in the scribble stage, as schiller’s report does, morris suggests that one or two of congo’s drawings show signs of progress but stresses they are far behind those of a human child (1962, 136). other subsequent authors have picked up on morris’s interpretation of schiller’s results to argue, on the one hand, for the “universality of symbolic creativeness” (margoshes and litt 1966, 71) but on the other hand, to alpha: the figure in the cage 37 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ re-emphasis the difference between human and nonhuman primates on the basis of the latter’s limited progression toward representation: the first discernible difference comes at about the age of three, when the child draws his first representation – an irregular circle, with marks inside it, that he spontaneously identifies as a face […]. here the monkey is left behind; no monkey is known ever to have made a representational painting or drawing, and all efforts to teach them this skill, as similar efforts to teach them to talk, seem to have failed (morris, 1962). it is relevant that it is about the same time that the human child begins to talk. what has happened, apparently, is that in the human being the perceptual-motor field now superimposes upon the conceptual field. (margoshes and litt 1966, 72) here again, a qualitative difference between human and nonhuman primate is asserted at the point of conceptual capacity. the examples above show that alpha’s drawings have generated interest, but commentators have been parsimonious in attributing significance to them, maintaining that although other primates draw, they do not draw like “us”. this position has been maintained in three ways. firstly, in lashley’s phrase, quoted by dewsbury and silver, that drawing is “primarily a motor expression” (schiller 1951, 111), implying visual feedback is of little significance and the action is mechanical. this eliminates any element of subjective intent and positions the drawing animal as little more than a machine. secondly, on the grounds that the drawings “are in no case representations” and never will be (schiller 1951, 111), repeated by margoshes and litt. here it is argued, drawings by human children, at a certain stage, leap forward into a qualitatively different conceptual domain whereas those of nonhuman primates remain as meaningless scribble. the term “representation” seems to refer to the type of diagramming seen in children’s drawings (exemplified by the circle with four limbs, a little round character, standing in for the whole human figure), or perhaps to a depiction based on visual observations from a fixed point. however, these are limited ways of looking for meaning and do not account, for example, for the significance of gesture or color. the third distinction is morris’s: although drawings by chimpanzees show progress on the comparative scale toward representation they remain at an early stage that is basic and primal. by comparison, humans have to make a knowing return to such a state of “naked aestheticism” (1962, 151). haraway (1989) outlines various ways in which nonhuman primates have been constructed paternalistically as the equivalent to children or as primitive relations helping to reveal the origins of human behavior. it seems that morris by making comparisons with children’s drawing and referring to prehistory to situate his discussions, to some extent continues this tradition. juliet macdonald 38 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 4. subsequent experiments other drawing experiments with nonhuman primates have followed from schiller’s and morris’ publications. for example, an experiment reported in 1976 with macaca mulatta monkeys used a system of rewards (m & ms) to initiate the drawing activities (brewster and siegel 1976). the authors use the language of behaviorist theories of learning: “[…] the animals were shaped to hold a wax crayon” (1976, 345). individual monkeys were taken from cages and put in a “primate restraining chair” for the duration of each test. perhaps not surprisingly given this structure of reward and restraint, the authors found no evidence of visual interest in the drawing activity on the part of the monkeys, only “simple mechanical arm movements” suggesting the “basic motor component” of drawing (1976, 347). by contrast, researchers in primate cognition, working at the yerkes regional primate research center in the 1980s, found the chimpanzees they tested to be fascinated by the activity of drawing, without rewards (boysen, berntson, and prentice 1987). the authors state their intention to be more systematic and objective than morris and they are cautious in their findings. following a previous experiment by smith (1973), they use similar geometrically marked test cards, finding no consistent evidence of balancing or completion of the figures. however, these authors acknowledge a changed landscape in primate research in the wake of language acquisition studies, resulting in “our awareness of the biological and cognitive continuum that we share” (boysen, berntson, and prentice 1987, 82). in a more recent experiment citing schiller and morris, infant chimpanzees were tested using computers with touch-sensitive screens to enable drawing with only an index finger (tanaka, tomonaga, and matsuzawa 2003). the use of a touch-sensitive screen presents possibilities for recording not only the residue of the drawing process but also the order, speed and direction of marks. the report states rewards were not given and infants took part with their mothers, who were already familiar with drawing, having been called into the experiment room from “an enriched outdoor compound” (tanaka, tomonaga, and matsuzawa 2003, 246). types of stroke were categorized (dots, straight lines, curves, hooks and loops). the report concludes the infants “seemed to possess an intrinsic motivation to draw” and there was a greater interest when a visible trace of action was produced (tanaka, tomonaga, and matsuzawa 2003, 250). photographs show the small figure of a chimpanzee crouching next to a laptop screen pointing to a trail of dots with apparent curiosity. while it is not possible to judge what lies outside the frame, or how the subjects remain enclosed, alpha: the figure in the cage 39 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the photographs support the impression of interested participation at the interface of this technology. an extensive study by zeller (2007) is more along the lines of morris’ survey, bringing together for comparison drawings and paintings by chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans (of varying ages) and those of humans under the age of five, in an attempt to categorize their marking patterns and color choice on the basis of species and gender. zeller argues that color and form convey expressive meaning. she disputes the border between human and animal defined by earlier observers on the basis of “representation”, but then marks out differences of species on other lines, making assertions of species-typical and gender-typical drawing tendencies based on the output of a small number of representatives. serious inequalities in context between a child drawing at home with a parent and an adult orangutan reaching through the bars of his cage to paint are overlooked. she acknowledges drawings were “gathered under a variety of conditions” and used a variety of media: watercolors, markers or pencils, applied with brush, stick, pencil, finger or tongue, onto board, canvas or paper (2007, 183-5). but in her findings, red is red and green is green regardless of the subtleties of these various materials, and regardless of the visual apparatus with which you look at them. the results therefore generalize, for example: humans are the species to use most colors, and females of any species are more likely to stay within the confines of the page. given the repeated assertion that drawings and paintings by nonhuman primates cannot “represent” anything it is perhaps not surprising that those in close communication with the producers of such works have disputed this. primatologists working at the gorilla foundation state that gorilla koko produces paintings that have a visual correlation in size, arrangement and colour to things she has observed (tanner, patterson, and byrne 2006). the gorilla foundation website shows (and sells) examples of paintings that were produced and named by koko and michael (both gorillas having been taught american sign language) and describes the paintings as representational (the gorilla foundation 2013). tanner et al. make an interesting connection between koko’s self-taught gestural signs and drawing; when koko traces an outline on the surface of her body to indicate a specific object, the authors liken this to the way in which some humans draw “in a tactile manner” by following the shape of something as if touching it (tanner, patterson, and byrne 2006, 88). they describe koko’s gestural signing as bound up with touch as well as vision, always in relation to her own body but mirroring others, and producing a kind of spatial depiction using movement. attentiveness to the subtleties of gestures is crucial in this understanding. juliet macdonald 40 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ a focus on gesture, tactility and movement opens up other possibilities, for thinking about meaning in drawings by nonhuman animals. gucwa and ehmann examined such qualities in drawings by the elephant siri (1985). from a different quarter, a number of recent articles in the journal animal cognition show that gestures by nonhuman apes are now a subject of intense scientific interest as investigators of language begin to observe the flexibility, intentionality and repertoire of gestures used by different great ape communities (genty et al. 2009; cartmill and byrne 2010; hobaiter and byrne 2011). given the subtleties of such hand movements, or trunk movements, the visual traces of gestural signs can be seen as meaningful inscription. both linguistic and paralinguistic, gestures are demonstrative and dynamic; they register pressure, movement, density and magnitude; and map larger spatial relationships in miniature form. all such qualities of gesture are rendered visible in drawing. 5. conclusion definitions of drawing that exclude the drawings of nonhuman animals no longer work. there are sufficient examples of other animals drawing (using whatever tools are available to them, without food rewards or training and with evident interest, enjoyment, curiosity or determination) to challenge assertions that drawing is an essentially human activity. if “we” mark our presence so do “they”. if we deliberately leave traces, we do so as animals – living, moving, signing, vocalizing, spraying, scoring, depositing, imprinting, writing and in various other ways differentiating ourselves, one from another. drawings by nonhuman animals upset demarcations made on the basis of a set of qualities believed to be the exclusive property of humans, e.g. expression of feeling, creativity, ability to respond, access to knowledge of the world. i am not in a position to argue philosophically for the release of each of these capacities from human exceptionalism but others have done so (see for example derrida 2002; calarco 2008; tyler 2012). in the case of alpha, the fact that her drawings have been cited in various disciplines, and schiller’s experiment has been replicated, indicates that her drawing activity raised questions that were not easily settled. however, in the discussion there is often a retraction or stepping back from the implications of bringing such artefacts into academic discourse. a limitation has been set on their significance based on the following arguments: the marks reflect only mechanical movement tendencies; the marks are scribble and do not reflect the movement toward representation seen in human children’s drawings; alpha: the figure in the cage 41 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the marks are comparable to young children’s drawings but remain at a rudimentary stage. thus the difference between “human” and “animal” drawing is effectively reinstated. this fundamental distinction is also reproduced by lumping together all the drawings of nonhuman animals as one phenomenon, or by testing for differences based purely on species rather than considering the specific contexts in which the drawings appear. birke, bryld and lykke draw attention to the complex network of techniques and practices that operate in the processes of knowledge production. considering laboratories particularly, they state: “[…] meanings emerge from a nexus of apparatuses, animals and people” (2004, 173). the laboratory is viewed as a configuration of instruments, equipment, professional roles, institutions and bodies, that is productive of the phenomena under investigation. the animal, as object of knowledge, and the scientist as experimenter and handler, are constituted within these relationships. for example, the authors argue the “laboratory rat” is actually a hybrid “coconstructed by discursive practices” (2004, 171). these living beings are not passive: “[…] the rat itself is an agent in the process, whether it obligingly reproduces to order or squeals and bites the experimenter” (2004, 173). birke et al. can be criticized for underemphasizing the obvious asymmetries of power between human experimenters and laboratory rats, but their assertion of agency challenges the physical and linguistic reduction of living beings to mere objects and instruments of knowledge practices. in this paper i have attempted to show that alpha’s drawings arise within a specific history and set of circumstances and should be seen not in generic terms as “chimpanzee drawings” but as the particular graphic traces of a particular life. created as a scientific model, in infancy she appears to have been the object of intense scrutiny and yet was afforded “almost human” status, cared for in a home and initiated into domestic practices, including being shown how to use a crayon. later, excluded and enclosed as a laboratory animal, she is reported as aggressively wanting to draw, turning her back to observers when doing so and destroying her drawings afterwards. alpha’s insistence on drawing exceeds the role for which she was designed. rather than remaining in the yellowing pages of a 1950s journal, reports of her drawing habit/practice have found their way into subsequent literature and i quote them again here. like the rat who leaves teeth marks in the hand of the experimenter, alpha’s marks outlive her. viewed against the plotted squares and circles on the test sheets, or the stick figures on the scales of child development, alpha’s marks disappear as meaningless scribble. in repositioning these drawings as meaningful it is tempting to attach significance to alpha’s reported tendency to cross thick bars at right angles or to obliterate the figures on the test sheet, as an act of juliet macdonald 42 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ resistance to the terms of the experiment and to the geometry of the cage. but rather than making an interpretation of specific meaning from such a distance, i would simply argue that the visible traces of her gestures spread out across a surface with intent, and her reported determination to draw is itself significant. i would point to the ripple of citations as evidence of the continuing agency of alpha’s marks. references birke, lynda, mette bryld, and nina lykke. 2004. “animal performances: an exploration of intersections between feminist science studies and studies of human/animal relationships”. feminist theory 5 (2): 167-83. doi: 10.1177/1464700104045406. boysen, sarah t., gary g. berntson, and james prentice. 1987. “simian scribbles: a reappraisal of drawing in the chimpanzee (pan troglodytes)”. journal of comparative psychology 101 (1): 82-9. brewster, joan m., and ronald k. siegel. 1976. “reinforced drawing in macaca mulatta”. journal of human evolution 5 (4): 345-6, in5, 347. calarco, matthew. 2008. zoographies: the question of the animal from heidegger to derrida. new york: columbia university press. cartmill, erica a., and richard w. byrne. 2010. “semantics of primate gestures: intentional meanings of orangutan gestures”. animal cognition 13 (6): 793804. doi: 10.1007/s10071-010-0328-7. derrida, jacques. 2002. “the animal that therefore i am (more to follow)”. critical inquiry 28 (2): 369-418. dewsbury, donald a. 1994. “the comparative psychology of paul schiller”. psychological record 44 (3): 326. dexter, emma. 2005. vitamin d: new perspectives in drawing. london new york: phaidon. genty, emilie, thomas breuer, catherine hobaiter, and richard w. byrne. 2009. “gestural communication of the gorilla (gorilla gorilla): repertoire, intentionality and possible origins”. animal cognition 12 (3): 527-46. doi: 10.1007/ s10071-009-0213-4. gesell, arnold. 1925. the mental growth of the pre-school child: a psychological outline of normal development from birth to the sixth year, including a system of developmental diagnosis. new york: the macmillan company. gucwa, david, and james ehmann. 1985. to whom it may concern: an investigation of the art of elephants. new york: norton. haraway, donna j. 1989. primate visions: gender, race, and nature in the world of modern science. new york: routledge. 1991. simians, cyborgs and women: the reinvention of nature. london: free association. alpha: the figure in the cage 43 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ hearst, eliot. 1991. “psychology and nothing”. american scientist 79 (5): 432-43. hobaiter, catherine, and richard w. byrne. 2011. “the gestural repertoire of the wild chimpanzee”. animal cognition 14 (5): 745-67. doi: 10.1007/s10071011-0409-2. hothersall, david. 1990. history of psychology. new york: mcgraw-hill. jacobsen, carlyle f., marion m. jacobsen, and joseph g. yoshioka. 1932. development of an infant chimpanzee during her first year. baltimore: the johns hopkins press. ladygina-kohts, nadezhda n., and frans de waal. 2002. infant chimpanzee and human child: a classic 1935 comparative study of ape emotions and intelligence. new york: oxford university press. macdonald, juliet. 2012. alpha #4: scheme for a drawing experiment. cheltenham: meantime. 2014. “alpha: biography of a prototype” [unpublished (in draft)]. margoshes, adam, and sheldon litt. 1966. “creativity in art: a bioenergetic approach”. journal of humanistic psychology 6 (2): 148-55. morris, desmond. 1962. the biology of art: a study of the picture-making behaviour of the great apes and its relationship to human art. london: methuen. schiller, claire h. 1957. instinctive behavior: the development of a modern concept. new york: international universities press. schiller, paul h. 1951. “figural preferences in the drawings of a chimpanzee”. journal of comparative and physiological psychology 44 (2): 101-11. silver, harry r. 1979. “ethnoart”. annual review of anthropology 8: 267-307. doi: 10.2307/2155621. smith, d.a. 1973. “systematic study of chimpanzee drawing”. journal of comparative and physiological psychology 82 (3): 406-14. tanaka, masayuki, masaki tomonaga, and tetsuro matsuzawa. 2003. “finger drawing by infant chimpanzees [pan troglodytes]”. animal cognition 6 (4): 245-51. tanner, joanne e., francine g. patterson, and richard w. byrne. 2006. “the development of spontaneous gestures in zoo-living gorillas and sign-taught gorillas: from action and location to object representation”. the journal of developmental processes 1 (fall): 69-102. the gorilla foundation. 2013. “kokomart: gorrilla art”. kokomart. last modified march 26, 2013. http://www.koko.org/friends/kokomart_art.html. tyler, tom. 2012. ciferae: a bestiary in five fingers. minneapolis: university of minnesota press. yerkes, robert m. 1943. chimpanzees; a laboratory colony. new haven: yale university press; london, h. milford oxford university press. zeller, anne. 2007. “‘what’s in a picture?’ a comparison of drawings by apes and children”. semiotica 166: 181-214. doi: 10.1515/sem.2007.056. is skrei a historical norwegian figure? the nomadic symbiosis of fish and humans in the lofoten islands 5 is sn 2 2 8 0 -9 9 5 3 beyond anthropocentrism 1 • january 2013 inside the emotional lives of non-human animals a minding animals international utrecht 2012 pre-conference event special issue (genoa, italy, 12-13 may, 2012) edited by m. andreozzi, r. bennison, a. massaro, s. tonutti capabilities approach and animal bioethics • michele panzera animals and our emotions. how to approach the study of an interspecific community? • sabrina tonutti advocacy and animal rights • kim stallwood the emotional lives of animals: a christian perspective • alma massaro – gianfranco nicora animalia: ontology and ethics in weak antispeciesism • leonardo caffo the contemporary debate on experimentation • susanna penco – rosagemma ciliberti non-human animals and genetic engineering • arianna ferrari the relationship between humans and other animals in european animal welfare legislation • paola sobbrio human’s best friends? • matteo andreozzi elationsre l a t io n s . b e y o n d a n t h r o p o c e n t r is m 1 • 2 0 1 3 r 8.1-2 november 2020 finding agency in nonhumans special issue edited by anne aronsson, fynn holm, melissa kaul introduction finding agency in nonhumans 7 anne aronsson fynn holm melissa kaul studies and research contributions conceptualizing robotic agency: social robots in elder care 17 in contemporary japan anne aronsson fynn holm “its hand around my throat”: the social rendering of borrelia 37 ritti soncco distributed skills in camel herding: cooperation 57 in a human-animal relationship in somaliland raphael schwere a sea cow goes to court: extinction and animal agency 77 in a struggle against militarism marius palz is skrei a historical norwegian figure? the nomadic symbiosis 97 of fish and humans in the lofoten islands nafsika papacharalampous relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ relations. beyond anthropocentrism 6 “agents of description”: animals, affect, and care 115 in thalia field’s experimental animals: a reality fiction (2016) shannon lambert comments, debates, reports and interviews on midgley and scruton: some limits of a too moderate 137 animal ethics francesco allegri author guidelines 145 relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 97 is skrei a historical norwegian figure? the nomadic symbiosis of fish and humans in the lofoten islands nafsika papacharalampous soas university of london doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2020-0102-papa nafsikacooks@gmail.com abstract this paper draws from short ethnographic fieldwork and collected oral histories in the lofoten islands in northern norway in 2019. in this paper i follow “skrei”, the norwegian codfish (gadus morhua). i explore what i call the “nomadic symbiosis” of islanders and skrei via their diachronic entanglements, as these appear in historical and present narratives, in changing ideas around economic development and progress, but also in the changes in the physical and political landscapes. these moments of connection, all challenge human-centric views arguing for skrei’s agency in cuisine-making, but also vis-à-vis identity-making, as skrei became recognized conjuring a newfound sense of belonging and becoming part of an imagined community within the lofoten islands and beyond. i argue that these meaningful interactions create worlds that decenter human agency and revisit the notion of cuisine and nation-building processes as truly multispecies entanglements. keywords: fish; fishing; human-animal relations; identity; multi-species ethnography; nationalism; nomadic symbiosis; non-human agency; norway; oral histories. 1. searching for skrei the name “skrei”, given to fish belonging in the norwegian atlantic cod family 1 comes from the old norse word for “the wanderer”. it is a very symbolic name, as skrei spends most of its life – and death for that matter – travelling. skrei lives in the barents sea, until the age of 6 or 7 1 the scientific name is gadus morhua. skrei differs from the atlantic cod as it is longer is size and more pointed, has whiter, crisper flesh, with firm flakes. see more on skrei.net, kurlansky 1998 and greenberg 2011. relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2020-0102-papa mailto:nafsikacooks@gmail.com https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ nafsika papacharalampous 98 when it reaches sexual maturity. every year in november-december it swims about 1000 km to the south, in the lofoten islands (to its place of birth), to spawn. the vestfjord, the area between the lofoten archipelago and the mainland, is known as the world’s biggest maternity ward and fills with millions of fish that reach the lofoten islands from january to early spring. and with them, come of course the fishermen, to hunt for skrei. the vehement relationships between skrei and fishermen in the lofoten archipelago and beyond, go back to the viking times. but skrei is not only part of norway’s history, but also becomes part of the world. as a wanderer, even after its death, it travels to southern europe, west africa and other parts of the world, air-dried, salted, or otherwise processed: a norwegian migrant that becomes part of the lives of southern europeans, west africans, and many more. arriving in the lofoten islands in october 2019 i was eager for my encounter with skrei. as i crossed the sea from the mainland to the lofoten islands, i imagined millions of fish swimming right below me, millions of fish on the mainland, caught in nets, hanging from wooden racks to be dried. but the wanderer was nowhere to be found. i was very late in the season. skrei had returned to the barents sea and as the fishing and processing were well over, there was no sign of it anywhere. it felt as if i was chasing an imaginary ghost. but it only took a few hours to realize that skrei was everywhere. i felt its presence, not as a passive commodity, to be fished, processed and sold. skrei imposed on the landscape, in people’s narratives, it was part of the lives of the islanders, giving shape to something i was about to discover. the wanderer was there, omnipresent, even if it was away, cutting across time and space, affecting and changing everything. it felt like an important member of the community who was simply away traveling, and the village waited for its return. and it is its invisible presence that captivated me and which i seek to reveal and analyze in this paper. this paper draws from short ethnographic fieldwork and collected oral histories from islanders in the lofoten islands in october 2019. in this paper i ask how, despite its name as a wanderer, skrei stays in the lofoten islands all year-round, having a meaningful life in the lofoten islands. i seek to understand its importance, agency and its embedded role in the lofoten world. to do so, i explore the relationships between skrei and the islanders vis-à-vis feelings of belonging and identity-making, focusing on cultural imaginaries, histories and revival of traditions of fishing, processing and cooking skrei. by doing so, i ask what these meaningful entanglements can reveal around the nature of the agency nonhumans carry. i begin by sketching the methodological and theorelations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ is skrei a historical norwegian figure? 99 retical framework of this paper. i then present the notion of “nomadic symbiosis” and analyse the historical moments and connections of skrei with fishermen and the islanders, and their interconnection with identity. i then hone into the nature of this “nomadic symbiosis” in present-day lofoten and proceed to illustrate how skrei shapes new ways of coexisting, creating a new sense of belonging for the islanders. 2. animals as “good to live with” to explore these meaningful entanglements, i draw from theoretical understandings in the context of the post-anthropocentric turn in anthropology and beyond. multispecies ethnography (kirksey and helmreich 2010) has cast animals as “good to live with”, as active participants in human social life, in what is called “becomings” – new kinds of relations emerging from non-hierarchical alliances, symbiotic attachments, and the mingling of creative agents (ibid, 454). multispecies ethnographies may move beyond animals and focus on the dynamic relationships between non-human organisms and humans, such as plants, insects, fungi, bacteria, and viruses (paxson 2008; tsing 2015), rendering human nature “an interspecies relationship” (tsing 2012). this shift which began from donna haraway’s seminal work when species meet (2008) explores the dynamic relationships formed between species and how they define and are defined by grander societal narratives. humans are no longer the center of the universe; it is “a network with no center to dictate order”, a more balanced system where threads of relations across species create equally interesting narratives and ideas to reflect on (kirksey and helmreich 2010, 454). many scholars have focused on human-animal relationships, and in their works we see how these relationships shape and are shaped from animals and humans together 2. for instance, beach and stammler (2006) describe a “symbiotic domestication” between reindeer in siberia and their herders, a relationship that is more than a relation of production between humans and animals. reindeers internalize the patterns of movements that their herders dictate and in turn the herders follow the reindeers into the landscape. in this worldview, humans and animals are considered equals and in a symbiotic relationship, that goes beyond their movements into the landscape and towards their reproduction, life and death (see also cassidy 2012). 2 see for example vitebsky 2005; franklin 2006; cassidy and mullin 2007; candea 2010; francis 2015; lien 2015. relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ nafsika papacharalampous 100 in this paper, i draw from this methodological and theoretical framework, diverging from classic ethnographies and interpretations. i see skrei not only as a foodstuff for human consumption, but also carrying cultural and symbolic value, and embedded in history and in the lives of the islanders. by following skrei and the feelings of belonging it conjures, i seek to explore understandings of agency for skrei and by extension for nonhuman animals. to this end, i situate the notion of agency as embedded in and deriving from these relationships that i describe above. more specifically, in defining agency, in this paper i diverge from kohn’s (2013) ideas around agency as intentionality and as a force that utilizes past learnings to create futures. instead, i ask if humans attribute agency to skrei in the sense of linguistic agency, of how humans talk about the fish. this is still meaningful, despite being human-centric and depended on humans. but i also ask if skrei has a deeper form of agency, not only promoting change in humans, as per bruno latour’s (2005) theory, but more, i see agency as the creation of a relationship of equals, between humans and skrei. but can skrei, a foodstuff, ever be really equal to humans? how does food/ cuisine and agency intersect? it is this “relationship” and “entanglements of human and nonhuman lives” that i search for in this paper in these instances in which skrei and human actions intertwine or diverge. within this framework, i problematize the meaningful categories of fish as “wild”, especially linking to the notions of animal as “wild” vs. “alien”, as they relate to ideas of inclusion and exclusion, particularly vis-à-vis the creation of relationships and entanglements 3. as such, in this paper, i engage with skrei and navigate these issues by decentering my human perspective to an all-encompassing view of the world 4. more specifically, i search for these moments where skrei and the human worlds merge, in their material or symbolic forms and the interconnections that become visible. 3. animals and identity-making but how does one actually go about researching the interconnections between skrei and the islanders? to explore this conundrum, i focus on identity-making and nation-building processes and ask how these can 3 see also govindrajan 2018, and especially chapter four on animals vis-à-vis the politics of exclusion and belonging. 4 see for example kohn 2013; despret 2016; mueller 2017. relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ is skrei a historical norwegian figure? 101 be reframed using not only the human gaze, but also bringing skrei into the discourse. classic scholarship in this realm usually reduces animals to “foods” and “cuisine”, the latter often defined as an assemblage of foodways, a reflection of communities with shared social roots, of people that come together, interact and collectively remember (mintz 1996; counihan 1999; sutton 2001; watson 2007). in this paper i see cuisine as embedded in social relations, but seek to rethink of such relations as something more than human, situating skrei in multispecies entanglements in the lofoten islands. i draw from ideas on terroir, in which the natural environment, the notion of time, the human element come together and create diverse cultural, political and economic networks of social relationships (trubek 2009; paxson 2010; west 2013), and the global processes of reinvention of tradition and revalorizing of rural foods on multiple local, regional and national levels (see markowitz 2012; grasseni 2012; wilk 2002 respectively; see also grasseni and paxson 2014). following these political processes of creation and consumption of food and place in the lofoten islands, i ask about and search for the absence of engagement with skrei in these definitions. more specifically, in what follows i discuss how skrei, even though has been part of the lofoten islands for centuries, it was until recently invisible and neglected, vis-à-vis the creation of local or even national cuisine, but also vis-à-vis the social relations that the notion of cuisine presupposes. to this end, using the lenses of cuisine i seek to understand the construction and negotiation of the norwegian identity, as local and national idioms coexist and sometimes clash, and the role of skrei in this process. norway is a particularly fascinating case for that matter. as the anthropologist thomas hylland eriksen notes, it is often portrayed as a relatively small country, with “simplicity, homogeneity, and cohesiveness as virtues that go with smallness” (2017, 71). implicit in eriksen’s words in the idea of a relatively homogenous national identity which envelops the internal diversity and external influences (for instance the national language dispute, the sami ethnic minority, or the northsouth tension that i discuss later on in this paper). indeed, the notion of “equality as sameness” has been the foundation for the creation and maintenance of social relations in norway, as marianna gullestad notes (1992, 162). however, during my time in the lofoten islands, complexities come to the fore when discussing the construction of the norwegian identity, and the interplay of local, regional and national idioms becomes a site of symbolic struggle, especially when seen from the prism of skrei. relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ nafsika papacharalampous 102 building on these works and using the theoretical framework presented above, i follow the norwegian codfish, and reveal its economic, political, and symbolic life and agency, suggesting skrei and the islanders can be involved in meaningful interactions that decenter human agency and make the notion of cuisine and identity-making a “truly multispecies entanglement”. as i will explore in what follows, the various powerful ways of relating to the nonhuman other reveal not only new perspectives on agency, but also how this becomes constitutive of identity and a trope for nationalism. 4. nomadic symbiosis every year from january to early spring, skrei begins its journey from the barents sea toward the vestfjord basin, the area between the lofoten archipelago and mainland norway. there, it confronts the fishermen who come from various parts of norway to fish. but it also comes to the land, becoming part of the islanders’ worlds. the relationship between fishermen, the islanders and skrei that i explore in what follows, is what i call a “nomadic symbiosis”, drawing from beach and stammler’s (2006) “symbiotic domestication” between reindeer in siberia and their herders. symbiosis, defined as the living together of unlike organisms 5 (which does not necessarily mean that all organisms mutually benefit), takes in this case a nomadic character from the very nature of skrei as a wanderer. skrei, like various other nomads, travels and comes in contact with various spaces and people, and these brief encounters in and around the lofoten islands, as i will narrate shortly, create entanglements and multispecies connections. these journeys and relationships of fish and humans date back centuries. notably, in 1890 skrei went particularly deep into the fjords and reached the narrow trollfjord fjord which is surrounded by steep-sided mountains. following skrei, fishing steamboats blocked the fjord mouth with nets and caught skrei. the small traditional open boats with oars and sail loudly protested, as they were not allowed in. their protests reached the government, and as a result closing nets were not allowed in the lofoten fishery from 1893. this was one of the many historical interactions between skrei and fishermen, which led to one of the most well-known conflicts related to the cod fisheries in norway. the battle of 5 in heinrich anton de bary’s 1878 speech, “die erscheinung der symbiose” (“de la symbiose”) (oulhen et al. 2016). relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ is skrei a historical norwegian figure? 103 the trollfjord, as it is known, was not so much about traditional ways of fishing vs. technological advancements, but a call against private capitalism and a future wage system which would turn fishermen into employees and wage laborers 6. this entanglement between skrei and humans, suggests not only the historical depth of these multispecies interactions, but also their political importance. analyzing the trollfjord battle, the signs of the “nomadic symbiosis” between skrei and the human world become visible: the unusual and unexpected movements of skrei stirred up political unrest and became the force for political change. as a result, skrei, the lofoten islands and the fisheries, became important elements of the norwegian political life. having always been a distinct part of the norwegian nation, they were now intertwined with important historical and political events. and skrei was at the epicenter of all this. in present-day lofoten, the lives of the islanders are still entangled with skrei, as communities of fishermen congregate in the area. the historical fishing past is embedded in their narratives. “our first boat was built in 1925”, narrates a third-generation fisherman. “as early as i could i was joining my father, from when i was 8 or 10 years old, so it was very natural for me to become a fisherman”. children and teenagers in lofoten would wait for the boats to come, as they took part in the – now traditional – seasonal activity of cutting the tongues from the cod heads. “you did it as a child so you could earn money”, everyone in lofoten explains. “my uncle had a fishing boat that was delivering to this one place”, narrates another islander, who grew up on a farm. “he was a very good fisherman, tough on the ocean, he didn’t give up. he called up my dad in the farm and if he had a lot of fish he would say ‘get the kids down’; the children would then wear an overall and were dropped into the full fish tanks of the boat to pull out the fish”. reflecting on the inclusion of skrei in the local world, it becomes clear that skrei has always been part of the lofoten society; it was a society of humans, and skrei. over the centuries, the fishing industry went through various changes with strict quotas being imposed in the 1980s and 1990s due to overfishing practices that deplenished the sea life, leading to the shrinking of the small boats and the near break-down of the industry. today, there are fewer fishing boats, which however make better profits, as fishing techniques have evolved, perhaps working towards more efficient ways to interact with skrei, which as a fisherman mentioned, is “smarter” than other fish. especially from the 1990s onwards, cost became a determin 6 see also holm 2020 and skrei.net. relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ nafsika papacharalampous 104 ing factor, and many local children were replaced by foreign workers. financially, it made more sense for boats to go to lithuania to get the bait, while seasonal migrants from poland and other places of europe that had no association to fishing offered cheaper labor, and they were used instead of local children in cod tongue-cutting. linking back to the discussion on norwegian identity, it becomes apparent how these movements of populations within the fishing industry are reflective of a more diverse amalgamation of populations in the lofoten islands. these economic-driven changes and the influx of foreign migrant laborers who had no cultural association to skrei created a rupture between the local communities and skrei. the traditional practice of removing the tongues from fish heads, which as one of my interlocutors explained, made the entire community entangled with the fishing boats has now disappeared. “children used to know all the boats”, he explains, “their names, when they come and when they go. today there is no incentive to do so”. the social relations between the islanders and skrei have broken down. however, the narratives and stories of times past still remain very much alive, creating an “imagined community”, as per anderson’s (1991) notion 7. building on the islander’s narratives, an imagined community emerges, one which maintains social connections with skrei. the locals talked vividly about the past, and even though many past practices did not continue into the present, the imagination and narratives of connections with skrei and of a community around skrei which existed in the past became part of collective memories and penetrate the present. this imagined community of fishermen, islanders and skrei becomes, as i will explore in what follows, the foundation for nation-building and identity-making. coming to the shore, and with the head and tongues removed, skrei continues its journey in lofoten, by becoming what is widely known as stockfish. this is the air-dried cod, an old preservation method. the fish is cut in half, the two halves are tied together and then hanged carefully one next to the other in wooden racks by the sea. walking in the lofoten islands, skrei dominates the landscape (fig. 1), as the imposing racks rise all year-long, covering wide patches of land and creating a distinct imaginary that is also depicted in postcards and in various other souvenirs offered to the many tourists that visit the area. but as opposed to other tourist monuments which can only be found in specific areas, skrei’s 7 anderson’s seminal work on nationalism defines the nation as a political community, imagined by its members as limited and sovereign, even though its members may not be in direct contact with each other. relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ is skrei a historical norwegian figure? 105 wooden racks are scattered around in various places, resulting in blending with the landscape so much so, that tourists themselves sometimes ignore them and camp under them, as one of my interlocutors mentioned. skrei, even though is a species that lives underwater becomes part of the land and of the human world, changing the landscape even during its absence. figure 1. – skrei drying racks in the lofoten islands (© nafsika papacharalampous). by observing the landscape in the lofoten islands, skrei’s force to alter the human physical world becomes apparent. reminding us of anna tsing’s (2015) matsutake mushrooms emerging in hiroshima’s blasted landscape in 1945 that challenged man’s power to destroy nature, skrei’s domination of the physical landscape in the lofoten islands reflects a unique sense of agency: skrei becomes a force, of and from nature, that imposes on human desire to have power over nature and sketch “their” landscape. skrei’s ability to affect the “human” landscape becomes even more powerful if one considers that skrei, as a wanderer, stays around the lofoten islands only for a few months in a year. when it comes to stockfish itself, no one talks about terroir yet and about the link between taste and place (cf. trubek 2009). but the way relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ nafsika papacharalampous 106 stockfish is made, carries within it valuable local knowledge: “it has to mature. just like a good cheese and wine it has to mature even more”, they say. “even within lofoten, not every place is suited for making stockfish”, says one of the islanders. “the temperature in the winter is ideal for the drying of the fish”, anne karine, the secretary of tørrfisk fra lofoten explains, “you need the temperature to be above zero and a little bit of rain, a little bit of sunshine. it has to be cold enough but not freezing. if it gets warm late in the hanging season the flies are awakening and put their eggs in the fish. if it hangs for a few days then it closes down and the flies can’t get in. if you get late in the season you hang smaller and smaller fish because if you hang big fish they won’t dry”. “the open side should hang towards the west”, says one of the islanders, whose family, like many islanders have been hanging codfish at home from early on, usually in ladders, taking the cod out in the sun in the mornings and placing it in boxes in the evening to avoid moisture. this deep and elaborate local knowledge embedded in stockfish becomes the trope for affirmation of identity, as this knowledge becomes the foundation that gives a sense of belonging. but is it only the local knowledge vis-à-vis skrei as a foodstuff that conjures a sense of belonging? even though the islanders eat fish a few times a week, until 20 years ago you could not find stockfish at the supermarket, and until recently, it was not even prepared at restaurants. “stockfish is money”, many told me, echoing the “golden age” of cod fishing from the 1830s to the 1880s when fishing evolved and merchants would send dried codfish to continue its journey to markets in southern europe 8. peter dass, a norwegian priest, poet and tradesman in the seventeenth century has called stockfish “the crown of lofoten” (amilien et al. 2019, 508). at the time (and today) skrei was not only an invaluable (historical) commodity with an undebatable monetary value. it was an active agent of progress. this agency is attributed in the way locals speak about it: “the fish is what built the big church in trondheim, it has built bergen as a city because that was a trading station for stockfish”, anne karine says. but implicit in her words is not only a linguistic agency attributed to the fish, as that which “builds”. the profound historical connection between skrei and norwegian progress, especially in smaller cities such as trondheim and bergen illustrates not only that “the fish builds”, but also that the fish is actually intertwined in the development of these peripheral cities of norway, which would perhaps have evolved very differently had it not been for their entanglements with skrei. 8 see holm 2020. relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ is skrei a historical norwegian figure? 107 but despite skrei being embedded in history, the landscape, local knowledge, and becoming an active agent of the local economy, the symbolic figure of skrei and the social and cultural capital of the fishermen were not always a source of pride for the islanders. bad pay, hard working conditions contributed to the low status of the fishing profession, not only in lofoten, but across norway as well. islanders share how they felt unwelcomed in oslo when they moved there as labor migrants or as students in the 60s and 70s. “they wouldn’t rent you a room if they heard you were from the lofoten”, one of my interlocutors mentioned. skrei and the fishing culture were invisible in the construction of norwegian national identity, not recognized in the national narratives. “oslo forgot about us on the 17th of may” 9, a cod exporter in lofoten shared with me, “as it didn’t fit the european story”, one of my interlocutors shared. implicit in their words in the tension which also exists in other peripheries of europe, where several figures of rurality are more often than not a source of embarrassment in the desire to fit cultural imaginaries of the “modern european”. for instance, as i have explored in my previous research in greece, rural foods and symbols had been an intimate and embarrassing universe for greeks, not displayed in official narratives of identity-making, and only after the financial crisis in the mid-2010s, the profound nostalgia for the previously rejected rurality, became a source of comfort and ultimately a foundation for identity (papacharalampous 2019). returning to norway, even though figures of rurality and coastal identities were part of the 19th century romantic nationalism, as the locals’ words suggest skrei and the fishing industry did not form part of these narratives. norwegian identity was based on ideas around nature, but within nature no one mentioned skrei. it was invisible when seen under the prism of the norwegian nationalism. homing into nationbuilding processes in norway, skrei therefore, even though an outsider as a fish, a nomad, living in the “wild”, it was an insider for the locals, part of the lofoten islands, and as such, an outsider vis-à-vis norway. this complexity in the relationship between skrei and the norwegian identity is illuminating of the symbiosis of the nomadic skrei and those who inhabit the lofoten islands. digging deeper into these connections, in the next part of this paper i ask what is the role of skrei in the creation of this imagined community, not only in the lofoten islands, but vis-à-vis the norwegian nation. in what follows, i return to the notion of identity, as i hone into the nature of this “nomadic symbiosis” in present-day lofoten. 9 the 17th of may is the day of the signing of the norwegian constitution in eidsvoll, in 1814, declaring norway to be an independent kingdom. relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/norway_in_1814 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ nafsika papacharalampous 108 5. recognizing one another in her book what would animals say if we asked the right questions? vinciane despret (2016) discusses the possibility of becoming “with” animals, “not in the sense of feeling what the other is thinking or of feeling for the other like a burdensome empathizer but rather of receiving and creating the possibility to inscribe oneself in a relation of exchange and proximity that has nothing to do with identification” (ibid., 17). i draw from this idea and having discussed these historical moments and connections of skrei with fishermen and the islanders, and the interconnection of the “nomadic symbiosis” with identity, in what follows i focus on the recent past and present in lofoten, and illustrate how skrei is becoming “good to live with”, shaping new ways of coexisting and creating a new sense of belonging for the islanders. in the last couple of decades, skrei gained national visibility. in 2007, stockfish from lofoten received a geographical protected designation in norway and in 2014 it also gained the status of protected geographical indication in the eu (stockfish from lofoten n.d.). the skrei quality label is now a protected trademark registered and managed by the norwegian seafood council (2019). these public moments of recognition for skrei were accompanied by its appearance in restaurant spaces and in markets, creating various ways of proximity, as the following examples illustrate. angelita, in her 40s, grew up in lofoten also cutting fish tongue as a child. like many others, in the summer, she would accompany her fisherman father on trips. with her partner tamara they have revived the stockfish tradition by creating a stockfish-spice mix with japanese influences. they wanted “to make something new based on tradition”, as she explains. for that, they hang the codfish, but coated with sugar and salt, turning it into a unique type of dried fish, which is then blended with seaweeds and sesame, and place it in beautiful minimalist tins with a sea-blue packaging. two other producers, helge and his wife, both in their late 40s, have been for years in the food industry and also come from lofoten. they create a dish, which is sold ready to eat, as they wanted to have “something that would be around throughout the year”, a way to keep skrei with them. for their product they use the salted and dried cod called klippfish 10. their dish is called bacalao, the name coming from the classic 10 the name comes from the norwegian word klippe, meaning cliff, because these fish are dried on rocks as opposed to wooden racks (the stocks in stockfish) (kristoffersen 2020). relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ is skrei a historical norwegian figure? 109 basque codfish stew. in their bacalao, the salted and dried cod is slowly cooked with crushed tomatoes, onions, and other ingredients. they sell their bacalao dish to supermarkets and local restaurants. local and national supermarket chains carry these foods, along with many other local artisanal foods and produce placed at special sections, creating “pride for the local producers” as anna karine says. all of my interlocutors shared how such foods are getting more and more popular, a combination of an increased interest in the revival of traditional foods and old ways of doing things and of course, convenience. during my time in the lofoten islands, a local food festival took place in leknes, one of the islands, showcasing traditional dishes and ingredients, bringing together producers, the locals, and of course, skrei. chefs also started incorporating stockfish in their menus, after locals started travelling and tasted stockfish in italy or other places. so they are now taking recipes from italy or portugal and develop them differently. skrei travels in high cuisine and also in the capital city, as it also appears in the menus of upscale restaurants, for example in the form of “salted cod stuffed olives” at “imperial restaurant” in oslo. this “awakening for local food” as anne karine names it is part of the european-wide phenomenon of returning to the roots and revalorizing locality and rurality. these foods have also come to be associated with europe or the world, elements that conjure to their popularity. nonetheless, as angelita says, it makes her feel “closer to home and to my roots”. this movement often becomes the foundation for the recreation of regional or national cuisines. to this end, skrei is no longer only transformed into stockfish or klippfisk and by extension into money. today, it is still highly commercialized, but its cultural and symbolic value shifts, making it not only a primary produce to sell, but a celebrated revival of tradition, associated with ideas of modernity, and luxury, recognized by locals and outsiders alike, as its visibility in the capital city and around norway rises. this metamorphosis of cuisine which i encountered in lofoten, is the result of the entanglements and nomadic symbiosis of locals and skrei, illuminating the interrelation between agency and cuisine. and it is the unique way of relating between humans and skrei that gives birth to this metamorphosis: angelita’s need to feel closer to home and to her roots makes her forge a (new) relationship with skrei, by transforming it to something new. helge and his wife’s need to keep skrei with them all year round, gives birth to their bacalao dish. the old relationships of proximity between the islanders, skrei and the world are now renegotiated, and the foundation for these multispecies connections now becomes the pride for skrei. as i have discussed, skrei has always been relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ nafsika papacharalampous 110 an insider, but now it is an insider at the center of change and an insider which represents lofoten to the world. the fishing industry as well is now getting more and more popular, shifting the imaginaries of the lives of fishermen. as a fisherman tells me, popular television series showcasing skrei and the lives of fishermen added glamour and appeal to an otherwise challenging profession and, as i suggest, to the ideas of living “with” skrei. but also, better working conditions with fewer work-hours and a good income make fishing an appealing profession for the locals, who are now returning to it. this shift illuminates the desire to create new deeper relationships with skrei and the sea, building on the diachronic relationships between fish and fisheries. concluding this last part of the paper, and following skrei in realms that are traditionally viewed via the lenses of cuisine and “fish as food”, i suggest that the notion of cuisine, whose foundation lays in the ways people relate to one another, can be re-examined. by searching for those connections between fish, foods, and people, a new approach towards understanding cuisine and identity-making is revealed. the desire of the islanders to reconnect with skrei, as it manifests in the artisanal producers’ re-engagement with skrei, or in the locals’ desire to become fishermen, renders skrei not only a foodstuff that is part of cuisine: skrei conjures an imagined community rooted in the present, and a sense of belonging. in the case of skrei in the lofoten islands, cuisine and identity-making is not only the fish-as-food shared amongst humans who collectively come together. it is the creation of a community of those with shared roots and histories, both humans and fish. 6. is skrei a historical norwegian figure? the new 200 nok norwegian banknote has a picture of a codfish, as part of a new series of banknotes featuring various abstract maritime motifs, and replacing portraits of famous norwegian figures of the previous series. the series notes how “no other fish species is as adorable and mythical as cod […] we see it in the literature, sculptures, municipal coats of arms – and now in the new banknotes” (norges bank 2017). has cod become a historical norwegian figure, so famous as to be depicted in banknotes? in this paper, i have followed the relationships and multispecies entanglements forged between skrei and the islanders in the lofoten islands in search of what these meaningful entanglements can reveal around the nature of the agency nonhumans carry. relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ is skrei a historical norwegian figure? 111 skrei has been historically part of the lofoten worlds in a “nomadic symbiosis” between fish and humans, as illustrated in the narratives of the islanders, and if one observes diachronically the entanglements between skrei and the fishing industry, the physical landscape, the political events as the famous battle of trollfjord, the economic development and progress. skrei was indeed an insider. as an insider it was entangled in webs of meaning that did not allow for it to conjure a sense of pride, as these relationships were not fused with cultural and symbolic local value and clashed with the national identity-making processes. but as i have analyzed in this paper, this shifted in the last couple of decades, as skrei becomes more and more visible in the eyes of locals and others alike. skrei is now recognized, and creates new possibilities of relating and of proximity, as it conjures a newfound sense of belonging. as such, skrei becomes part of an imagined community, becoming a symbolic representation of the entire norway, also changing how we understand lofoten within and outside of norway. returning to the notion of agency, what the case of skrei illustrates is that when discussing agency for the nonhumans, it is by observing the subtle entanglements, relationships and tension between humans and the nonhumans that create moments of connection and friction that we may reach a better understanding for the nonhuman mind. is the relationship of skrei and humans a relationship of equals? no, but as i have argued in this paper, skrei’s role in fueling the trollfjord battle and causing unrest in the human world, in “being smart” as the fishermen say and playing a role in the evolution of fishing methods, in altering the human landscape, as an agent of economic progress, and ultimately in its role in giving a sense of belonging and a home to those who live with it, and in the process of (re) presentation and revaluation of lofoten to norway and to the world, all challenge the human-centric view of human “domination” over “submissive” fish. these moments of connection suggest skrei and the islanders can be involved in meaningful interactions and create worlds that decentre human agency. what the case of skrei and this paper proposes therefore is that agency derives from these powerful ways of relating to the nonhuman other, revealing the importance of non-human species in cuisine-making, as constitutive of identity and as a trope for nationalism in europe. as i left the lofoten islands on a cold sunday morning, on my train journey to the south i realized that my initial disappointment for my inability to encounter skrei had disappeared. it had given its place to what felt like a connection with this fish and the people around it. as anthropologists we may never be able to fully understand the nonhuman mind, especially when our quest involves a nomadic fish, a wanderer. but relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ nafsika papacharalampous 112 doesn’t this hold true for any other, human, mind? what matters is that in the process of defining who we are and the worlds we inhabit, we are open to relating “with” the other, in this case, skrei, the wanderer. 7. acknowledgments my research was part of the skrei convention, a european cooperation project (2018-2020) funded by creative europe, and part of the european year of cultural heritage 2018 program. i would like to extend my gratitude to all those who shared their stories with me, and to anna vermehren and camilla crosta for making it all possible. parts of this research were presented at the toward an understanding of nonhuman minds: from animal to artificial agency workshop at the university of zurich in 2020, organized by anne aronsson, fynn holm, and melissa ann kaul. i am grateful for the constructive comments made by a number of colleagues there. i would especially like to thank anne aronsson and fynn holm for their very insightful thoughts on various versions of this paper. a special thank you is owed to maurice morgan in norway. references amilien, virginie, gunnar vitterso, and torvald tangeland. 2019. “pgi lofoten stockfish in norway”. in sustainability of european food quality schemes: multi-performance, structure, and governance of pdo, pgi, and organic agri-food systems, edited by filippo arfini and valentin bellassen, 507527. cham (switzerland): springer nature. anderson, benedict. 1991. imagined communities: reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. london new york: verso. candea, matei. 2010. “‘i fell in love with carlos the meerkat’: engagement and detachment in human-animal relations”. american ethnologist 37 (2): 241-258. cassidy, rebecca. 2012. “lives with others: climate change and human-animal relations”. annual review anthropology 41: 21-36. cassidy, rebecca, and molly mullin, eds. 2007. where the wild things are now: domestication reconsidered. 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and philip scranton, 67-89. new york london: routledge. relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ “low down dirty rat”: popular and moral responses to possums and rats in melbourne “low down dirty rat” popular and moral responses to possums and rats in melbourne 1 siobhan o’sullivan 1 barbara creed 2 jenny gray 3 1 research fellow in the school of social & political sciences, university of melbourne 2 professor of screen studies in the school of culture & communication, university of melbourne 3 chief executive officer, zoos victoria doi: 10.7358/rela-2014-002-osul siobhano@unimelb.edu.au bacreed@unimelb.edu.au jgray@zoo.org.au abstract possums and rats are both found in large numbers in the city of melbourne, australia. the two species share much in common, including an ability to flourish among humans and a predisposition for building nests in houses and eating food and plants intended for humans. yet despite numerous similarities possums and rats are afforded strikingly different levels of protection before the law. the death of a possum must be justified and carried out painlessly. the same does not apply to rats, who may be exterminated freely and in ways that are painful. considered from the perspective of the principle of “unnecessary suffering” we find that such inconsistent treatment is difficult to justify. we find that the rat’s historical association with disease may account for some of our animosity towards the species. popular culture, which accords favorable treatment to possums and adopts contradictory attitudes to rats, appears to influence our attitudes in important ways. our study does not demonstrate one way or the other whether rats are often used to represent undesirable characteristics because many humans have an aversion to them, or whether we have an aversion to them because of the cultural messages that encourage us to perceive of rats as abject. rather, our conclusion is 1 the authors would like to thank dr. anat pick, dr. robert mackay and dr. tom tylor for their insightful comments on an earlier draft of this paper, as well as participants at the australian animal studies group (aasg) conference at griffith university; and participants at minding animals two in utrecht for their feedback and suggestions. the authors would also like to thank gonzalo villanueva for his research into the laws concerning possums and rats and dr. clare mccausland for her editorial assistance. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ siobhan o’sullivan barbara creed jenny gray 60 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ that human cruelty to animals is contradictory and irrational and that when another species potentially threatens human lives and human self-interest we react brutally and without due consideration. keywords: possums, rats, animal welfare, ethics, law, popular culture, cruelty, disease, necessary suffering, possum magic. 1. introduction this paper was inspired by an anecdote told to us by a professional animal worker from melbourne zoo. apparently it is not uncommon for members of the public to request assistance from the zoo in the care of orphaned baby possums. the well-intentioned citizen explains that he/ she found the possum in the garden or park, took the possum home and provided the animal with food and much tender loving care. the infant responded extremely well. however, the family feel unable to continue to provide care. they ask the zoo if it will step in and look after the orphaned creature. with apparent regularity, the zoo staff agree to assist, but upon inspection of the animal explain that the infant is not a possum but rather a rat! on hearing this news the carer screams, and drops the animal as if the animal were a “monster”. all of the love which flowed from human to “possum” immediately dries up and is replaced by a deep-seated sense of revulsion. why is it that the response many humans have towards a onceloved fellow creature can cease so suddenly and dramatically? in this paper we seek to better understand our inconsistent attitudes towards nonhuman animals and our willingness to lavish care on some animals while subjecting others to serious pain. we do so using a distinctively interdisciplinary approach. we consider the issue through the lens of the law, ethics and popular culture. our interdisciplinarity affords us an insight into this complex phenomenon that would be difficult to achieve if we were to consider the issue from a single disciplinary perspective. 1.1. possums: the cute but imperfect neighbor it is well established that the way humans treat nonhuman animals is highly inconsistent (o’sullivan 2011). at one extreme, many companion animals living in the developed world are lavishly indulged (hadley and o’sullivan 2008; 2009). at the other extreme we find nonhuman animals who are “low down dirty rat” 61 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ considered pests and who are therefore vulnerable to harmful treatment, including death via painful means. which animals do we nurture and which do we persecute? how do we come to decide? we find that possums and rats share many characteristics. this is evidenced by the australian museum website dedicated to helping the public differentiate rats from other animals, especially the ringtail possum (australian museum 2010). yet, despite the numerous similarities, we do identify some differences of note between possums and rats. the possum family consists of 27 different species of animal, ranging from the pygmy possum, weighing just 7 grams, to the 4.5 kilogram brushtail possum, the largest possum living in australia today. the two most common and best known species of possum are the brushtail possum (trichosurus vulpecular) and ringtail possum (pseudocheirus peregrines). they live alongside humans in most australian cities. they are the focus of this paper as we are primarily concerned with the human/nonhuman animal interactions as they occur in melbourne, australia. possums are corpuscular, spending all day asleep in a nest and venturing out at dusk and dawn to feed (mcdonald-madden et al. 2000). they are herbivorous and prefer fruit trees, vegetable and decorative garden plants to their native, pre-urbanization food sources. possums are not aggressive and pose no threat of attack. however, they are equipped with climbing claws and sharp teeth meaning they are capable of hurting a human if cornered or captured. yet despite this, reports of possum attacks are rare to non-existent. possums do not carry or spread diseases that impact on humans. but that is not to suggest that possums are the perfect urban neighbor. brushtail possums are noisy and messy. all possums require nesting space and while they are evolved to find sanctuary in tree hollows, in modern times they show a strong disposition towards building nests in roof and wall cavities. the tendency to nest in buildings constructed by humans, for (often exclusively) human purposes, is a source of ongoing irritation. annoyance caused by possums seems to be associated with the noise they make running around in roof cavities. the noise generated by possums is particularly problematic because they are active at night while humans are typically trying to sleep. possums also have a habit of defecating just outside their nesting site often resulting in droppings on paths and verandas. finally, possums are elusive animals. they appear at night and enter peoples’ homes, often via building gaps that are difficult to locate. in many cases it is difficult for humans to stop possums nesting in buildings, even if they want to. the ability to enter and exit buildings undetected can also create problems if a possum dies in a roof or wall cavity. the possum is siobhan o’sullivan barbara creed jenny gray 62 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ therefore a prominent part of the australian landscape, including the contemporary urban cityscape, and simultaneously a significant source of nuisance to people battling to maintain their home as human-only (or human invited-only) space. 1.2. rats: the quintessential urban dweller unlike possums, rats are found throughout the world. while there are 56 species of rats, the best known are the black (rattus rattus) and brown (rattus norvegicus) rats. indeed, the black and brown rats have been so successful in evolutionary terms that many other species of rat are island endemics and are under threat from competition from black and brown rats. rats are thought to have originated in asia, most likely china, and spread through the known world via trade routes. rats have travelled by ship to all parts of the globe, such that rats are now found in almost all human settlements. in cities, rats often live in sewers enjoying the damp, dark habitat. it is said that there are as many rats in major cities as people, if not more. rats are usually active at night and pass largely unobserved amongst human populations. the two common species of rats are opportunistic survivors and often live with or near humans. rats are omnivores and will eat anything that is remotely nutritious, contributing to their success in human cities where food is abundant in waste dumps and homes. in addition to eating food intended for human consumption, rats also commonly contaminate food supplies, especially with their feces. rats can serve as vectors for certain pathogens and which cause disease, such as lassa fever, leptospirosis and hantavirus infection. despite this, rats have been consumed in many places including naples, china, and the philippines. but rats are more than simply urban drain dwellers in the modern context. some people keep rats as companion animals. such animals are often referred to as “fancy rats”. fancy rats are domesticated brown rats. people have kept rats as pets since at least the nineteenth century. rat fancy societies continue to thrive with groups in the united states, germany, the netherlands, and sweden. since 1974 the nebraska wesleyan university has held a rat olympics and in 2003 in america the inaugural world rat day was instituted (burt 2006, 135). rats are social and smart animals who can be trained and make entertaining companions. rats have been used extensively in research and education due to their small size; availability; rapid reproductive capacity; ability to live in small cages; their general “low down dirty rat” 63 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ hardiness as a species; and possibly also the fact that rats have a long history of being disfavored by humans. as a result, an incredible amount of knowledge has been collected on these highly intelligent, aggressive and adaptable animals. 1.3. similarities and differences the speed with which they breed is one of the important differences between rats and possums. possums are relatively slow breeding with the average female brushtail living 6.5 years and producing seven offspring in her lifetime (isaac 2005). ringtails can live up to seven years and will produce one or two litters per year, based on the age of the female and abundance of food. litter sizes can range from one to three offspring (pahl and lee 1988). in comparison, rats are rapid breeders and can breed throughout the year if the conditions are suitable. a single female can produce five litters a year with a gestation period of only 21 days. rats are a boom species. their numbers can expand rapidly and easily reach plague proportions. while some people argue that possums are too numerous in suburban melbourne, they are most certainly not at plague proportions. in addition to their speed of reproduction, there is a range of other differences between the two species. for example, while possums are a solitary, territorial species, rats live in large colonies, grooming each other and sleeping together. despite the differences, rats and possums share many characteristics. for example, both are species of mammals. possums and rats are both active at night and largely dormant during daylight hours. they have both adapted remarkably well to urban environments. they thrive among humans and are therefore species that have benefited from human migration around the globe and urbanization. both species are very inclined to utilize human constructs for nesting, especially buildings, where available. both are numerous in cities, including melbourne and both are often considered to be a pest. finally, both are capable of making charming companions. from a species perspective, possums and rats have much in common. from a legal perspective possums and rats are treated very differently. we tend to afford possums considerable preferential treatment when we create laws to protect their interests and also influence the nature of the human/ possum or human/rat relationship. siobhan o’sullivan barbara creed jenny gray 64 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 2. legal responses to possums in melbourne while possums are a common feature throughout melbourne, and indeed australia, their abundance does not necessarily equate to popularity. for example, on may 1, 2011, melbourne’s the age newspaper lead with the headline the possum wars reporting that “furry, cute, noisy and destructive: the common possum has got melbourne residents up in arms”. just six months earlier the lord mayor of melbourne, robert doyle, had described possums as “vermin” and was quoted as saying: “i come out of my house in south melbourne and i’m virtually waist deep in possum poo”. such media reports suggest a level of disquiet throughout the community. furthermore, they attest to the firsthand experience the people of melbourne have with their possum neighbors: an experience that is not universally positive. although possums are omnipresent, only a minimal amount of research has been undertaken into how australians cohabitate with possums and their feelings about that geographical proximity. in a 2009 paper, power surveyed 24 sydney residences, all sharing their property with one or more possums. power found that interviewees have mixed feelings about the possums with whom they cohabitated, and that those feelings were filtered through complex thought patters. typically respondents attributed possums an elevated status because they are a native species. power found that many sought to accept the presence of possums in their home because possums represent a link to lost or diminished bushland and therefore nature. at the same time, many interviewees attested to the difficulties associated with accommodating possums within the house and most had tried to keep possums out, but often accepted them because their efforts to exclude possums were not successful. a number of different laws regulate the lives of possums. those laws seek to negotiate between the desire on the part of possums to nest in homes and tree filled parks, and the human desire to keep possums at arm’s length: that is, to enjoy the uniquely australian character of the cute and furry possum, without having to manage the noise and mess associated with having to share intimate space with them. possums receive some protection under the wildlife act 1975 (victoria) which provides all wildlife in victoria with a general protection against harassment and damage to habitat. yet despite the protection against harm afforded all wildlife under the act, an exemption was established in 2003 in relation to the brushtail possum, meaning that their legal status moved to that of “unprotected”. in practice, the 2003 edict means that brushtail possums living in buildings, in municipal parks, or municipal gardens may be “controlled”, but that “the “low down dirty rat” 65 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ only method of capture permitted is by the use of a cage trap”. where trapping does take place, the trap must not cause injury, and the possum must be protected from rain or wind, direct sun and domestic animals (victoria gazette g28 [2003], 1766-7). possums trapped on municipal property cannot be released and must be killed. this must be done by a veterinarian in accordance with the rules set out in the prevention of cruelty to animals act 1986 (victoria). yet trapping is not the only means used to keep possums at bay. throughout the city of melbourne it is common to see trees with large metal bands around the trunk. referred to as collars, the metal devices are attached to trees to prevent possums running up the trunk and therefore nesting in the branches. according to the city of melbourne’s ringtail and brushtail possums factsheet (n.d.), the trees are banded to prevent possum “feeding and nestling activities damaging the foliage of vulnerable trees”. it also states that if one tree is at risk then surrounding trees will also be banded. while this does not constitute extermination per se, banding is intended to make parks a less attractive habitat for possums. without shelter the possums must move elsewhere. but it is not only public servants who are legally entitled to take issue with where possums set up home. possums regularly occupy domestic dwellings and people living in the city of melbourne have a legal right to take strong action if they do not wish to share their home with a possum. the victorian state government’s policy response is laid out in a document called possums (2011). it explains that while it is lawful to remove possums from roof cavities, captured possums must be released within 50 meters of their place of capture. the 50 meters rule acknowledges the territorial nature of possums and reflects research which demonstrates that possums do not fare well when relocated outside of their established home-range. however, the laws regulating the release of possums provide for a very convenient exemption. they allow for possums to be “humanely killed” by a veterinarian in cases where relocation is “not reasonably possible”. because there is no mechanism to test the reasonableness of home owners’ or tenants’ wish to have a possum killed, it seems likely that anyone who does not wish to risk a possum returning to their roof should be able to find a vet willing to put the offending possum down. or, people who trap possums themselves may choose to relocate the possum far from their home. this would be a cheaper option and again points to the enforcement challenges inherent in the possum relocation laws as they are currently structured. in short, the laws regulating the lives of possums are ambiguous. they start with the assumption that possums should be protected on the basis that they are wildlife. they then create an exemption in the case of siobhan o’sullivan barbara creed jenny gray 66 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ brushtail possums, based in part on their abundance and in part on their propensity to take up residence in places that humans would prefer to keep to themselves. that exemption treats the invasion of human only spaces very seriously. in the case of possums who occupy state managed land and buildings it equates to certain death. if the possum chooses a private residency they may receive a reprieve if the owner or occupier wishes to go to the expense of identifying and sealing up the possum’s entry point. however, even if the owner does not wish to do so, the law takes a compassionate view on how possum intruders are to die; stipulating the need for a painless death via lethal injection from a veterinarian. 2.1. legal responses to rats in melbourne before the law, rats receive little to no protection against harm. this is despite the fact that most reasonable people would be likely to think that both possums and rats have a similar capacity to suffer. further, recent research has revealed that not only are rats highly intelligent but that they are empathetic creatures who will put their own well-being aside to rescue their fellows from perceived harm (bartal, decety, and mason 2011). since 2010 there has been a sizable increase in melbourne’s rat and mouse population. as the age reported in april 2012 “rats are invading houses across melbourne, as changing weather conditions lead to rising numbers of rodents” (cohen 2012). the same article quoted evolutionary biologist mark elgar as saying that “as the population increases […] an increasing number of rats would be facing a housing crisis so they would then be increasingly encroaching on potentially more risky human habitation” (cohen 2012). by 2012, rodent control accounted for 70 per cent of business reported by one pest controller in melbourne. yet despite increasing numbers of rats in the city of melbourne and surrounds, rats receive very little press. this may be because of their capacity to go about their business largely undetected. it might also be because there is almost universal agreement that rats are undesirable housemates and should be treated as such. the prevention of cruelty to animals act 1986 (poctaa) does quite a lot of the work of articulating how unwanted rats can be killed. despite the act’s name, it does allow for a painful death, and it does single rats out for particular treatment. for example, traps that uses electrocution as a means to kill an animal are generally prohibited, by specifically permitted in the case of rodents. but while rats (along with mice) are afforded a particularly low level of interest protection under poctaa, some limits “low down dirty rat” 67 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ do apply. they include a requirement that the jaws on rodent traps must be smooth, rather than sharp, and they must “humanely” kill the animal. the act is also specific in relation to the use of glue traps. glue traps are particularly harmful as they cause the animal to become stuck, meaning they don’t die instantly, but rather die from dehydration, starvation, predation, or self-mutilation. poctaa places limitations on who can set glue traps and where they may be laid. the act requires that they only be used by commercial pest controllers acting under license by the minister. yet the public is able to purchase ratsack freely from the supermarket for use in the suburban home. ratsack leads to a particularly painful death. its symptoms include vomiting, bleeding, seizures, swelling and foaming at the mouth. although the careless use of ratsack can lead also to the accidental poisoning and painful deaths of animals for whom we typically have a higher degree of sympathy such as dogs, cats, birds, this is not considered a strong enough reason to ban sales of the poison – such is our fear of rats. in short, the law allows humans to control both possums and rats, including by killing unwanted animals. however, the law does treat the species differently. the death of a possum must be justified and painless. the death of a rat requires no justification and may inflict considerable pain. but that pain is not without limits and the law does seek to reduce the suffering experienced by rats in some cases. in the next section we consider whether the way in which the law sharply differentiates between possums and rats is ethically justifiable. we conclude by considering reasons why humans might seek to afford preferential treatment to possums compared to rats. 3. assessing the moral significance of possums and rats and their legal protections in melbourne? thinking in the field of animal ethics has advanced to a point where few would argue that animals have no moral standing (francione and garner 2010; palmer 2010). it is widely accepted that at least all mammals, birds and some reptiles, are sentient and that sentience matters in that it is equated with pain and suffering. there is a broad consensus that the sentience of animals means that we have some moral obligations to them. sentience and the acceptance that animals can be harmed forms the basis of modern animal welfare ethics. the most widely accepted principle in the complex field of animal ethics is that it is wrong to cause unnecessary pain and suffering to animals, termed the principle of unnecessary suffering siobhan o’sullivan barbara creed jenny gray 68 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ by david gardner (francione and garner 2010). different philosophers ground this principle on different logic and argument, but all hold that sentience matters and that those that can feel pain and can suffer should not be made to do so unnecessarily. however arguments abound concerning the scope of the term “animal”, what constitutes suffering, and which actions are “necessary” and which are not. the principle of unnecessary suffering allows us to examine the differences and similarities in the way we treat possums and rats to determine if there is sufficient difference between the species to warrant the distinctive legal response each receives. the principle of unnecessary suffering also provides a standard against which we can measure if the treatment of possum and rats is morally defendable. both rats and possums are mammals. it is therefore safe to assume that there is nothing in the definition of “animal” that would include one and exclude the other. in deciding where to draw the line with respect to animal rights tom regan attributes a special moral status to adult mammals (regan 2004). the concept of special relationships may be used to argue that we have greater duties and responsibilities to some individuals as opposed to others (palmer 2010). in the case of possums and rats it may be argued that possums are native animals while rats are an invasive species. most frequently we consider special relationships as a ground for positive duties of protection or assistance. if rats were to threaten the security of possums it could be argued that as native species possums deserve our assistance. that might constitute a special relationship such that it obliges us to kill rats in order to save the lives of possums. while this may be intellectually sound, in reality both possums and rats thrive in human habitats, especially urban centers such as melbourne. where controls are implemented to reduce numbers, it is done to address the nuisance both species cause to humans, not because the rat places the possum at risk. moreover, the unnecessary suffering principle does not require that special relationships be taken into account in order to determine the necessity of pain and suffering. is there a difference in the two species’ capacity to experience pain? while we can never know definitively that two beings experience pain in the same way, it is reasonable to consider if there is anything in either their behavior or physiology that would lead us to think that normal possums feel pain in a way that is significantly different to that of normal rats. certainly both possums and rats possess similar nervous systems and similar brains. that suggests that their experience of pain is probably not vastly different. yet possums and rats are different to the extent that they do have different breeding practices. rats breed fast and are capable of producing an “low down dirty rat” 69 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ average of 35 offspring each year. little care is given to the young who are fully weaned by five weeks. rat mortality can be as high as 95 per cent per annum, with rats living on average one year. by contrast, possums only produce 1-2 offspring per year. the youngster stays with the mother for 12 months with the average female producing six to seven offspring in her life (isaac 2005). thus the loss of an offspring is indicative of more investment and more costly to the species. possums live on average for 6.5 years. as such it may be argued that killing a possum is more significant than killing a rat. therefore the killing of possums may require greater consideration than the killing of rats. yet this type of moral distinction is not recognized in law. both rats and possums may be killed with impunity. what differs is the method. 3.1. are rats and possums a threat to human well-being? rats are often considered a vector for disease and plague. the vector for transmission of disease is fleas, with both the densities of rats and the fleas per rat increasing the likelihood of disease transmission (durham and casman 2009). rats’ preference for living out of sight in sewers, rubbish tips and basements is probably responsible for the perception that they spread germs and filth. while a failure to control numbers may result in an infestation of rats who have the capacity to spread disease, that does not morally justify the causing of harm. killing rats may be promoted as necessary to stop plague proportions of a potentially dangerous animal. but the methods of killing are not consistent with the avoidance of unnecessary pain and suffering. glue traps, snap traps and poison all result in significant levels of pain and suffering. possums are less threatening to people. at worst they make a mess, eat the roses and thump around at night. while inconvenient they are not a disease risk nor do they pose any direct threat to humans. the nature of australian animals is that they regulate their numbers based on the availability of food, hollows and predation. in many species, including possums, this means that the total numbers are self-limiting and densities remain stable over time (isaac 2005). the removal of possums creates a vacuum that new possums will occupy. the removal of an individual possum is not a solution to removing the nuisance. since european colonization cities have become ideal territory for possums. but while food is abundant, nesting holes and hollows are not, thus possums have made use of human structures. with care possums can be excluded for entering buildings, roofs and wall cavities. strategic locations of possum boxes can allow for possums to siobhan o’sullivan barbara creed jenny gray 70 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ nest in a suitable location without entering a home. thus the removal and killing of possums is neither necessary nor effective in managing possum populations. short of whole-species elimination we will always cohabitate with possums in green leafy suburbs. while the removal and killing of possums is not necessary, the terms of removal and killing are regulated to minimize pain and suffering. the law surrounding unwanted possums in melbourne requires that the animal be captured and released within 50 meters. this is done to ensure that pain and suffering from loss of territory are avoided. alternatively, in the case of death, it must be achieved via a painless lethal injection. this may be said to be consistent with the moral requirement to avoid unnecessary suffering. moreover, excluding possums from food sources like trees, will act to reduce populations through self-regulation, but should be implemented with care to ensure that no possums are trapped up trees at the time the collars are attached. in assessing the current treatment of possums and rats against the widely accepted the principle of unnecessary suffering, we have argued that both species experience pain and have the capacity to suffer. the necessity of controlling possum numbers seems tenuous and thus actions taken to control possum numbers are morally dubious. for rats the situations is equally morally challenging, yet for a different reason. while it may be necessary to reduce rat numbers, the methods of killing rats seems to be unnecessarily brutal and rats enjoy little protection from significant suffering. another relevant factor is that rats present a perceived threat to human well-being. in contrast to possums, rats do carry disease. as burt points out, however, even the association of rats with the bubonic plague has been subjected to exaggerated and irrational fears: the disease most linked to rats and which has the greatest cultural impact on human in history is bubonic plague. attitudes to bubonic plague parallel attitudes to rats themselves. though it is not necessarily the most lethal disease in terms of the death rate it is the one that strikes the most fear, much in the same way that the rat is the most hated animal. (2006, 115) far more people have died world-wide from malaria, tuberculosis, smallpox, cholera and influenza yet none of these epidemics historically have had the power to invoke the degree of public panic aroused by fear of the plague believed to be carried by rat (burt 2006, 115). recent global scares concerning avian flu demonstrate that when humans feel threatened by another species, ethical considerations, including humane methods of killing the offending species receive little if any attention. animal organisations have reported acts of great cruelty in these situations. in april 2013, the “low down dirty rat” 71 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ human society international claimed that sheep exported out of australia, but rejected for health reasons by pakistan, were brutally killed with many reportedly clubbed, stabbed and buried alive. in china in 2013 the outbreak of a new strain of the h7n9 avian influenza resulted in the culling of hundreds of thousands of birds. many were buried alive to limit possible contamination. likewise, when foot and mouth disease broke out in the united kingdom in 2001, up to 10 million apparently healthy cattle were slaughtered. this is despite foot and mouth disease being a minor flu like ailment. as one commentator observed at the time: foot-and-mouth disease is a form of flu, treatable by proper veterinary care, preventable by vaccination, lethal neither to humans nor to animals. these animals, millions of them not even infected, were all killed only because their market value had been diminished and because trade policy required it – because, in short, under the circumstances it was the quick and convenient thing to do. by the one measure we now apply to these creatures, they had all become worthless. for them, the difference between what happened and what awaited them anyway was one of timing. (scully 2002, ix-x) it appears that whenever human interests are threatened by nonhuman animals, the latter are viewed as expendable and in many instances subjected to painful deaths. is it possible that rats, having historically been identified with the bubonic plague, continue to be killed indiscriminately and with great cruelty primarily for this reason? 4. hello possums! goodbye rats! exploring the suburban abject the one area in which the rat enjoys some popularity is popular culture – but not to the same degree as the possum. the possum has come to occupy an elevated position in australian popular culture. the word “possum” itself is now a friendly moniker in australian idiomatic language. dame edna everage, possibly australia’s best-known stage comedian, invariably welcomes her audiences with the very australian greeting, which she has made world famous, “hello possums!”. the greeting has become a trademark of her bizarre persona. it both makes her audiences feel cute and cuddly, while also reminding them they are a funny bunch of bush creatures who are not quite in the same class as dame edna. parents often affectionately call their children “possum” rather than conventional terms of endearment. possums enjoy a prominent place in australian story-telling. the most popular australian children’s picture story book of all time is mem fox’s possum magic siobhan o’sullivan barbara creed jenny gray 72 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ (1983), which tells the story of grandma poss, an endearing bush creature with magic powers that sometimes go awry. told from the point of view of grandma poss the narrative overturns the anthropocentric, or humancentered view of the universe to which darwin’s theory of natural selection had delivered a therapeutic shock in the late 19th  century. continuously in print since its publication in 1983, possum magic is illustrated by julie vivas, who depicts grandma poss wearing spectacles, coloured sandals and a blue apron covered in yellow stars. grandma poss knows bush magic, itself a nonhuman power, yet needs spectacles to compensate for her poor vision. the effect of such anthropomorphisation is to undermine gently any rigid boundaries between human and animal. anthropomorphism is to attribute human emotions and the expression of such emotions to the animal. in his famous work, the expression of the emotions in man and animals (1872) charles darwin argued that the emotions evolved in human and animal alike and that animals express all of the emotions, through facial and bodily muscles, sounds and cries, that are expressed by humans including fear, anxiety, grief, dejection, joy, love and devotion. in his conclusion darwin wrote the “origin of the various expressions which may be hourly seen on the faces of the men around us, not to mention our domesticated animals, ought to possess much interest for us” (1998, 360). in the following decades and centuries, scientists and animal behaviourists in particular have been quick to criticise any attempt to anthropomorphise the animal world, that is, to affirm that nonhuman animals express emotions shared by human animals or to search for the origin of these expressions as darwin urged. one possible reason for this is to maintain a strict division between human and nonhuman animal. another reason may be to justify our continued use of animals for our own gain as in animal experimentation, hunting and animal sports, and the farming of animals for human consumption. paul wells states: the denial of expressiveness in animals, or indeed, other human beings, amounts to a decision that animals do not possess a voice, a language, a mode of communication through their bodies, and a fundamental rejection of the likeness that might characterise animal identity and animal cognition. (2009, 96) while some might argue that anthropomorphism demeans the animal, by removing what it is that is animal about them, it also has the effect of blurring boundaries between human animals and nonhuman animals. in both classical culture (opera, ballet, painting) and popular culture (myths, fairy tales, song, film) we have anthropomorphised animals in order to find a “low down dirty rat” 73 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ language with which to understand the expression of emotions in nonhuman animals whether wild or domesticated. the ubiquitous possum has also influenced australian cultural exhibitions. in 2011 the melbourne town hall’s city gallery staged an exhibition called crepuscular, which celebrated the various wildlife species that become alive in the city at twilight. one of the most conspicuous creatures with whom we co-habit is the possum, who comes out at dusk as people depart from the parks and gardens. one of the key exhibits was a ringtail possum, noted for the acrobatics he or she enacts, hanging from the ceiling. evolution sees to it that these crepuscular creatures have learnt how to live alongside human species in shared urban and parkland spaces. the exhibition argued that animals such as the possum are “making the new world that we’re in – evolution is on a new course because of human intervention. we can’t undo it” (northover 2011). as humans destroy the natural habitats of the nonhuman animals, more and more creatures are moving into urban areas, including our homes, in order to survive. the possum occupies an unusual position because it disturbs the boundaries between human and animal, often in a troubling manner. it appears that one of the reasons that many find possums such a threat is their ability to cross the human/animal habitat threshold, in particular by nesting in the roof of the family home. in other words, they live “above”, out of reach, at the rim of the line between house and sky. in a sense they are “on top” of the human animal, the latter noted for their hierarchical approach to all aspects of life. in this context, possums become abject because they disturb domestic boundaries and hierarchies, reminding us of the permeable nature of human society and culture. some popular children’s picture books, such as possum in the house (jensen 1989) and possum goes to school (carter 1992), explore this theme. they examine the power of the possum to cross the boundary between human and animal spaces, arguing that the most sensible approach is to learn to co-habit with the possum. 4.1. rats in the ranks in australian indigenous myths such as the story of bilargun and daroo the rat is not at all denigrated. it explains how the platypus was born of a strange but happy union between the water-rat, bilargun and daroo, the duck. when the couple had offspring the babies had a duck’s bill and webbed feet and the water rat’s fur coat and flat tail. in more recent popular culture the rat has been assigned a place of honour. the rats of tobruk, for instance was the name given to a garrison of australian soldiers who siobhan o’sullivan barbara creed jenny gray 74 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ defended the port of tobruk in libya during world war ii. they dug a network of tunnels and shelters, in addition to the trenches, in which to secure themselves from the enemy and from which they launched attacks at night. when radio berlin described them as “trapped like rats” they claimed the name as a mark of pride, even having a medal struck in the image of a rat. in 1944 charles chauvel directed a film titled the rats of tobruk, which starred the iconic australian actors chips rafferty and peter finch. the term “rats of tobruk” signifies bravery, cunning, and fierce determination. more recently, australian television produced a new and popular police series titled water rats (1996-2001) based on the adventures of men and women in the sydney water police. again the name signified cunning combined with courage. australian children’s literature is not without its classic rat characters from jimmy the brush-tail rat by daisy fry (1952) to paul jennings’ the spitting rat (1999). in 2010, the short and incredibly happy life of riley, the story of a happy rat, won the children’s book council of australia picture book of the year award. written by colin thompson and amy lissiat, the narrative compares riley, a happy rat with people, who seem never to be happy. riley is happy because his needs are few and his tastes simple. when the animated film, ratatouille, was released in australia in 2007, it became an instant hit. ratatouille dreams of becoming a great french chef despite the huge task of working in a profession in which rats are the enemy. despite the rat’s ambiguous status in the human world, ratatouille sparked a craze for pet rats, suggesting the power of popular culture to influence people’s behavior. australia’s friendly disposition towards rats was clearly affirmed on may 16 2012 when workmen accidentally destroyed a famous piece of street art, parachuting rat, painted on the brick exterior of a restaurant, by the world renowned artist, banksy. there was a great public outcry – as much for the loss of the adventuresome little rat as for the loss of a bansky. although the rat seems to hold a key place in australian popular culture, in reality australians kill, capture and poison rats without remorse. in contrast to the possum, there have been no attempts to legalize the humane removal of rats, let alone their humane killing. possibly, the possum fares better because it is a native australian animal. the explanation, however, is more likely to be that historically the rat, much more than the possum, has been represented in popular culture, myth and religion as an abject creature, both reviled and revered. in his fascinating study jonathan burt writes: “rats are fundamentally ambiguous creatures occupying intriguing positions around notions of the sacred, the profane and the apocalyptic” (2006, 49). burt offers details of cultures which have revered and deified rats, others which have associated “low down dirty rat” 75 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the rat with damnation and the devil and yet others which have viewed the rat as harbingers of the plague and the apocalypse. in hindu cultures rats are viewed as lucky, and in some areas of india they are thought to be incarnated human beings and therefore sacred. in the chinese horoscope the rat, the sign of commerce, signifies charm and imagination. it is the rat’s sharp teeth, propensity to cannibalism if deprived of food and ability to gnaw through hard objects such as wood, bone and leather, which have made it such a creature of terror in horror literature. george orwell in 1984 and edgar allen poe in the pit and the pendulum, both acclaimed works, draw on the rat’s formidable gnawing ability as a source of horror. robert browning based his famous poem, rats! on the legend of the pied piper of hamelin (hendrickson 1983, 138). browning exploits all of the major fears about the threats rats pose to humans. he apparently wrote it for a friend’s young son and did not plan to publish it: they fought the dogs and killed the cats, and bit the babies in the cradles, and ate the cheeses out of the vats, and licked the soup from the cook’s own ladles […]. yet as discussed above, popular culture also depicts rats as cute and lovable as evident in the much-loved figure of ratty from wind in the willows (1908) and the rodent chef in the recent global box office hit ratatouille. why are human attitudes to the rat so ambivalent? and does this account for the very different ways in which we treat possums in contrast to rats? burt provides a possible answer to human ambivalence to, and exploitation of, the rat when he discusses the common view of “human/rat mirroring” (2006, 13). burt presents the views of various writers who have seen the rat as “the twin of the human”. rats like humans have most successfully learnt the art of adaptation; rats follow humans so that they might live off human food supplies; rats thrive on the waste left in the wake of human warfare; rats like humans have learned to negotiate the complex networks of modernity; and rats like humans are highly intelligent, rapacious and successful. burt writes that “the rat, in its own peculiar way, could be described as a totem animal for modernity” (burt 2006, 18). it is interesting to note how the concept of the human/rat twin is expressed in language. this is through the many ways in which we link the word “rat” to an adjective to designate certain forms of human behavior as in “you dirty, rotten rat”, “cunning rat”, “sneaky rat”, “sleazy rat” and so on. it is difficult to think of another animal whose name is used in this way and with such regularity. it would appear then that human ambivalence towards the rat, perhaps greater than its ambivalence towards any other creature, may rest on the siobhan o’sullivan barbara creed jenny gray 76 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ perceived similarities between the rat and human, which for many people may not be consciously apprehended. these ambivalences, however, are most strongly expressed in popular culture, although as yet the positive attributes of the rat have not led to any significant attempts to introduce legal regulations to protect rats from harm and unnecessary suffering. as other creatures receive more and more legal and humane protection, the rat remains as humankind’s necessary abject “other” which, because it is our dark twin, we cannot afford to release it from the grip of superstition. otherwise, the myth of an essential difference between human and nonhuman animals might be even further eroded and animals, such as rats, might be accorded the right to have more than a bare existence. 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everything”. in what philosophy can tell you about your dog, edited by steven hales, 285-94. chicago: open court. hendrickson, robert. 1983. more cunning than man: a complete history of the rat and its role in civilization. new york: stein and day. isaac, joanne l. 2005. “life history and demographics of an island possum”. journal of zoology 53: 195-203. doi: 10.1071/zo05018. jennings, paul. 1999. the spitting rat. ringwood: penguin. jensen, kiersten. 1989. possum in the house. milwaukee: gareth stevens publishing. mcdonald-madden, eve, lian k. akers, deena j. brenner, sarah howell, blair w. patullo, and mark a. elgar. 2000. “possums in the park: efficient foraging under the risk of predation or of competition?”. australian journal of zoology 48 (2): 155-60. doi: 10.1071/zo99061. northover, kylie. 2011. “critters of the night shift”. the age. last modified may 11, 2011. http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/critters-of-thenight-shift-20110510-1eh1t.html. orwell, george. 1949. 1984. new york: harcourt. o’sullivan, siobhan. 2011. animals, equality and democracy. basingstoke: palgrave macmillan. pahl, l.i., and a.k. lee. 1988. “reproductive traits of two populations of the common ringtail possum, ‘pseudocheirus peregrinus’, in victoria”. australian journal of zoology 36 (1): 83-97. doi: 10.1071/zo9880083. palmer, clare. 2010. animal ethics in context. columbia: columbia university press. poe, edgar allen. 2007. great tales and poems of edgar allan poe, supplementary materials written by charles bower. new york: pocket books. power, emma r. 2009. “border-processes and homemaking: encounters with possums in suburban australian homes”. cultural geographies 16 (1): 29-54. doi: 10.1177/1474474008097979. prevention of cruelty to animals act 1986 (victoria). regan, tom. 2004. the case for animal rights, 2nd edn. berkeley: university of california press. scully, matthew. 2002. dominion: the power of man, the suffering of animals and the call to mercy. new york: st. martin’s press. thompson, colin, and amy lissiat. 2005. the short and incredibly happy life of riley. south melbourne: lothian. wells, paul. 2009. the animated bestiary: animals, cartoons, and culture. new brunswick: rutgers university press. wildlife act 1975 (victoria). “wildlife act 1975 order declaring common brushtail possum (‘trichosurus vulpecula’) to be unprotected wildlife”. victoria gazette g28, july 10, 2003: 1766-7. immanuel kant e l’etica ambientale. tre proposte per rivisitare (e una per riattualizzare) la morale kantiana 5 is sn 2 2 8 0 -9 9 5 3 beyond anthropocentrism 1 • january 2013 inside the emotional lives of non-human animals a minding animals international utrecht 2012 pre-conference event special issue (genoa, italy, 12-13 may, 2012) edited by m. andreozzi, r. bennison, a. massaro, s. tonutti capabilities approach and animal bioethics • michele panzera animals and our emotions. how to approach the study of an interspecific community? • sabrina tonutti advocacy and animal rights • kim stallwood the emotional lives of animals: a christian perspective • alma massaro – gianfranco nicora animalia: ontology and ethics in weak antispeciesism • leonardo caffo the contemporary debate on experimentation • susanna penco – rosagemma ciliberti non-human animals and genetic engineering • arianna ferrari the relationship between humans and other animals in european animal welfare legislation • paola sobbrio human’s best friends? • matteo andreozzi elationsre l a t io n s . b e y o n d a n t h r o p o c e n t r is m 1 • 2 0 1 3 r 10.2 december 2022 human beings’ moral relations with other animals and the natural environment edited by francesco allegri studies and research contributions what we owe owls: nonideal relationality among fellow 9 creatures in the old growth forest ben almassi the “cruel absurdity” of human violence and its consequences: 23 a vegan studies analysis of a pandemic novel jessica murray duality of abuse and care: empathy in sara gruen’s water 39 for elephants moumita bala smriti singh immanuel kant e l’etica ambientale. tre proposte per rivisitare 55 (e una per riattualizzare) la morale kantiana matteo andreozzi ecosocial autonomy as an educational ideal 75 jani pulkki sami keto comments, debates, reports and interviews is there a moral problem in predation? 93 francesco allegri author guidelines 101 relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 55 matteo.andreozzi@gmail.com abstract the main aim of this paper is to demonstrate that in order to claim that kant’s ethics is neither speciesist nor anthropocentric there is no need to reinterpret kant’s theories pushing them over their anthroposcopism. i start by exploring the most relevant references to non-human animals and nature in kant’s moral theory. then i highlight the main reasons behind the critics of speciesism and anthropocentrism often referred to kant’s philosophy. i show how non-anthropocentric environmental ethics reinterpretations of kant’s moral theory offered by christine korsgaard, sharon anderson-gold e marc lucht reply to the critics. in conclusion, i claim that staying with kant’s anthroposcopism and formal approach to moral ethics could be enough to provide a stronger theoretical framework for an already widespread and widely accepted weak anthropocentric reformist environmental ethics. keywords: anthropocentrism; anthroposcopism; biocentrism; direct duties; ecocentrism; environmental ethics; indirect duties; intrinsic value; sentiocentrism; speciesism. 1. kant e la natura non-umana l’etica kantiana è spesso poco o quasi per nulla considerata all’interno del dibattito che contraddistingue le etiche ambientali, in quanto ritenuta specista, fortemente antropocentrica o in ogni caso non più conciliabile con il contesto culturale contemporaneo e la transizione ecologica in atto. a essere in particolar modo invalidante sarebbe soprattutto il suo specismo antropocentrico: un atteggiamento pregiudizievole che le renderebbe intrinsecamente impossibile estendere il “cerchio dell’etica” oltre la sfera umana. lo specismo sarebbe deducibile dal fatto che egli si rifiuta relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 immanuel kant e l’etica ambientale tre proposte per rivisitare (e una per riattualizzare) la morale kantiana immanuel kant and environmental ethics. three proposals to revisit (and one to reactualize) kantian morality matteo andreozzi independent scholar italy doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2022-02-andm https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2022-02-andm mailto:matteo.andreozzi@gmail.com https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ matteo andreozzi 56 di riservare un trattamento egualitario alle altre forme di vita sulla sola base della loro non appartenenza alla nostra stessa specie, mentre il suo antropocentrismo forte deriverebbe dal suo considerare l’essere umano come il culmine evolutivo, il fine ultimo della creazione e l’unico centro di ogni considerazione filosofica. la filosofia di immanuel kant è infatti contraddistinta dall’idea (già presente nel diritto romano), secondo cui tutto ciò che non è “persona” è “cosa”. poiché si tratta di una distinzione imprescindibile, sia per la fondazione che per l’applicazione della morale kantiana, sembrerebbe a prima vista inevitabile inquadrare questa come un’etica fortemente antropocentrica, se non anche specista. la reificazione degli animali non umani e degli enti naturali compiuta da kant, per essere adeguatamente compresa, deve tuttavia essere inquadrata a partire da un adeguato approfondimento di tre aspetti del sua pensiero: la distinzione “persona-cosa”, la fondazione della morale e la sua applicazione. come esplicitamente detto dallo stesso kant nella fondazione della metafisica dei costumi, solo gli esseri umani sono persone, e lo sono in quanto dotati di una facoltà conoscitiva, morale ed estetica fondata non soltanto sulla sensibilità (propria anche degli animali non umani), ma anche sull’intelletto e, soprattutto, sulla ragione (kant [1785] 2003, 141143). l’assenza di una sola di queste facoltà relega ogni ente allo stato di cosa, mentre la mancata e non adeguata considerazione della sinergia tra tutte queste facoltà non può mai essere in grado di determinare gli elementi costitutivi della conoscenza, della volontà o del giudizio estetico (kant [1785] 2003, 141-143). ritornerò in seguito sullo stato di “cosa”, approfondendolo meglio, e procederò ora con l’illustrare come questa distinzione permei e condizioni l’etica kantiana. la morale kantiana, così per come viene delineata nella critica della ragion pratica ([1787] 1997), si fonda essenzialmente su una critica della “ragione empirica pratica”, condizionata dalla sensibilità, a favore della “ragione pura pratica”, in grado di rendersi indipendente dalla sensibilità, de-condizionandosi da istinti e impulsi. la critica risulta essenziale per la fondazione della morale perché si riflette in una almeno parziale ulteriore critica di “massime” e “imperativi ipotetici” a favore dell’unico “imperativo categorico”, principio formale pratico della morale che può derivare soltanto dalla “ragione pura pratica”, propria soltanto dell’essere umano (kant [1787] 1997). tutti gli animali sono certamente in grado di perseguire la propria felicità sensibile tramite l’istinto. l’essere umano ha però bisogno della ragione pura pratica, e non solo per perseguire la propria felicità, ma anche e soprattutto per distinguere questa dal vero bene. la morale non è dunque data da un insieme di leggi che si trovano già nel mondo e che relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ immanuel kant e l’etica ambientale 57 vengono scoperte poi dall’uomo: è lo stesso essere umano che, in quanto persona dotata anche di intelletto e ragione, le fonda. se sono solo le persone a potere partecipare al fondamento delle leggi morali è perché la loro universalità e necessità non è data su base esteriore, ma su base interiore: è proprio su ciò che, infatti, si basa la “rivoluzione copernicana” attuata da kant nel campo dell’etica. questa impostazione ha poi ovvie ripercussioni anche sui soggetti morali, siano essi agenti o pazienti morali. l’imperativo categorico che sta a fondamento della morale, infatti, si concretizza – in estrema sintesi – nella prescrizione di agire secondo una massima che possa essere universalmente valida per tutte le persone (kant [1787] 1997, 65; kant [1785] 2003, 143-145, 149). in pratica, un comportamento è morale solo se, nell’ipotesi in cui tutte le persone lo attuano, consente a tutte loro di vivere in comunità senza contraddizione. è questa la ragione per cui è necessario agire in modo da considerare ogni persona, compresi se stessi, sempre anche al tempo stesso come fine e mai soltanto come semplice mezzo. le persone sono dunque gli unici enti considerabili come fini in sé, e lo sono in quanto dotati di tre essenziali caratteristiche riconducibili alla ragione: hanno una dignità e finalità intrinseca, la quale è data dalla loro libertà e autonomia legislativa, la quale è a sua volta dovuta alla loro capacità di ragionare in un modo universalmente valido per tutta la comunità. da ciò consegue che l’essere umano, in quanto persona, non costituisce solo il fondamento dell’etica, ma anche il suo unico vero attore e destinatario: la morale istituisce un “regno dei fini” di cui solo le persone, unite in comunità, fanno parte (kant [1787] 1997). se l’antropocentrismo etico di kant si fonda sulla distinzione tra persona e cosa, dunque, ciò è dovuto al fatto che, rivoluzionando copernicanamente anche la morale, il filosofo riconosce il fondamento universale della volontà, del dovere e del rispetto nella stessa ragione umana. gli enti privi di ragione non possono entrare nella comunità morale perché non sono coinvolti nella fondazione delle leggi o non sono in grado, nello stesso modo in cui lo sono le persone libere, di distinguere la soddisfazione e il piacere dal bene. per meglio comprendere che tipo di considerazione morale kant ritenga opportuno concedere agli animali non umani e agli enti di natura è dunque necessario approfondire la sua valutazione ontologica di queste entità non umane. riprendendo, come si era detto, la distinzione tra persone e cose è opportuno ora precisare che, per kant, non tutte le “cose” sono cose in modo uguale. il filosofo tedesco si discosta, infatti, dal meccanicismo cartesiano che relega tutta la res extensa priva di res cogitans a mera materialità soggetta alle leggi meccaniche di natura. nelle lezioni relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ matteo andreozzi 58 di metafisica, condotte tra il 1780 e il 1783, egli si allontana da questa visione soffermandosi soprattutto sulla rappresentatività e sensibilità animale (kant [1787] 1997, 213), mentre nella critica del giudizio teleologico interna alla critica del giudizio (1790) si concentra principalmente sulla finalità della natura (kant [1790] 1997, 399-663). kant precisa che gli animali non umani non sono semplici automaton materiali, ma automaton spirituali: essi non sono mossi semplicemente mediante la materia, ma hanno un’anima mossa da rappresentazioni che guidano queste forme di vita nel perseguimento del proprio piacere sensibile. la natura è invece, seppure interamente dominata da leggi meccaniche di causa-effetto, costituita da esseri organizzati che sono dotati di una finalità oggettiva data dal fatto che essi (kant riporta esplicitamente l’esempio di un albero), oltre a produrre se stessi come specie, tramite “generazione”, e come soggetti, tramite “crescita”, si conservano tramite “auto-conservazione” (kant [1790] 1997, 425-433). per kant tutte le forme di vita, siano esse animali o vegetali, sono “prodotti organizzati di natura in cui tutte le parti sono reciprocamente scopo e mezzo” e tra queste nessun essere è di per sé lo “scopo finale” della creazione (kant [1790] 1997, 425-433). le persone sono però lo “scopo ultimo” di natura in quanto unici esseri che, a differenza delle cose, sono in grado di porsi l’obiettivo di sviluppare la propria ragione al fine di divenire anche esseri morali, realizzando lo “scopo finale” della creazione (kant [1790] 1997, 543-557). in buona sostanza, gli enti di natura sono esseri organizzati non in grado di perseguire coscientemente dei fini; gli animali non umani sono esseri organizzati in grado di perseguire fini solo mediante rappresentazioni sensibili; mentre le persone sono esseri privilegiati in quanto razionali e, quindi, morali. anche se l’uomo, tramite ragione, può realizzare lo “scopo finale” della creazione egli rimane, così come tutti gli altri “prodotti organizzati”, un “prodotto di natura”. il tipo di considerazione morale che gli animali non umani e l’ambiente meritano all’interno del sistema etico kantiano parte proprio da questo quadro ontologico. kant fa implicito rimando ai doveri umani nei confronti di ciò che non è umano in molte delle sue opere, ma ne parla esplicitamente soprattutto nelle lezioni di etica tenute a königsberg intorno al 1775 (kant [1780-1783] 1984, 273-275) e ne la metafisica dei costumi (kant [1797] 1991, 303-305). sarà principalmente a partire da queste due opere che cercherò ora di illustrare il tipo di considerazione morale che secondo il filosofo meritano le “cose” di natura 1. 1 non distinguerò le posizioni per opera, ma fornirò un quadro sintetico fondato sulla distinzione tra forme di vita animali non umane ed enti di natura. relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ immanuel kant e l’etica ambientale 59 una premessa importante è che, come si è avuto modo di anticipare, per kant, poiché l’essere umano può avere dei doveri o provare rispetto solo verso se stesso e gli altri esseri umani la cui volontà può opporsi alla propria, il rispettare la materia inanimata, vegetale o animale è e non può che essere soltanto un “dovere indiretto” dell’uomo: un dovere che si rivolge a cose solamente per poi ritornare alle persone. il punto, per il filosofo di königsberg, è che anche se non esistono “doveri diretti” dell’uomo verso i “semplici mezzi”, esistono dei doveri relativi ai mezzi in quanto volti al beneficio degli unici “fini in sé”, gli esseri umani. è questo il senso con cui kant rivolge attenzione etica agli animali non umani e all’ambiente ed è in gran parte questo il motivo per cui egli è stato largamente criticato da diverse etiche ambientali contemporanee, che vorrebbero invece vedere riconosciuto il valore di fine in sé anche agli enti e soggetti di natura. per quanto riguarda gli animali non umani, kant vi fa riferimento sia per determinare i termini di liceità della nostra interazione con loro, sia per condannare duramente le interazioni non lecite, sia per illustrare come certe interazioni con queste cose possano rivelarsi propedeutiche allo sviluppo di una maggiore eticità nelle interazioni tra persone. in riferimento ai termini di liceità della nostra interazione con loro, kant non parla mai espressamente dell’uccisione o dello sfruttamento di animali non umani a fini alimentari, di vestiario, medici o lavorativi, ma è presumibilmente a queste attività che fa riferimento, considerandole lecite, anche se con qualche nota. egli sostiene che abbiamo tutto il diritto di ucciderli e utilizzarli per esperimenti che arricchiscono la conoscenza umana o per lavori che agevolano le attività lavorative umane – quindi non, si presume, per spettacoli di intrattenimento come zoo, circhi, pali o corride. la loro uccisione deve però essere rapida e priva di dolore e non può essere dovuta ad attività di semplice diletto, come la caccia. gli esperimenti non devono recare troppa sofferenza e non devono comunque essere condotti nel caso in cui vi siano alternative valide. non possiamo poi caricarli di lavori che sforzino eccessivamente le loro capacità ma, anzi, dobbiamo sempre essere loro riconoscenti e grati, come se fossero membri della famiglia, per il servizio che ci hanno offerto. sorprende, a tal proposito, un passo della dottrina del metodo della critica della ragion pratica nel quale è riferito, con ammirazione, un aneddoto riguardante leibniz, che ripose con riconoscenza un insetto sull’albero da cui lo aveva tolto per studiarlo momentaneamente (kant [1787] 1997, 345). il filosofo riserva poi dure parole verso chi interagisce con gli animali non umani in modo non lecito, facendoli soffrire o patire condizioni di vita indecenti, trattandoli senza amore, tormentandoli o uccidendoli quando relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ matteo andreozzi 60 sono ormai vecchi e non più utili, ma solo costosi da mantenere. verso gli animali non umani non è mai possibile provare rispetto, perché sono cose, ma il punto, per kant, è che chi non segue questi doveri indiretti, va contro il dovere diretto di rispettare la propria dignità umana e, con essa, quella dell’umanità intera: un’infrazione gravissima, che spesso conduce le persone a compiere poi atti analoghi anche verso altri esseri umani. se dunque, da un lato, il non rispettare questi doveri indiretti coltiva vizi che compromettono la nostra capacità simpatetica e compassionevole, dall’altro essere etici nei confronti degli animali non umani aiuta a coltivare le virtù che fanno riferimento ai doveri diretti verso gli esseri umani: gli animali non umani sono cose, ma in quanto analoghe alle persone, posso servire anche ad allenare la moralità che riguarderà poi soltanto i membri del “regno dei fini”. in riferimento agli enti di natura il discorso è simile. kant precisa che i nostri doveri indiretti nei confronti dell’ambiente sono stabiliti soltanto sulla base della sua capacità di servire i bisogni umani. nella critica del giudizio egli afferma addirittura che in assenza di interessi umani la creazione sarebbe soltanto un “semplice deserto, vano e senza scopo finale”, perché è la stessa esistenza umana a possedere lo “scopo ultimo” della natura (kant [1790] 1997, 571). il filosofo discute l’argomento considerando soprattutto i valori estetici dell’ambiente e la disponibilità di risorse naturali. da un lato non dobbiamo distruggere il “bello di natura”, perché comprometteremmo la nostra e altrui disposizione alla fruizione estetica, la quale è giovevole alla moralità (kant [1790] 1997, 571). dall’altro non dobbiamo però distruggere nemmeno le cose di natura che possono ancora essere utilizzate da altri. se non si rispettano questi doveri indiretti, danneggiando sia la bellezza della natura che le risorse naturali, si agisce in modo immorale perché si ledono doveri diretti sia verso se stessi (non si sfrutta l’estetica ambientale come trampolino verso uno sviluppo etico personale) sia verso le altre persone (si impedisce loro di sviluppare la propria moralità a partire dall’estetica e si compromette la loro possibilità di avere accesso alle risorse naturali). a questo punto è forse possibile abbozzare un primo breve bilancio critico sull’antropocentrismo che kant adotta nei confronti degli animali non umani e dell’ambiente. per il filosofo di königsberg l’essere umano è un “prodotto” di natura come lo sono tutte le altre forme di vita ma, grazie alla ragione, può divenire un essere libero dai meccanismi di natura. ciò non significa, però, che l’uomo possa piegare legittimamente al proprio incondizionato volere gli animali e gli enti di natura: esistono svariati doveri che deve rispettare nei loro confronti, anche se sono soltanto doveri indiretti. kant non mette certamente in discussione relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ immanuel kant e l’etica ambientale 61 la centralità umana in natura, così come l’impossibilità di assegnare un valore intrinseco al di fuori delle comunità umane. il punto, tuttavia, è che il valore strumentale – peraltro assegnato anche all’uomo, a seconda delle circostanze  – che egli riconosce agli animali non umani e agli enti di natura non implica una totale assenza di responsabilità nei confronti dei pazienti morali non umani. la domanda, semmai, è se un simile antropocentrismo possa essere un’adeguata prospettiva-guida nel nostro relazionarci, direttamente o indirettamente, ai soggetti e agli enti del resto del mondo naturale. 2. i limiti delle ragioni kantiane la riflessione morale di immanuel kant potrebbe sembrare tanto inadeguata ad affrontare i problemi sollevati in epoca contemporanea dalla questione animale e da quella ambientale, quanto insufficiente a guidare un’etica cui si chiede oggi di porre massima attenzione alla cosiddetta transizione ecologica. senza che vi sia bisogno di accusare il filosofo di königsberg di uno specismo antropocentrico che, come si è già mostrato nel paragrafo precedente, è tutt’altro che evidente all’interno del pensiero kantiano, sembrerebbe effettivamente innegabile che egli abbia concesso solo una scarsa o comunque poco approfondita attenzione alla tutela e al rispetto degli animali non umani e dell’ambiente. anche ammettendo che kant abbia ragionato in un modo formalmente corretto, in quanto non pregiudicato da un atteggiamento specista o fortemente antropocentrico, la sua etica avrebbe in ogni caso il limite di essersi sostanzialmente poggiata su premesse culturali e constatazioni ambientali ora del tutto inattuali. simili basi di partenza, per quanto accettabili all’epoca, non sono solamente divenute insostenibili oggi, ma sono anche direttamente responsabili sia del contesto di crisi ambientale, ecologica e vitale che stiamo oggi vivendo, sia dell’affermarsi di un paradigma di pensiero specista e fortemente antropocentrico. per quanto concerne le premesse culturali, gli studi condotti soprattutto negli ultimi cinquant’anni da discipline quali biologia, etologia ed ecologia evidenziano in effetti la necessità di rivedere le nostre idee quantomeno su concetti quali gerarchia biologica, animalità e ambiente (eibl-eibesfeldt [1976] 1995; odum e barrett 2007; ferraguti e castellacci 2011). in riferimento al concetto di “gerarchia biologica”, la biologia contemporanea ci dice che, nonostante esistano certamente diverse caratteristiche peculiari di ogni specie e diversi livelli inclusivi di complessità relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ matteo andreozzi 62 del vivente, non c’è nulla che giustifichi oggettivamente che una capacità possa essere ritenuta “migliore” di un’altra o che “più complesso” significhi “superiore”. una certa gerarchia esiste, ma è inclusiva, non esclusiva: ciò che sta “sopra”, in quest’ottica, non è separato, indipendente o superiore rispetto a ciò che si trova “sotto”, perché sussistono sempre legami di interdipendenza biologica tra le specie. l’uomo è senza dubbio una forma di vita estremamente complessa, dotata di linguaggio e di un alto livello di coscienza, ma queste caratteristiche rappresentano soltanto il suo “specifico” modo di accoppiarsi all’ambiente: le altre forme di vita, semplicemente, non ne hanno avuto bisogno o non hanno avuto necessità di una simile complessità per adattarsi al proprio ambiente. per quanto concerne il concetto di “animalità”, l’etologia contemporanea ha mostrato che la maggior parte degli animali non umani sono esseri senzienti, dotati non soltanto di sensibilità e doti rappresentative, ma anche di sentimenti, intelligenza sociale, empatia cognitiva, capacità tecniche sofisticate e persino di ragione. il concetto di “ragione” è, a dire il vero, diversamente interpretabile. in senso letterale essa rappresenta una capacità di discernimento di tipo economico-calcolativo (dal termine latino ratio, che significa “calcolo”). così intesa, la ragione è certamente in possesso di tutto il regno animale, perché senza di essa nessun animale non umano sarebbe stato in grado di adattarsi all’ambiente, evolversi e sopravvivere fino a oggi: come potrebbe un ragno fare una così complicata ragnatela o una zecca individuare la superficie cui attaccarsi per succhiare sangue senza una capacità di scelta calcolativa? in senso kantiano, però, la ragione è più che altro una coscienza o auto-coscienza di sé che solo di recente si è riconosciuta essere propria anche di moltissimi animali. una forma di auto-coscienza in senso stretto è presente in primati, elefanti e delfini ed è testata da un riconoscimento di se stessi allo specchio, verificato marcando la fronte dell’animale con un segno e osservando se l’animale punta al segno allo specchio o si accerta che il segno sia sulla propria fronte. come evidenzia christine korsgaard, però, se si intende l’auto-coscienza in un senso ancora più largo, come qualcosa che implica una coscienza di se stessi quali enti inseriti una specifica dimensione spazio-temporale, questa è propria di quasi tutti gli animali non umani (korsgaard 2011, 100-103). dimostra di possederla un cane che si sottomette ad altri cani e risponde ai richiami, riconoscendo la propria parte all’interno di uno specifico contesto relazionale e sociale, ma ne danno dimostrazione anche numerosi altri animali che, ad esempio, si mimetizzano o preparano agguati ubicandosi nello spazio e nascondendosi in base alle capacità di percezione che riconoscono nella propria preda. relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ immanuel kant e l’etica ambientale 63 riguardo invece il concetto di “ambiente”, l’ecologia contemporanea ha dimostrato chiaramente che questo non è, o quantomeno non è soltanto, una risorsa o lo sfondo passivo delle attività vitali: è un complesso sistema di forme viventi co-evolute e co-adattate, dotato di proprietà auto-regolative ed emergenti, dalle quali affiora un valore aggiunto in grado di erogare servizi indispensabili al dinamico equilibrio vitale. questi servizi non sono poi solo alimentari o estetico-culturali, ma anche e primariamente di supporto all’intera vita sulla terra, poiché, tra le altre cose, regolativi nei confronti del clima, del diffondersi di malattie e dei cicli dell’acqua. in pratica, come evidenzia il millennium ecosystem assessment (una ricerca condotta dal 2001 al 2005 da circa 1.360 esperti e scienziati provenienti da tutto il mondo), dall’equilibrio dinamico del mondo naturale dipende la stessa libertà umana (millennium ecosystem assessment 2005, 190-203). da esso, infatti, deriva ogni elemento connesso a quel soddisfacimento di bisogni umani primari e secondari senza i quali non saremmo intellettualmente liberi di agire secondo ragione, ma biologicamente costretti ad agire secondo istinto. i risultati mostrati dal millennium ecosystem assessment in riferimento al contesto contemporaneo descrivono inoltre una situazione di crisi ambientale che apre una grande sfida sia per l’umanità che per la filosofia (non solo kantiana). considerando il significato che il senso comune attribuisce solitamente al termine “ambiente” (qualcosa di statico e di distaccato dal mondo umano, un semplice sfondo della nostra vita), è probabilmente più corretto distinguere almeno tre volti di un’unica grande “crisi naturale”. uno è, per l’appunto, la “crisi ambientale”: una crisi dei paesaggi e delle risorse naturali, che interessa i servizi ecosistemici di approvvigionamento e culturali. il secondo è la “crisi ecologica”, che interessa anche i servizi regolativi del complesso vitale offerti dal “sistema natura”. il terzo è la “crisi vitale” dei servizi che fanno da sostegno alla vita e alla biodiversità; una crisi che, di fatto, si ripercuote non soltanto sugli esseri umani, ma su tutti gli esseri viventi. sono tutte le forme di vita e tutti gli ecosistemi a essere dunque interessati da queste tre crisi, non soltanto l’essere umano. anche se il contesto di crisi ecosistemica non è il frutto della sola azione umana, noi siamo senz’altro tra i principali “attori protagonisti” di questo dramma, anche, e forse soprattutto, in forza della prospettiva specista e antropocentrica che abbiamo adottato per secoli, sia essa riconducibile o no a kant. ad avere maggiore pertinenza con le azioni umane e con la questione animale è però soprattutto il fenomeno dello specismo. il problema non si riduce, infatti, a una mancata considerazione del pericolo vitale corso indirettamente dalle numerose specie viventi i cui habitat vengono relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ matteo andreozzi 64 continuamente compromessi o distrutti dall’attività antropica. numerose difficoltà etiche sono oggi sollevate dalla vastità dei modi in cui l’essere umano ha costruito, soprattutto dopo la rivoluzione industriale, la propria relazione diretta con il mondo del vivente: il rapporto con gli animali d’affezione o da compagnia, alle volte gestiti come surrogati affettivi, giocattoli, pretesti di socializzazione o senza un’attenta considerazione dei loro bisogni; quello con gli animali da reddito o d’allevamento, utilizzati a fini alimentari; quello con gli animali da pelliccia o da vestiario, allevati o catturati per produrre beni di lusso; e quello con gli animali selvatici, cacciati o catturati per sperimentazioni o per l’intrattenimento nei parchi, negli spettacoli, nelle corride, nei rodei, nei pali, nelle sagre e negli zoo. per riassumere, riprendendo kant, l’essere umano, grazie alla propria razionalità, è certamente in grado di dominare e controllare le altre forme di vita e l’ambiente considerandoli come cose o semplici mezzi, ma ciò non rappresenta una sua maggiore evoluzione e non significa che egli debba agire sempre e comunque in questo senso. le motivazioni e giustificazioni che lo portano a seguire una simile condotta sono, anzi, messe ancora di più in discussione da ciò che oggi, grazie alla scienza, si è compreso: che egli non è in alcun modo legittimato a sentirsi superiore alle altre specie, che fa soffrire animali non umani i quali sanno di soffrire, e che danneggia l’equilibrio dinamico del “sistema natura” agendo, quindi, persino a suo stesso svantaggio. anche il contesto contemporaneo, poi, gioca a sfavore dell’attenzione rivolta dall’etica kantiana agli animali non umani e agli enti di natura. per quanto riguarda gli animali, un essere umano del xxi secolo (o se non altro un essere umano contestualizzato all’interno di una nazione sviluppata o in via di sviluppo) non ha alcun bisogno di utilizzare, sfruttare o uccidere animali per affezione, compagnia, vestiario, beni di lusso, caccia, spettacoli, zoo e persino alimentazione (american dietetic association and dietitians of canada 2003): sui benefici umani che deriverebbero dalla sperimentazione animale la questione resta aperta, ma molto controversa (battaglia 1997, 107-126). per quanto concerne l’ambiente, invece, un uso cieco delle risorse, incapace di porre in primo piano la qualità dei bisogni piuttosto che la loro quantità e di valutare correttamente i cicli di sostenibilità naturali non può che condurre il pianeta, e noi con esso, al collasso. 3. rivisitare kant secondo alcuni autori, tuttavia, ad allontanare l’etica kantiana dallo specismo antropocentrico non sarebbero tanto le ragioni intrinseche illustrarelations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ immanuel kant e l’etica ambientale 65 te nel primo paragrafo o quelle estrinseche approfondite nel secondo. un’attenta analisi del pensiero del filosofo di königsberg mostrerebbe infatti come in esso siano presenti le radici di un pensiero sensiocentrico, biocentrico o addirittura ecocentrico, di cui kant stesso era probabilmente inconsapevole. in quest’ottica, compito delle etiche ambientali dovrebbe essere quello di rivisitare la morale kantiana, in ottica persino non antropocentrica. ho scelto qui di illustrare brevemente le proposte teoriche di tre degli autori che hanno deciso di raccogliere questa sfida: la già citata e più conosciuta korsgaard, sharon anderson-gold e marc lucht. korsgaard propone di rileggere l’etica kantiana in una chiave sostanzialmente riconducibile al sensiocentrismo o al biocentrismo indivi dualistico. secondo l’autrice, kant dimostra a più riprese di non accet tare, anche se inconsapevolmente, tanto lo specismo quanto un an tropocentrismo forte. in merito allo specismo l’autrice propone interessanti riflessioni su tutti e tre gli aspetti caratterizzanti la reificazione kantiana degli animali non umani e degli enti naturali, di cui ho già avuto modo di parlare nel primo paragrafo (la distinzione tra persone e cose, la fondazione della morale e la sua applicazione). la distinzione tra persone e cose, fa notare, non deve essere presa rigidamente. il filosofo, infatti, oltre a riconoscere che gli animali non umani possono perseguire dei fini tramite sensibilità e rappresentazione, li considera semplici mezzi sulla base di un condizionamento morale, non ontologico: egli non li esclude dal regno dei fini perché non sono fini in sé, ma, viceversa, non li considera fini in sé perché non possono contribuire alla costruzione del regno dei fini (korsgaard 2011, 106). l’esclusione degli animali dalla comunità morale non si fonda dunque né su un’assunzione ontologica né su una reificazione meccanicista delle forme di vita non umane a mera materialità priva di scopi individuali. se così stanno le cose, allora, per quanto concerne il fondamento della morale, il fatto che gli animali non umani non vi partecipino non implica necessariamente che essa non si rivolga anche loro, determinando degli obblighi umani nei loro confronti: è kant stesso, ricorda korsgaard, il primo a riconoscere la necessità di proteggere certi diritti fondamentali in chi non ha potuto partecipare nello stabilire le leggi di uno stato (le donne, i bambini, la servitù o gli stranieri), in quanto privo del diritto o della facoltà di votare (korsgaard 2005, 96). anche per quanto riguarda l’applicazione della morale non è necessario discostarsi di molto dalle parole del filosofo. quando infatti kant parla, nella metafisica dei costumi, dei “doveri perfetti dell’uomo verso se stesso in quanto essere animale”, secondo l’autrice egli, anche se inconsapevolmente, riconosce che i doveri diretti che l’essere umano ha nei confronti relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ matteo andreozzi 66 di se stesso comprendono il perseguimento di fini naturali condivisi con tutte le forme di vita che sono diversi dai fini culturali e sono, anzi, a essi anteposti e indispensabili (korsgaard 2011, 100-101). è lo stesso kant ad anteporre questo genere di doveri diretti verso se stessi a tutti gli altri rivolti verso altre persone (kant [1797] 1991, 277-283): se abbiamo dei doveri diretti verso noi stessi in quanto esseri animali e se questi sono così prioritari, perché non dovremmo avere dei doveri paralleli nei confronti degli altri animali non umani? in merito al presunto antropocentrismo forte dell’etica kantiana, korsgaard osserva che la distinzione tra esseri umani e animali non umani compiuta dal filosofo non si fonda sul fatto che i primi sono gli unici connessi con un ordine trascendente e razionale superiore alla natura. la separazione deriva piuttosto dal fatto che noi, allo scopo di prefiggerci fini tra cui vi sono anche fini naturali (come nutrirsi, riprodursi, o più in generale vivere) in buona parte perseguiti da tutte le forme di vita (ne siano esse consapevoli o meno), siamo costretti dal possesso della ragione a costruire un ordine trascendentale e razionale che faccia da mediatore teleologico di questi stessi fini (korsgaard 2011, 101-103). il fatto che l’essere umano sia l’unico essere razionale e morale non implica quindi, in quest’ottica, che egli non abbia doveri verso le altre forme di vita, perché implica semmai soltanto che le altre forme di vita non abbiano doveri verso di lui, in quanto incapaci di formularli (korsgaard 2011, 103). secondo korsgaard, in sostanza, l’etica kantiana contiene implicitamente nascosto l’obbligo di trattare ogni forma di vita sempre anche come fine in sé. per risolvere gli eventuali esiti contraddittori o inaccettabili che potrebbero derivare dal riservare doveri diretti anche nei confronti degli animali non umani, l’autrice propone di rivalutare due ultimi importanti aspetti dell’etica kantiana. il primo è che il filosofo non sostiene l’illegittimità del trattare gli altri come mezzi: il punto è che non bisogna mai trattarli soltanto come mezzi. è infatti lecito avvalersi degli altri, e non solo quando loro acconsentono, come possono fare di norma gli esseri umani (es. un cameriere, che ci serve per lavoro), ma anche quando mettiamo gli altri in condizioni di mutuale e onesto beneficio, in cui è plausibile pensare che se potessero darebbero il loro consenso a essere utilizzati, come accade per i cosiddetti “casi marginali” di essere umano (narveson 1977), e come dovrebbe accadere per tutte le altre forme di vita animale (es. un mulo utilizzato per trasportare pesi, ma protetto, curato, nutrito e trattato dignitosamente) (korsgaard 2011, 110). avere dei doveri diretti verso animali non umani considerati come fini in sé, così come l’averli nei confronti di altre persone, non implica un forse impraticabile astenersi dall’interagire direttamente con loro avvalendosi di ciò relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ immanuel kant e l’etica ambientale 67 che questa relazione può darci. certo è, però, che i benefici che possiamo trarre da un simile rapporto non dovrebbero mai costare un’inaccettabile sofferenza, o magari persino la morte, della controparte utilizzata come “mezzo”. in riferimento alla probabile impossibilità di astenersi dal causare morte o sofferenza nelle altre forme di vita con il nostro semplice esistere (es. le formiche schiacciate camminando in un prato o gli insetti spiaccicati sul vetro anteriore della nostra auto), la korsgaard porta all’attenzione un secondo importante aspetto dell’etica kantiana che rende questa constatazione incapace di giustificare una rinuncia ad agire nella direzione antispecista. per kant, l’autrice precisa, il “devo” non implica infatti necessariamente il “posso”, ma ciò non è mai in grado di delegittimare l’imperativo categorico: anche se non possiamo eliminare la predazione naturale, possiamo sentirci in dovere di smettere di predare; anche se non possiamo essere sicuri che ogni topo e coniglio possa vivere una vita libera, possiamo sentirci in dovere di smettere di sperimentare su di loro; anche se non possiamo essere certi che smettere di mangiare carne salverà la vita di tutte le mucche, dei polli e dei maiali, possiamo sentirci in dovere di rifiutarci di contribuire a questo massacro (korsgaard 2005, 106-109). anderson-gold e lucht propongono invece di rileggere kant in una vera e propria ottica ambientalista di tendenza biocentrica olistica o persino ecocentrica. nella critica del giudizio, secondo lucht, il filosofo di königsberg, offre – anche se contro le proprie intenzioni – l’unica possibile via per coltivare la propensione morale a considerare seriamente e con rispetto tutte le forme di vita animali e vegetali, e questa via è il “giudizio estetico disinteressato”: unico giudizio in grado di fare sentire l’essere umano rivitalizzato dal sentirsi (anche se mai comprendersi) come immerso nella natura, e non separato da essa (lucht 2007). andersongold propone invece di rivedere la connessione esistente tra i concetti kantiani di “fine in sé”, “dignità”, “prezzo” e “scopo finale” (andersongold 2008). l’autrice precisa che un ente, per kant, è un fine in sé se ha dignità, e ha dignità solo se non ha prezzo – il che per il filosofo significa che non è sostituibile con un proprio equivalente. se si considera, però, come ogni interazione tra i singoli enti auto-organizzanti di natura che contribuiscono al tutto di cui sono parte sia insostituibile, allora, anche se kant non è arrivato ad ammetterlo, sono senza prezzo, e perciò fini in sé, tutti gli enti di natura, siano essi animali o vegetali. la natura, inoltre, non è intesa dal filosofo come qualcosa di destinato a produrre una “specie superiore”, legittimata ad abusare di tutti gli animali non umani e dell’ambiente. se lo scopo ultimo della creazione è l’essere umano ciò è dovuto al fatto che noi siamo l’unica forma di vita in grado di perseguire relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ matteo andreozzi 68 uno scopo finale dato dalla piena armonia tra natura e libertà: visto che il regno dei fini include e non può prescindere dai fini naturali, questo obiettivo richiede una comprensione ecosistemica olistica dell’interdipendenza di tutti i “sistemi vitali”. seguendo una direzione almeno in parte diversa da quella di korsgaard, i due autori sostengono in sostanza che il pensiero di kant contiene implicitamente un rispetto rivolto, più che verso i singoli soggetti ed enti di natura, verso il complesso “sistema naturale” di cui l’essere umano stesso fa parte. anche se è probabilmente vero, come afferma kant, che non esisterà mai un vero “newton del filo d’erba” (kant [1790] 1997, 483), l’uomo ha il dovere sia di sentirsi parte della natura sia di cercare di comprendere come contribuire al mantenimento dell’equilibrio dinamico naturale. 4. riattualizzare kant a dire il vero l’etica kantiana, se non si guarda a essa cercando di rinvenirne le presunte radici non antropocentriche, è già abbondantemente considerata all’interno del dibattito che contraddistingue le etiche ambientali – e non solo. su di essa, infatti, si fonda proprio quell’antropocentrismo riformista che ancora oggi rappresenta la prospettiva più adottata e accettata all’interno del dibattito culturale che accompagna la transizione ecologica. la morale kantiana, dunque, potrebbe anche non avere bisogno di essere rivisitata per fornire spunti utili a fronteggiare il contesto di crisi ambientale, ecologica e vitale che contraddistingue la contemporaneità. ciò che occorre fare, semmai, è capire se una sua più semplice riattualizzazione possa essere non solo legittima, ma anche sufficiente ad applicarne i principi anche al di fuori della sfera umana. la legittimità di riattualizzare il pensiero di kant deriva anzitutto dalla constatazione che il filosofo di königsberg, nell’elaborare la propria filosofia, guarda al mondo con gli occhi di un uomo razionale che, nel ’700, si rappresentava una realtà logocentrica. il suo antropocentrismo, però, se osservato attentamente non appare né forte né specista: esso è anzi, più che altro, un antroposcopismo. come suggerisce l’utilizzo del suffisso di origine greca skopeo (che significa osservare, guardare o esaminare), il suggerimento è di guardare all’etica kantiana come una teoria morale che pur senza negare che i valori morali emergano da una visione etica del mondo prettamente umana, accoglie una concezione della realtà in cui noi esseri umani guardiamo alla natura non più da una posizione distante o sopraelevata, ma dall’interno (safit 2013, 79). l’antroposcopismo di kant non lo porta, infatti, né a negare simpatia, e addirittura amore, per relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ immanuel kant e l’etica ambientale 69 le altre forme di vita, né a distaccare l’uomo da una natura intesa come un insieme di relazioni tra esseri organizzati (kant [1787] 1997, 167). egli non esclude gli animali non umani dalla comunità morale per mere differenze di specie, ma perché è essenziale, per il suo sistema etico, che tutti i membri del regno dei fini contribuiscano al fondamento della morale. se kant approda a un antropocentrismo, questo è senz’altro debole e molto lontano da quello, ad esempio, di un descartes, in quanto guarda, sì, alla realtà da un punto di vista esclusivamente umano, ma riconosce anche nell’uomo, non più il legittimo dominatore e sfruttatore del creato, ma un legittimato, dalla ragione e da dio, custode, amministratore e pastore del mondo. una prospettiva, insomma, ben diversa da quella specista e fortemente antropocentrica di diversi altri sistemi etici, e molto più vicina a svariate altre proposte contemporanee di etica ambientale: quelle della responsabilità, del rispetto per le condizioni di vita degli animali e di uno sviluppo sostenibile con le dinamiche naturali. a tutto ciò si deve aggiungere che la riflessione morale di kant, oltre a concentrarsi più sulla moralità delle relazioni che su quella dei semplici atti, è essenzialmente formale. a maggior ragione è dunque del tutto lecito tornare all’etica kantiana rileggendone semplicemente la forma dei doveri relazionali descritti, riattualizzandola in base al contesto contemporaneo e applicandola agli animali non umani e agli enti naturali. per quanto riguarda la questione animale, kant è esplicitamente contro la caccia, le attività di diletto (quindi spettacoli, zoo ma anche beni di lusso) e la sperimentazione animale. è senza dubbio che egli, almeno per scopi alimentari, intenda legittimare l’uccisione degli animali non umani, come è fuori discussione che verso di essi riconosca soltanto dei doveri indiretti che sono poi in realtà doveri diretti verso l’umanità. d’altronde è bene non dimenticare che, da un lato l’essere umano è anche un animale e in quanto tale ha il diritto (e non però anche il dovere) di predare, mentre dall’altro l’antroposcopismo kantiano, e forse ancor prima umano, anche ammettendo che sia eludibile, non è di certo facile da eludere – altrimenti si sarebbero già riconosciuti veri e propri diritti morali o civili a ciò che umano non è. ciononostante, alcune parole dell’autore lasciano aperta la porta anche a un diverso modo di intendere il nostro rapporto con il regno animale, astenendoci dall’avvalercene quando è possibile. anche se kant, nella metafisica dei costumi, riconosce la simpatia come un dovere (kant [1797] 1991, 325), seguire questa strada – connessa a quella sensiocentrica della sensibilità e della razionalità animale – è a mio avviso imboccare un vicolo cieco all’interno del pensiero kantiano: per kant gli animali non umani restano indiscutibilmente “semplici mezzi” e “cose”. nella stessa opera, però, il filosofo sembra riconoscere, in un passo in relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ matteo andreozzi 70 cui parla di sperimentazione, che il nostro diritto a sfruttare o uccidere animali regge solo fintanto che non è possibile “raggiungere lo stesso fine con altri mezzi” (kant [1797] 1991, 305). è su questo punto che, a mio parere, vale la pena insistere nell’allargare e riattualizzare il discorso del filosofo tedesco in chiave animalista, andando oltre gli usi sperimentali degli animali non umani. sono gli altri mezzi, l’alternativa, oggi a disposizione, che potrebbe portare kant ad essere un valido difensore contemporaneo della causa animalista. come si è già avuto modo dire, infatti, un uomo occidentale del xxi secolo non ha alcun bisogno di utilizzare, sfruttare o uccidere animali né per affezione o compagnia, né per sport o intrattenimento, né per produrre vestiario o beni di lusso, e men che meno per la propria alimentazione: vi sono, oggi, innumerevoli alternative. le etiche ambientali portano oggi numerosi argomenti, sia diretti che indiretti, a supporto di questa tesi. senza che ci si soffermi oltre a riflettere sul tema, è allora sufficiente notare che solo l’abitudine legata ai costumi e al gusto potrebbe farci oggi persistere in un atteggiamento che, a questo punto, anche kant giudicherebbe probabilmente immorale. anche per quanto concerne la transizione ecologica, è sufficiente restare fedeli ai principi formali dell’etica kantiana per rileggere il filosofo in chiave ambientalista. kant, nella critica del giudizio teleologico interna alla critica del giudizio, definisce l’uomo come un “prodotto di natura” e, anche se è convinto (probabilmente a ragione) che non sarà mai possibile possedere una piena conoscenza ecosistemica, riconosce in natura un progetto trascendente che, per quanto imperscrutabile alla ragione umana, comprende anche l’essere umano e lo coinvolge direttamente nel preservare l’armonia di natura (kant [1790] 1997, 399-663). egli poi, in tal senso, difende esplicitamente sia il “bello di natura” sia le “cose di natura”, rispettivamente nella metafisica dei costumi e nelle lezioni di etica (kant [1797] 1991; kant [1780-1783] 1984). il primo ci prepara ad amare qualcosa “indipendentemente da ogni considerazione di utilità” (kant [1797] 1991, 304), mentre le risorse non vanno sprecate, perché “possono essere ancora usate” da altri (kant [1780-1783] 1984, 275). è su questi aspetti che allora forse converrebbe soffermarsi per ricontestualizzare kant in ottica ambientalista: è proprio in vista degli altri (le generazioni a venire) che il richiamo oggi tanto diffuso alla sostenibilità si propone di preservare le risorse naturali affinché sia possibile servirsene anche in futuro. il concetto di “sviluppo sostenibile”, formalizzato nel 1987, fa riferimento infatti a “uno sviluppo che soddisfi i bisogni del presente senza compromettere la capacità delle generazioni future di soddisfare i propri” (commissione mondiale per l’ambiente e lo sviluppo [1987] 1990, 71). oggi sappiamo, inoltre, che tanto l’armonia quanto il bello di relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ immanuel kant e l’etica ambientale 71 natura richiedono, per essere preservati, un’attenzione ecosistemica che coinvolge tutte le specie viventi e che è molto superiore a quella fino a oggi riservata dall’uomo nei confronti dell’ambiente. esistono, anche in questo contesto, numerosi argomenti in grado di dimostrare tale urgenza, ed è sempre l’abitudine la probabile principale causa del perdurare di un atteggiamento di mancata tutela della natura: un comportamento che, dunque, forse anche kant giudicherebbe oggi immorale, poiché contrario sia ai doveri verso se stessi in quanti esseri animali e morali, sia ai doveri diretti e indiretti verso gli altri, siano essi presenti o futuri, persone o cose. in conclusione, per ridare centralità al pensiero kantiano all’interno del dibattito etico contemporaneo non è dunque necessario riconoscere in kant i principi formali di un’etica sensiocentrica, biocentrica o ecocentrica. il punto, semmai, è se il suo antroposcopismo, che oggi accosteremmo a un antropocentrismo riformista, sia davvero consono al contesto culturale contemporaneo e sufficiente a fornire una guida utile a fronteggiare la crisi ambientale, ecologica e vitale che contraddistingue la nostra epoca. l’etica è quasi indubbiamente un “regno” umano: il bene non è qualcosa di natura, ma un costrutto inestricabile dalla natura umana e a essa indispensabile. non è forse possibile uscire del tutto dalla prospettiva antroposcopica, ma questo non significa per forza che sia anche impossibile riconoscere che, ancora prima di essere divenuti parte della “comunità morale”, eravamo e siamo ancora tutti membri di una “comunità naturale” più vasta. se il regno dei fini è accostabile antropocentricamente, il regno naturale richiede lo sforzo continuo di guardare alla realtà da un punto di vista non antropocentrico. kant si allontana da chi sostiene che è sempre lecito abbattere un albero o sfruttare un animale non umano. il dovere indiretto kantiano ci impone di lasciare lì l’albero affinché altri ne possano godere e di non utilizzare altre forme di vita se abbiamo alternative. una simile etica deontologica si rivela certamente utile, in questo momento, ad agire rapidamente con responsabilità nei confronti dell’ambiente e degli animali. ciò non nega, tuttavia, che sia possibile in futuro andare oltre l’antroposcopismo e riconoscere ad animali non umani ed enti di natura, un valore intrinseco su cui noi non possiamo mai veramente essere giudici imparziali e verso cui abbiamo dei veri e propri doveri diretti. relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ matteo andreozzi 72 riferimenti bibliografici american dietetic association and dietitians of canada. 2003. “position of the american dietetic association and dietitians of canada: vegetarian diets”. journal of the american dietetic association 103 (6): 748-765. anderson-gold, sharon. 2008. “the purposiveness of nature: kant and environmental ethics”. in law and peace in kant’s philosophy / recht und 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(1987) 1990. il futuro di noi tutti. rapporto della commissione mondiale per l’ambiente e lo sviluppo. trad. it. di francesco saba sardi. milano: bompiani. eibl-eibesfeldt, irenäus. (1976) 1995. i fondamenti dell’etologia. il comportamento degli animali e dell’uomo. trad. it. di annamaria sassi e felicita scapini. mi lano: adelphi. ferraguti, marco, e castellacci, carla, a cura di. 2011. evoluzione. modelli e processi. milano torino: pearson italia. kant, immanuel. (1780-1783) 1984. lezioni di etica. trad. it. di augusto guerra. roma bari: laterza. kant, immanuel. (1787) 1997. critica della ragion pratica. trad. it. di francesco capra. roma bari: laterza. kant, immanuel. (1790) 1997. critica del giudizio. trad. it. di alfredo gargiulo. ro ma bari: laterza. kant, immanuel. (1797) 1991. la metafisica dei costumi. trad. it. di giovanni vidari. roma bari: laterza. kant, immanuel. (1785) 2003. fondazione della metafisica dei costumi. trad. it. di vittorio mathieu. milano: bompiani. korsgaard, christine m. 2005. “fellow creatures: kantian ethics and our duties to animals”. in the tanner lectures on human values, xxv, edited by grethe b. peterson, 77-110. salt lake city: university of utah press. korsgaard, christine m. 2011. “interacting with animals: a kantian account”. in the oxford handbook of animal ethics, edited by tom l. beauchamp and raymond g. frey, 91-118. oxford: oxford university press. lucht, marc. 2007. “does kant have anything to teach us about environmental ethics?”. american journal of economics and sociology 66 (1): 127-149. millennium ecosystem assessment. 2005. ecosystems and human well-being: statement from the board. washington: island press. narveson, jan. 1977. “animal rights”. canadian journal of philosophy 7: 161-178. odum, eugene p., e barrett, gary w. 2007. fondamenti di ecologia, a cura di loreto rossi. trad. it. di alberto basset. padova: piccin. safit, ilan. 2013. “the ethics of survival: responsibility and sacrifice in environmental ethics”. phenomenology & practice 7 (2): 78-99. relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ immanuel kant e l’etica ambientale 73 copyright (©) 2022 matteo andreozzi editorial format and graphical layout: copyright (©) led edizioni universitarie this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives – 4.0 international license how to cite this paper: andreozzi, matteo. 2022. “immanuel kant e l’etica ambientale. tre proposte per rivisitare (e una per riattualizzare) la morale kantiana”. relations. beyond anthropocentrism 10 (2): 55-73. doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-202202-andm relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ relations_10-2-2022_00b_sommario.pdf studies and research contributions what we owe owls nonideal relationality among fellow creatures in the old growth forest ben almassi the “cruel absurdity” of human violence and its consequences a vegan studies analysis of a pandemic novel jessica murray duality of abuse and care empathy in sara gruen’s water for elephants moumita bala smriti singh immanuel kant e l’etica ambientale tre proposte per rivisitare (e una per riattualizzare) la morale kantiana matteo andreozzi ecosocial autonomy as an educational ideal jani pulkki sami keto comments, debates, reports and interviews is there a moral problem in predation? francesco allegri author guidelines distributed skills in camel herding: cooperation in a human-animal relationship in somaliland 5 is sn 2 2 8 0 -9 9 5 3 beyond anthropocentrism 1 • january 2013 inside the emotional lives of non-human animals a minding animals international utrecht 2012 pre-conference event special issue (genoa, italy, 12-13 may, 2012) edited by m. andreozzi, r. bennison, a. massaro, s. tonutti capabilities approach and animal bioethics • michele panzera animals and our emotions. how to approach the study of an interspecific community? • sabrina tonutti advocacy and animal rights • kim stallwood the emotional lives of animals: a christian perspective • alma massaro – gianfranco nicora animalia: ontology and ethics in weak antispeciesism • leonardo caffo the contemporary debate on experimentation • susanna penco – rosagemma ciliberti non-human animals and genetic engineering • arianna ferrari the relationship between humans and other animals in european animal welfare legislation • paola sobbrio human’s best friends? • matteo andreozzi elationsre l a t io n s . b e y o n d a n t h r o p o c e n t r is m 1 • 2 0 1 3 r 8.1-2 november 2020 finding agency in nonhumans special issue edited by anne aronsson, fynn holm, melissa kaul introduction finding agency in nonhumans 7 anne aronsson fynn holm melissa kaul studies and research contributions conceptualizing robotic agency: social robots in elder care 17 in contemporary japan anne aronsson fynn holm “its hand around my throat”: the social rendering of borrelia 37 ritti soncco distributed skills in camel herding: cooperation 57 in a human-animal relationship in somaliland raphael schwere a sea cow goes to court: extinction and animal agency 77 in a struggle against militarism marius palz is skrei a historical norwegian figure? the nomadic symbiosis 97 of fish and humans in the lofoten islands nafsika papacharalampous relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ relations. beyond anthropocentrism 6 “agents of description”: animals, affect, and care 115 in thalia field’s experimental animals: a reality fiction (2016) shannon lambert comments, debates, reports and interviews on midgley and scruton: some limits of a too moderate 137 animal ethics francesco allegri author guidelines 145 relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 57 distributed skills in camel herding cooperation in a human-animal relationship in somaliland raphael schwere universität zürich doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2020-0102-schw schwere@vmz.uzh.ch abstract this article examines interspecies cooperation in camel herding in somaliland. it presents the case of a particular joint activity in this task-scape: moving a camel herd, by leading and driving it, from the night-camp to the daytime grazing area and back. the analytical aim is to clarify the role that skills and nonhuman agency play in the constitution of cooperative human-camel relationships. on the basis of empirical data, collected in a multispecies ethnographic project by following and observing one herd and herder closely, this article demonstrates how nonhuman agency, as an individual capacity to engage in an activity and an epistemological potential, manifests in this human-camel cooperative task. cooperation is made possible through human-camel sociality and intersubjectivity, through the ability to interpret and respond to each other, and it depends on the empathetic acknowledgement of the enabling or disabling powers of each counterpart, her or his agency. leading and driving camels is a skilled practice requiring the responding and enabling capacities of the cooperation partner. hence, it is a case of distributed skills – distributed in the sense that skills of humans and nonhumans are intertwined in this practice, that they complement each other. keywords: affective apprenticeship; camelidae agency; camels; distributed skills; dromedaries; ethnocamelology; herding; human-animal cooperation; multispecies ethnography; somaliland. 1. introduction my first experience of camel herding on my own in somaliland was demoralizing. the herd clearly expressed their indisposition toward my naive and desperate efforts to assume control and make them move toward the nearby well – which was the task i had been given on that september morning in 2017. the camels only got under way grudgrelations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2020-0102-schw mailto:schwere@vmz.uzh.ch https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ raphael schwere 58 ingly, pausing after every couple of meters, and dispersing in all directions. they did not understand the purpose of my fussing. when they eventually realized that they were being offered water from the berkad, the water-harvesting basin, they proceeded in their own way, refusing to queue and wait until the previous group had finished drinking. one even kicked me. luckily, its two-toed leathery padded foot did not hit me with full force 1. i failed at my task and was subjected to this vehement snub because the camels and i were not (yet) acquainted. the camels seemed to consider my actions an affront. there was no social relation between us, and therefore no cooperation. this article examines interspecies cooperation in camel herding in somaliland. it presents the empirical case of a particular joint activity in this task-scape: moving a herd, by leading and driving it, from the nightcamp to the grazing area and back. the analytical aim is to clarify the role that skills and nonhuman agency play in the constitution of cooperative human-camel relationships. by following and observing the herd and herder closely, it became apparent that this collective endeavor was a result of skills distributed between human and camels. when reviewing literature on camel herding, it is easy to lose yourself in the vast world of pastoralism research. what is immediately interesting here is that pastoralism has also been viewed through the prism of the anthropology of work and labor (for an overview see beck and klute 1991). this body of research on pastoralists’ labor includes studies on camel herding. the german anthropologist of labor gerd spittler, for example, differentiates two forms of camel herding: to pasture (“weiden”, unattended by the herder) and to tend (“hüten”, to shepherd), the main difference being that the former involves the work of searching for camels at one point – an endeavor that can take “days or even weeks” (spittler 2016, 213-219; 1998, 121-135). what struck me most, however, when reviewing social anthropological pastoralism research on camel herding and labor, was that the animals do not appear as actors in the texts: neither as laborers, nor as beings recognized as “persons” – as piers locke (2017) would put it – with their own minds and their agency. 1 mild violent encounters with animals seem to be a common fieldwork experience of multispecies ethnographers. for example, radhika govindrajan was “butted” by goats she was supposed to herd (2018, 29-30), piers locke was surprised by a “reprimanding slap” from the trunk of a working elephant (locke 2017, 365-366), and aline von atzigen was stung by a bee while collecting honey (personal communication). none of the three interpreted their experience as a random mishap, seeing it as carrying meaning in their interspecies cooperative work context. relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ distributed skills in camel herding 59 the absence of analysis of animals as laborers has only recently become the subject of criticism and lively debate in human-animal studies. the anthropologists sarah besky and alex blanchette (2019), for example, explain this lacuna as a result of what they call the “naturalization of work”. this is a normative socio-cultural process that defines labor as an integral, “unquestionable”, “necessary and inevitable”, and “even desirable” component of life (ibid., 7-12). this pertains to human and (most) animal lives. hence, at this moment in the “history of human-animal interaction as a continuum of exploitation”, animals are conceived as “natural laborers” (noske in braidotti 2006, 104). but what kind of labor is it that animals provide? the human geographer maan barua sheds light on animals as “workers in the shadow of capitalism” with “their unwaged labors […] rendered invisible, both by working practices of accumulation, and conceptualizations reducing them to raw material […] or fixed capital […]” (barua 2019, 653). he differentiates between ecological (e.g. pollinators), affective (e.g. pets) and metabolic animal labor. the latter is performed in the camel herding setting i am describing in this text. the camels’ metabolic labor is their “fleshly becoming” or “body work” of reproducing and producing commodities (milk and meat) (haraway and wacquant in barua 2019, 653). the human laborer counterpart of the camel is the herder. his (camel herding is a male bastion in somaliland) task assignments are both legwork and supervision. on the one hand, he has to provide for the camelidae laborers (access to food, water, shelter, medical care, etc.) and, on the other hand, he has to discipline the camels according to the regime and vision of the herd’s owner. hence, there is some sort of mutuality in their relationship. along these lines, the findings of sociologist and zootechnician jocelyne porcher and the agricultural engineer tiphaine schmitt on the question of what dairy cows’ “animal work” consists of, are no surprise. porcher and schmitt attest that cows “invest their intelligence and affects in the activity of work”, that they adapt to and trust each other, sometimes “cheat” (e.g. pretending to submit to a farmer’s will, only until she/he faces away) and – as per the focus of this article – they cooperate (porcher and schmitt 2012, 56). following barua’s structural argument, i would like to contour camels as laborers and, at the same time, follow porcher and schmitt in rendering them visible as personas with individual minds and agency. hence, the interspecies cooperation i am analyzing is between human and camelidae laborers who engage together in leading and driving the herd, on the basis of distributed embodied knowledge. relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ raphael schwere 60 2. situating human-camel relations in somaliland it was coming up to eight o’clock in the morning. camels (geel in somali, sg., i.e. dromedary) and herders, both wide awake, started to get jittery. the milking of the dairy camels (irmaan) that had started at daybreak was finished and the herd was set to leave the xero for the relatively close browsing and grazing grounds. the xero (pronounce “hhero”) is a circular, roofless camel enclosure (corral in spanish/american-english) built by herders from cut-off thorny brushes, divided into four or more compartments. these are meant to separate different groups of camels. one section is designated for camel foals (nirig) with their mothers which are still allowed by the herders to be suckled (xagjir); another is for the other females (hal), young camels (qaalin) and the stallion (barqab). a third space is used for the other mature males (rati or awr), and at least one section reserved for the herders (geeljire) and their campfire 2. this particular xero was located just a few meters from the herd owner’s family homestead. the camels had been corralled there because the vegetation around the homestead of the settled family was still relatively green at that time of the year, in september 2018, in the transitory period between the second minor dry season (xagaa) and the minor rainy season (dayr). moreover, the camel herd owner had access to what he referred to as a “garden” (beerta), an area nearby with lush and ample vegetation; a stretch of land of approximately fifteen walking minutes’ length and width. this kind of arrangement is popular with commercial camel milk traders, like nur, who can afford renting private land for grazing and for whom the closeness to the urban milk market is crucial. if it were not for this opportunity, which allowed the camel herd to browse and graze nearby, the geeljire would probably had left this xero in order to relocate the animals from pasture to pasture. the beerta lay approximately five kilometers in a beeline southeast from the homestead – both located between garabis and sheik moldhle, about a one-hour ride by pickup on a track leaving somaliland’s capital hargeysa toward the southwest. before returning to the action this article is concerned with, the empirical material on distributed skills, i will first outline how camelhuman relations are “situated” in the study context, following the philosopher thiemo breyer and the social and cultural anthropologist thomas 2 the corpus of somali camel terminology is vast (e.g. liberman 2004). the terms mentioned here do not include their plural and gendered forms. geelxir is the plural form of geeljire, for example. relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ distributed skills in camel herding 61 widlok (2018, 7). to begin with, certain animals are considered more or less important than others. for somalilanders, the camel is thought superlative in every respect: in somali, it is called boqorka xoolaha, the king of all animals. it is culturally iconic, social decisive, politically pivotal 3, and economically essential 4. among the somali regions, which host by far the largest camel population worldwide, somaliland claims the most – approximately 6,855,000 heads. this is, with around 10.75 camels per km2, the highest camel density globally (breulmann et al. 2007, 15). somaliland, which declared its independence from somalia in 1991, is a fully-fledged, yet not internationally recognized country. but despite the territory’s lack of international recognition and its fragile political status in the region, it is consolidating and expanding its area of control and domains of influence within its self-proclaimed borders with ethiopia, djibouti and the puntland state of somalia 5. concurrently with this political stabilization 6, economy and life in the “de facto state” (pegg 2017) are changing at a fast pace. it is experiencing new migratory trends, most importantly youth emigration, diaspora returnees and internal rural-to-urban migration. there are economic reconfigurations, like the advancing commercialization of the camel market and commodification of animals, new livestock trade relations with asia, and diasporic investments. these changes are altering the social fabric of the country – and so are ecological changes such as the higher frequency of droughts, and environmental degradation. in the midst of this turmoil, however, the importance of the dromedary for human socio-economic organization and identity construction, seems to have persisted. the one-humped camel remains the iconic animal of the region that it has been for a long time, and human dependence on it endures, even though the role of camels and people’s relations to them have changed and are continuing to change. camels are witness 3 e.g. mansur (1995, 108-109). 4 the livestock industry is the country’s largest economic sector, estimated at 28 percent. 65 percent of all somalilanders, about 3.5 to 4 million people, make a living by working in animal production or in related lines of business (fox 2015, 11; somaliland ministry of national planning and development 2015, 4-12). 5 bradbury (2008) and walls (2014) provide the most comprehensive overviews of somaliland’s political history. 6 somaliland’s recent history of civil disruption: colonialization, independence in 1960, changes of government, the ogaden war, state collapse, and the disastrous somali civil war (in somaliland between the late-1980s and 1991) which led to secession from the then-somali democratic republic and its self-declaration as the republic of somaliland (formerly the british somaliland protectorate). relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ raphael schwere 62 ing an increasing physical distance from humans and are experiencing the intensification of human-camel production and trade strategies firsthand due to the growing consumption of their milk and meat 7. these days, for example, it is likely for a camel in somaliland to experience being relocated from an open ranching life to a zero-grazing camel stable. this growing distance between humans and animals and concurrently an unvarying dependence on and abundant consumption of animal products, is exactly what the historian (and camel expert) richard bulliet describes as part of a current global transition period from the domestic to the post-domestic era of human-animal relations (2005, 3). at first glance, this historical narrative of a unidirectional transformation of human-animal relations – at least from a structural macro-perspective – seems to apply to my case as well. with my microperspective on skills and camelidae agency, however, i aim to critically interrogate the unilinearity of this narrative using the empirical insights gleaned during my fieldwork. i am interested in the specificity of the case of camels in somaliland, in how camels and human agents are actively shaping their relationship in the wake of the described social and ecological dynamics. hence, human-camel relations in somaliland are situated in a singular social and ecological environment that has been, and is still being, shaped by the duo’s mutually dependent lifestyle, which, in turn, is constantly adapting to endoand exogenic dynamics that impact on their shared lifeworld. 3. hermeneutics of skill and affective apprenticeship as direct interactions between camels and camel professionals take place on the level of the body and are mediated through body practices, the starting point for this study is an examination of the skilled practices performed in human-animal relations. according to tim ingold’s definition (2000, 5), skills are: […] capabilities of action and perception of the whole organic being (indissolubly mind and body) situated in a richly structured environment. as properties of human organisms, skills are thus as much biological as cultural. […] skills are not transmitted from generation to generation but 7 according to delgado (2003), meat consumption in developing countries has grown thrice as much as in developed countries, resulting in environmental and health issues. somaliland is no exception in this regard. relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ distributed skills in camel herding 63 are regrown in each, incorporated into the modus operandi of the developing human organism through training and experience in the performance of particular tasks. furthermore, “environmentally situated agents” develop skills in “histories of continuing involvement with human and non-human constituents” (ingold 2000, 5-10). hence, if skills are inscribed into human and non-human bodies through practice, and are socially and environmentally embedded, i am asking: what role do skills play in human-animal relations? or, more specifically, how do skills form human-animal relations, and how are they formed in such? furthermore, are skills shared or co-conditioned with non-human actors? the data and conclusions presented in this text are based on participant observation during nine months of fieldwork, which i conducted during three research stays (2016, 2017, 2018) in somaliland, in two urban and two rural areas that i chose for their ecological and social characteristics. i started my doctoral fieldwork with no prior knowledge or experience of living or working with camels. this limitation prompts some methodological questions. the interdisciplinary methodological debate on how to conduct ethnographic research with animals has only just begun. promising starting points, approaches and arguments can be found in the works of the philosopher dominique lestel, the social anthropologist florence brunois and the cognitive psychologist florence gaunet (2006), or the social anthropologists raymond madden (2014) and irina wenk (2016). within this growing body of methodological literature, the humanelephant studies scholars piers locke and nicholas lainé have inspired me greatly. following locke, i aim to contribute to the advancement of multispecies ethnographic approaches by testing what he calls “affective apprenticeship” with “non-human informants” (2017). “affective apprenticeship” is participant observation tailored to obtain more-than-human understandings of the research subject. engaging with camels in direct bodily interactions as an apprentice of a camel herder enabled me to shift my perspective to the animals’ lifeworlds. participating in their lives between the day grazing areas and night camps or xero through waking and walking with, touching, calling, hitting (gently), tethering, guarding, searching, watering, feeding, corralling, milking, branding, cuddling or mourning them, bestowed me with interspecies encounters that ultimately led me to concede personalities to individual camels and experience interspecies acquaintance, companionship, and cooperation at first hand. the respective autoethnographic notes from my field diaries form parts of the basis of this text. relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ raphael schwere 64 the apprentice-master relationship was with, among others (including the camels themselves), the geeljire jamaac. jamaac is a calm, kind, single man in his fifties from benaadir in southeastern somalia, near mogadishu, with no relatives in somaliland. every year he works for the herd owner and city trader nur, he earns a camel. he has earned twelve so far. all expenses for the needs of his modest and dedicated lifestyle are met by nur. that is why jamaac only very rarely leaves his work (for example, merely to buy new clothes in the city). day in, day out, year after year he is with the camels. jamaac was my macalin (teacher) and i his arday (student). he did not talk much. the guiding principle was: “just watch me doing it and do as i do!” 8. above, i narrated how i was caught on the wrong foot when starting my herding apprenticeship. a few days after that incident, however, my relation to the herd improved. i lost my fear, which made it possible to start establishing relationships with some individuals. with marwo, for example, a then-five-year-old female camel, i intuitively felt an affective bond. since we became acquainted, after i was told that she was a very social being, we interacted through exchanging caresses. she sought bodily contact by bending towards me, touching my head and shoulders with her head, and i petted her neck. directly engaging with camels, i learned – as thom van dooren et al. formulate it – paying “attention to how they craft shared lives and worlds” (2016, 6) and thereby, i have to admit, experienced “being perpetually pulled beyond the limits of [my] own taken-for-granted world” (narayan in mcgranahan 2014). furthermore, “in paying attention to others [i gained] a new understanding and appreciation of the human” (van dooren et al. 2016, 14). i was profoundly and lastingly impressed by the herders’ knowledge, explicit and tacit, their sensory capabilities, and intuition, empathy, sensitivity in interacting and cooperating with nonhuman actors. for this paper, i deeply dived into my data to recall the sensory and affective impressions with the animals and herders in the respective environments. in the following sections, i return to this empirical material. 8 in a herding setting like the one i am describing it is common that a herder works alone. in other settings, when the herd is far away from the homestead on its transhumant journey for example, herders work in a team of two, three or more. another human-human relation that is outside the scope of this article is the dynamic between me, the researcher, and jamaac. in short, this research benefitted greatly from jamaac’s generous and patient, wordless instructions and trust, which eventually resulted in human-human cooperation, in the form of my assistance under his guidance, as well. relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ distributed skills in camel herding 65 4. leading and driving camels to the “xero”, the empirical case once he had driven the herd from the xero to the garden, the geeljire’s day, spent in the shade of a tree, was calm, only occasionally interrupted by his inspection rounds in order to ensure that the freely strolling munching animals did not disperse too far. then, in the late afternoon, at around half past four, the herder set out to spot the animals that had wandered around on their own accord, to first gather and then walk them back to the xero where they all needed to arrive at dusk. in order to find the scattered camels, he combed the beerta by circumnavigating the largest possible area to which furthest ranges he suspected the animals could have roamed. from the periphery he sent the animals to an inner circle. once the 360-degree circuit was completed, he narrowed his round, until he succeeded in gathering all the camels on one spot, from which he then walked them from the grazing area back to the resting place for the night. in the process of gathering the camels, interspecies cooperation is required. from where jamaac found the camels in the beerta he sent them to the gathering spot by shooing them in that direction. after a few meters, the camels understood, relented to jamaac’s intention and moved, some more, others less disciplined, towards the meeting place. the cooperative effort of the camels was to walk, more or less independently, to the gathering place, which they knew, and to wait there patiently until the herder signaled their joint departure for the xero. instead of waiting, the camels could have departed on their own. they knew the way, there was no fence hindering them and the herder was out of reach looking for other camels. but they waited. they were aware of the herder’s role and included him in their plan for retreating to the safety of the xero. from the camels’ perspective, the herder was “drawn into the process as an active co-participant” (stépanoff 2012, 309) 9. 9 vice versa, the camels are drawn into the herder’s routine to extract their milk in the xero or follow the camel owner’s plan to drive the fattened he-camel, via the livestock market, to the slaughterhouse. in fact, “human and animal knowledge is highly asymmetrical, although complementary” (stépanoff 2012, 309). hence, this paper’s focus on cooperation and distributed skills tends to disguise the reality that animals are (too) often worked with against their will and by employing brute force and deadly violence. this is, of course, also true for the cooperation between camels and herders. ultimately, their relationship is far from symmetrical. and in this regard, a critical scrutiny of the human ethics of (camel) care and a discussion of animals’ resistance, how they refuse to work (dave 2019), revolt (despret 2016, 21-27) or strike back, like the camel that kicked me, are unaccounted for in this paper. relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ raphael schwere 66 after gathering, the controlled moving of a camel herd required the herder to command further skills. not least, of course, a thorough knowledge of the place but, most importantly, driving skills. accomplishing this task is impossible without the cooperation of the animals. the camels do not walk neatly in a bunch or in an orderly line, or at the same pace, or even toward the same direction. they walk at their own tempo, pause, shear off, stop to nibble here and there, quarrel with their mates or even decide they have not sufficiently filled their stomachs and (try) to return to the garden. others cannot wait to reach the xero and speed off on their own. hence, they do not simply react to the stimuli of the herder, conditioned like a pavlovian dog. they meet their bodily (hunger, tiredness, or bulging udder) and social (walking with a significant other or alone, playing, etc.) needs and act independently and nonuniformly. this expresses their individual agency. but the time of the day, the verbal and nonverbal communication with the beings of their own and the human species, the direction, the longing for their place of rest, safety before dusk and, for some, their full udders being milked after sunset, evokes a general atmosphere of departure and brings to mind that the collective is homeward bound. at this moment, camels and herders know both the way and the why. at the rear of the moving trek, driving for humans means steering the animals at the end and flanks of the band in the direction towards the xero, while the cooperating animals lead the rest and largest number of the group on the right path, directly, without detours, independently, back to the xero. one of these leaders is the barqab, the dominant stallion. his body is massive and muscular, and he is the tallest in the herd. moreover, he features distinctive authoritarian character traits. his physique, charisma, competence, and demeanor (cf. max weber’s charismatic leadership) are efficacious to the extent that his leading does not need much active intervention on the herder’s behalf. the herd follow him. the caring camel mothers chivvy along their meandering offspring, and the playful youngsters gang up and walk together 10. notwithstanding, the fact that the herd arrives at the xero before the driving herder underscores the claim that camels cooperate with 10 alpha male, female carer, and gendered hierarchy sound like anthropomorphic gender stereotypes. i am neither equipped to formulate nor inclined to reproduce a “theory of dominance” in the camel herd. despite the fieldnotes above, i would answer vinciane despret’s question, “might the dominance of males be a myth?” (2016, 59) affirmatively. female camels are leaders as well, and this view is clearly attested by the “metaphorical representation of the nation-state as the she-camel” (maandeeq) (orwin 2016) in a well-known somali poetry debate. relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ distributed skills in camel herding 67 humans in the task of leading the party home, and that the leading camels fulfil their part in the interspecies congregation in a skillful manner. the demands of the job for the cooperating human and the trouble they encounter in conducting even the unruliest among the camels toward the corral, further stresses the claim that: considering that one human (if not supported by colleagues) can drive a group of up to a hundred animals makes the inevitability of human-animal cooperation evident. it is impossible, for example, to visually keep track of all the camels. the herder needs to visually focus on the stony ground in order not to stumble, whilst keeping an eye on the near and far distance. he must not lose direction, must watch out for any dangers (e.g. predators like hyenas) but, most importantly, must not miss any camel that could easily and quickly disappear in the dry and dusty bush of withered small-leaved thorny shrubs, behind groups of umbrella thorned acacia trees (qudhac), thickets of the invasive prosopis juliflora (garanwaa or cali-garoob), patches of succulent, or the red or yellow flowered aloe megalacantha (dacar dhegweyn) (cf. pickering and awale 2018, 13, 22, 90, 98, on the respective flora on the hawd plateau.). furthermore, driving is strenuous. due to the relatively short legs of a human compared to a dromedary, the herder has to keep up with the fast pace, and remain sensorially concentrated for quite some time. the walk home from the gathering spot that particular evening overran by a full hour. furthermore, driving is communicating. the herders whistle and shout, “he!” or “aha-aha-aha!” meaning “walk” and “go”. messages like “this way!”, “stop eating!” or “let’s move” are communicated nonverbally by gesturing with hands or a stick, or by approaching the animal – depending on the message, in a slower or faster, kinder or more menacing manner. sometimes, the herder tries to make the camel run off in the right direction (and catch up with the group) by imitating a hyena. he does that by running crouched towards the camel, blowing up dust by dragging his herder stick behind him. mostly, however, communication is much easier. walking assertively toward a camel, like the barqab does, suffices to get the message across. if that does not work, or simply to ensure that some characters do not get into mischief, the herder touches, lightly slaps or pushes them, with his hand or stick. the geeljire hardly ever hit the animals hard. for their part, the camels communicate back. i observed that they signal their attention with a nod-like movement of the neck and, by extension the head, toward the herder, without turning toward him entirely. whether they are willing to comply, however, only becomes clear from their ensuing action. refusal or resistance is marked by turning toward relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ raphael schwere 68 the herder and staring, puffing themselves up, roaring, kicking, biting, or spitting. hence, human-camel cross-species communication is equally “both vocal and tactile”, as nicolas lainé remarks in his study on humanelephant relations (2016, 180), it requires interspecies sociality (cf. hurn 2012, 115, about elephants), and the limits of communication are set by one’s familiarity with the other’s abilities to “respond and understand”. therefore, camel herders “do not tend to ‘talk’ to the herd animals, as people converse with pets in western society”, they do not speak to them “like small children”, thus, they “do not tend to anthropomorphise” (cf. fijn 2011, 123, about mongolian herders and their herd animals). because they spend their lives together, camels and humans know how to interpret each other (cf. haraway in fijn 2011 on farmer-sheep-dog communication). furthermore, the herder’s choice of their mode of communication is not generic or arbitrary, but individualized. meaningful communication requires knowing the individual animals and recognizing them as personas with agency. recognizing camels individually (cf. cow herders’ recognition abilities in italian alps in grasseni 2004, 42) is also vital for knowing whether the herd is complete and for keeping an eye on the condition and wellbeing of each and every animal at all times. the herder knows them all – and all the camels know the herder. the animals are said to have good memory and recognition skills themselves. the geeljire knows the camels under his watch as personalities. facets of their personalities that are relevant for the herder to know when driving are traits like an animal’s role as a forerunner who leads his or her peers on the trail, or as a maverick who dislikes trotting with the group. some like walking in the group, some beside it, some fast, some slow, at the front or the end. and others behave stubbornly and do not want to walk at all. it can happen that the latter must even be left behind and collected later when the rest of the herd is safely enclosed in the xero or looked for the next morning (after worrying the whole night that it could have been attacked by a hyena). camels with this personality trait are called gooni daaq (lit. isolated grazing), meaning a “loner”. eventually the herd and the herder arrive at the xero, where the camels are directed into their respective compartments. there the herder is supported by a human helper, who then also assists in milking. once milking is done and the campfire is lit, it is time to rest. the herder eats his supper – a favorite being the somali corn porridge shuuro refined with camel milk and ghee – while the camels chew the cud. relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ distributed skills in camel herding 69 to take a camel herd from one place to another, to safely reach a xero before nightfall and the thick darkness of somaliland’s non-electrified countryside, interspecies cooperation is indispensable. completing one’s duties in this cooperative interspecies relationship successfully requires being equipped with experiential knowledge inscribed to one’s human or nonhuman body through practice, and embedded in the interspecies sociality. hence, moving a herd is a matter of distributed skills (in leading and driving) between humans and camels. 5. distributed skills and camelidae agency my ethno-camelological and more-than-human perspective is inspired by lively current debates in the interdisciplinary (hitherto, regrettably, mostly eurocentric) human-animal studies (ritvo 2007, 119). since “the animal turn” (ibid.) in the early 2000s (pedersen 2014, 13) in the wake of the “ontological turn” (cf. “narrow ontological turn” in kohn 2015), the new materialism and actor-network theory, scholars in this field postulate that animals are intricately entangled with human lives and hence must not be reduced to “mere objects to be utilized by the human subjects of ethnographic inquiry” (hurn 2012, 1). accordingly, a shift in anthropology towards acknowledging animals’ agency and subjectivity can be observed (e.g. in the growing number of publications and conferences on the subject). next, relating my own concept grounded in my empirical observations to recent work in human-animal studies, i will argue that relocating a herd of camels from a to b by hoof and by foot is a cooperative practice accomplished on the basis of skills distributed between human and camelidae actors. the key parameters of distributed skills are embodiment, interspecies sociality, intersubjectivity, and transformability. the skills required in this cooperative practice are leading (i.e. spearheading, routing, conducting a group of camels), and driving (to hurry along a group of camels). skills, as mentioned above, are inscribed into human and non-human bodies through practice in an intimate environment. skill is embodied knowledge. leading and driving is body work (walking, trotting, running, gesturing, shouting, spotting, listening, touching, kicking, etc.), and human and nonhuman bodies are finely attuned to each other and the sentient environment in a sensorial way. it is skills that form these perceptions and actions. the acquirement of these skills, through embodied knowledge transmission (e.g. through observation and imitation of master by apprentice), relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ raphael schwere 70 is socially embedded and is a result of the process that donna haraway calls co-evolution (2003, 26-32), natasha fijn termed “phylogenetic enculturation” (2011, 124) or marianne lien titled “biosocial becomings” (2015, 15-16). specifically, the distributed skills under consideration are socially embedded in a “hybrid human-animal community” (lestel et al. 2006 in stépanoff 2012, 288) that is characterized by mutual percipience, engagement and “co-dependence” (fijn 2011, 241-242). the herders’ and camels’ lives overlap temporally and spatially. they live in a “cross-species ecosocial landscape” (fijn 2011, 241) in which they share both domestic spaces (the xero) and pasturage (the beerta). their daily routines are synchronized. they even wake up and go to sleep at around the same time. the human-camel community depends on interspecies intersubjectivity. camels and humans recognize each other as individuals with certain character traits (hotspur, playful, earnest, indifferent, cuddly, etc.) and roles (leader, driver, follower, loner, guardian, etc.). in the group there is “mutual trust and empathic and communicative understanding” (lainé 2016, 200-201), developed in processes of co-evolution (since camels and humans started living together in the horn of africa) and co-socialization (while growing up and coming of age in a camel pastoralist community). cross-species communicative strategies are passed on from generation to generation, and individual enskilment occurs while inhabiting a lifeworld together. habituating is a matter of co-dependence (meat, milk, protection, water, salt, etc.) and affect, which “enables animal agency and subjectivity to emerge” (nyman and schuurman 2016) and “[e]mpathy, the ability to read emotions or body language and recognize how another is feeling, leads to much more effective and meaningful communication […]” (frans de waal 2009 in hurn 2012, 118-119). interspecies sociality enables “collaborative labour” (lainé 2016, 200-201). lastly, skills are not invariable. in somaliland, social and ecological dynamics are transforming the skills under consideration. there are examples of deskilling processes that render distributed skills obsolete, like for example the transportation of camels by lorry, or camel breeding in zero-grazing farms that do not require joint mobility. however, the opposite can be observed as well: an example of enskilment is the case of “city camels” that guide rural camels from the outskirts of the capital hargeysa to the livestock market in its center. this phenomenon is a consequence of social and ecological dynamics that have propelled urbanization and compelled humans and camels to adapt their distributed skillset of leading and driving to a new setting (this case will be presented in my forthcoming phd dissertation). thus, animals are not only agents but relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ distributed skills in camel herding 71 also historical actors (ingold 1994, 8-9; steinbrecher and krüger 2016), whose transformative role as close companions in human history and active co-constituents of their relations to, and the lifeworlds they share with, human communities, must be acknowledged (shipman 2011 and noske 1997 in ogden et al. 2013, 10). 6. conclusion in this text, i have shown that nonhuman agency, as an individual capacity to engage in an activity and an epistemological potential (the purposeful acquisition and application of knowledge/skills), manifests in human-camel cooperative tasks. cooperation is made possible through human-camel sociality and intersubjectivity, through the ability to interpret and respond to each other, and it depends on the empathetic acknowledgement of the enabling or disabling powers of each counterpart, her or his agency. leading and driving camels is a skilled practice requiring the responding and enabling capacities of both cooperation partners. hence, it is a case of distributed skills; distributed in the sense that skills of humans and nonhumans are intertwined in this practice, that they complement each other. addressing nonhuman agency and distributed skills in this way provides a interesting analytical opportunity. a post-anthropocentric perspective allows the co-construction of social worlds by multi-species communities in unison to be revealed, thereby unmasking the “privileged ontological status of humans as knowers” (kohn in hurn 2012, 204-205, 214). hence, i am putting forward this claim for discussion – that animals are skilled agents whose cooperation with humans is essential for certain labor relations – in order to argue against human exceptionalism, a long-held social anthropological key premise. with this argument, my work is aligned with anthropologists in current human-animal studies as mentioned above, since the animal turn. when human-animal relations are thought of as not simply hegemonic and reified, but intersubjective and based on mutual dependencies, it becomes apparent that cooperation between humans and (co-domesticated 11) animals not only occurs in the realm of the animal body, e.g. as physical animal labor that humans avail themselves of, but also in the sphere of the nonhuman mind 12: 11 the term “co-domestication” emphasizes “symmetrical relationships of coevolution” (see the “domestication reconsidered” debate in cassidy 2007). 12 theorizing “the nonhuman mind” and “nonhuman agency” generally involves a risk of neglecting the specificity of a particular species. in my forthcoming dissertation, relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ raphael schwere 72 human-animal cooperative teams depend on each other’s sociality, shared experiences, and skills. for this reason, i understand camels as agents in interand intraspecies relationships. moreover, a post-anthropocentric perspective epistemologically decolonizes notions of animals and their relationships to humans that were previously marked and devalued as beliefs of “pre-modern” animistic societies. actually, the current rethinking of what animals are and how humans actually relate to them seems to be a predominantly western concern. in somaliland, on the contrary, to attribute agency to animals is to state the obvious. camelidae agency is an experiential fact in somali pastoralist communities. jamaac, who instructed me how to drive camels and interact with them as camelidae agents, would not be impressed by the findings of this article. what this paper has demonstrated is that, to him and other herders like him, interspecies cooperation is a self-evident part of everyday life. 7. acknowledgements i am indebted to jamaac, the highly skilled and caring herder, and the family members of the homestead to which the xero belonged. their willingness to share their knowledge and their hospitality made this article possible in the first place. my encounter with jamaac and nur took place during the fieldwork for my phd studies at the university of zurich (uzh). i thank my colleagues at the department of social anthropology and cultural studies, especially my main supervisor prof. mareile flitsch, for their continuous support. maxamuud cabdi ismaaciil sooyaan supported my research enthusiastically and thoughtfully from my first week in somaliland, and i am most grateful for his assistance and friendship. this text was written during a visiting predoctoral fellowship at the max planck institute for the history of science, in the midst of the covid-19 pandemic, and revised on the basis of extremely valuable feedback from participants of the workshop, towards an understanding of nonhuman minds: from animal to artificial agency, organized by anne stefanie aronsson, fynn holm and melissa kaul. i aim to highlight how the uniqueness of human-camel relations is a result of the specific characteristics of this animal too. relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ distributed skills in camel herding 73 references barua, maan. 2019. “animating capital: work, commodities, circulation”. progress in human geography 43 (4): 650-669. beck, kurt, and georg klute. 1991. “hirtenarbeit in der ethnologie”. zeitschrift für ethnologie 116: 91-124. besky, sarah, and alex blanchette, eds. 2019. how nature works: rethinking labor on a troubled planet. albuquerque: university of new mexico press. bradbury, mark. 2008. becoming somaliland. oxford: james currey (african issues). braidotti, rosi. 2006. transpositions: on 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288-298. stuttgart: j.b. metzler. relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ a clinical perspective on “theory of mind”, empathy and altruism. the hypothesis of somasia a clinical perspective on “theory of mind”, empathy and altruism the hypothesis of somasia jean-michel le bot phd, university rennes 2, rennes doi: 10.7358/rela-2014-001-lebo jean-michel.lebot@univ-rennes2.fr abstract the article starts by recalling the results of recent experiments that have revealed that, to a certain extent, the “ability to simultaneously distinguish between different possible perspectives on the same situation” (decety and lamm 2007) exists in chimpanzees. it then describes a case study of spatial and temporal disorientation in a young man following a cerebral lesion in order to introduce the hypothesis that this ability is based on a specific process of somasia. by permitting self-other awareness, this process also provides subjects with anchor points in time and space from which they can perform the mental decentring that enables them to adopt various perspectives. this process seems to be shared by humans and certain animal species and appears to be subdivided into the processing of the identity of experienced situations, on the one hand, and of their unity on the other. the article concludes with a critique of overly reflexive and “representational” conceptions of theory of mind which do not distinguish adequately between the ability to “theorise” about the mental states of others and the self-other awareness ability (which is automatic and non-reflexive). keywords: social cognition, theory of mind, empathy, altruism, neuropsychology, somasia, humans, animals, mental states, decentring. 1. introduction in their seminal paper published in 1978, premack and woodruff stated that “an individual has a theory of mind [tom] if he imputes mental states to himself and others” (premack and woodruff 1978). since then, research into tom has flourished, both in humans, and more particularly in autistic children (baron-cohen et al. 1985), as well as in various animal species. a number of studies have emphasized the close link between empathy and tom, with “both [involving] an ability to simultaneously distinguish http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ jean-michel le bot 92 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ between different possible perspectives on the same situation” (decety and lamm 2007). in 2008, call and tomasello attempted to draw a conclusion from research relating to tom in chimpanzees. they concluded that it was no longer possible to answer the question posed by premack and woodruff with “a simple yes or no” (call and tomasello 2008, 187). more precisely, they considered it necessary to distinguish between two levels of definition of tom. the broader level is that comprising the understanding of other people’s goals and intentions as well as of their perceptions and knowledge. at this level, there is now sufficient evidence to affirm that “chimpanzees do have a theory of mind” (call and tomasello 2008, 191). the second level, which corresponds to tom understood in a narrower sense, relates to the understanding of false beliefs. here, their answer was negative, although still cautious (call and tomasello 2008, 191). the present article takes as its starting point the summary produced by call and tomasello and considers it to be an established fact that chimpanzees are able to represent to themselves the mental states of others, at least in part 1. on this basis, it attempts to propose new hypotheses designed to account for earlier observations and, at the same time, to consider possible future observations. to this end, it will start by recalling the results of a number of recent experiments performed with chimpanzees before comparing these with the results of clinical observations obtained from humans. this will make it possible to formulate the hypothesis that a process of somasia is a necessary condition for the decentring that makes it possible to put oneself, to a certain extent, “in another subject’s place” in order to understand his or her mental state. based on an analogy with two distinct types of aphasias and agnosias, it will then go on to suggest the existence of two types of somasic processing that make it possible to determine both the identity and the unity of the experienced situation. finally, it will return to the generally accepted definitions of tom in order to stress the fact that the various studies conducted to date have undoubtedly paid too much attention to the ability to “theorise” or “represent” the mental states of others and not enough to the fact that the most important thing is to distinguish between the self and the other subject in order, to a certain extent, to “put oneself” in this subject’s position. 1 some researchers, however, remain sceptical about this ability (see, for example, povinelli and vonk 2003; penn and povinelli 2006; penn, holyoak, and povinelli 2008; penn and povinelli in press). a clinical perspective on “theory of mind”, empathy and altruism 93 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 2. evidence of tom in chimpanzees two recent series of experiments have tested the ability of chimpanzees to take account of what others can see or hear (hare et al. 2006; melis et al. 2006). these experiments placed chimpanzees in a situation in which they had to compete for food with a human experimenter. the experimenter and the room in which the experiments were conducted were already familiar to the chimpanzees. the experiment itself was preceded by a preparatory phase intended to make the chimpanzees understand that they were in a competitive situation: the experimenter faced some of the food and turned his back on the rest of it; if the chimpanzees approached and grabbed the food behind the experimenter then they were allowed to take it; if, in contrast, they approached the food located in front of the experimenter then this was removed as soon as they tried to grab it. the ensuing experiment was then designed in such a way that some routes permitting access to the food were visible to the human experimenter whereas others were not. in one version, in which the aim was not to be heard by the experimenter, one of the access routes to the food was noisy whereas the other was silent. when the chimpanzees took the route which allowed them to be seen by the human experimenter (or chose the noisy route), the experimenter took away the food. when, in contrast, the chimpanzees chose to approach the food via the route that was hidden to the human observer (or approached it via the silent route), they were able to get to the food. to get the food, the chimpanzees therefore had to avoid being heard or seen by the experimenter. in other words, they had to take account of what the experimenter could know about the situation. the results of these experiments showed that chimpanzees do indeed take account of what the competitor can see or hear and are capable of dissimulation. in the absence of any competitor, they did not show any preference for either of the routes giving them access to the food. in contrast, when the competitor was present, they preferred the route that allowed them to hide their approach as of the very first attempt (there was a slight improvement in performances over the course of the trials but not such as to make it possible to conclude that the behavior was learned during the experiment). in a certain number of cases when the competitor was present, they even chose an indirect approach in which they first distanced themselves from the food in order to then disguise their approach better (hare et al. 2006, 508). the authors considered these results to be consistent with many other observations proving that chimpanzees are able to understand the mental states of others (tomasello, call, and hare 2003a; 2003b). at the very least, jean-michel le bot 94 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ they claimed, chimpanzees are able to understand what others can see or hear and hide certain information when it is of use to them to do so. the authors nevertheless agreed that a behaviourist explanation could be proposed to account for each of these observations – in each specific case, the chimpanzees would learn to associate a behavior with a certain stimulus. however, the great variety of situations involved mean that it is more economical to adhere to the hypothesis that chimpanzees are able to understand what others perceive: the best evidence that an individual understands another’s perception is when the two individuals’ perceptions differ (e.g. they see different sides of a barrier), and the observer acts on the basis not just of what she herself sees or knows but also on the basis of what the other sees or knows. (call and tomasello 2008, 189-90) it would seem that the ability of chimpanzees to place themselves “on the other side of the barrier” (our emphases) in this way is clearly demonstrated by these experiments in which the animals had to compete for food. these observations, seen in combination with many others, make it possible to conclude that chimpanzees are able, at least to a certain extent, to put themselves mentally “in the place of others”, or, to put it another way, that they are capable of a certain decentring (as the barrier metaphor suggests). “to a certain extent”, we said. but to what extent? in this specific case, what might “put oneself in the place of others” actually mean? what precisely is the “decentring” in question? one experiment which went further than those mentioned above was the study conducted among autistic children with the puppets sally and anne (baron-cohen et al. 1985). this latter experiment attempted to test the children’s understanding not only of the knowledge but also of the false beliefs of others. the results led the authors to conclude “that the autistic children did not appreciate the difference between their own and the doll’s knowledge” (baron-cohen et al. 1985, 43). however, this type of research into the understanding of false beliefs has also been conducted among chimpanzees. in an experiment performed by hare et al. (2001; hauser 2005; call and tomasello 2008), a dominant chimpanzee and a subordinate chimpanzee were placed in a situation in which they competed for food. the subordinate subject was always informed of the location of the food (since she saw it being placed there). in one version of the experiment, the dominant sometimes saw where the food was placed (she was informed) and sometimes she did not (she was not informed). in the other version, the dominant was always informed of the initial hiding place of the food which was then subsequently moved, either in her presence (she a clinical perspective on “theory of mind”, empathy and altruism 95 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ was therefore informed of the change of location) or in her absence (she therefore did not know that the food had been moved and possessed a false belief concerning its location). if chimpanzees are capable of understanding the false beliefs of others then, in such a case, the subordinate subject should go to the food without fear because she understands that the incorrectly informed dominant will go to the wrong place. in contrast, if she simply believes that the dominant is uninformed then the behavior of the subordinate will be less assured. the experiment showed that chimpanzees are able to distinguish between situations in which the competitor is informed (knowledge) and situations in which it is not informed (ignorance). in contrast, they are not able to distinguish between situations in which the competitor is not informed (ignorance) and those in which it is incorrectly informed (false belief). when seen in the light of other observations, this experiment clearly makes it possible to conclude that “chimpanzees understand knowledge-ignorance, but not false belief” (call and tomasello 2008, 191). this is different from the case of young children who, as of the age of one to two years, are able not only to understand that another knows or does not know something but also that the other person possesses a false belief (call and tomasello 2008, 191). it is this set of observations that led call and tomasello to distinguish, as we have seen, between two levels in the definition of tom. since they are able to understand what others see or hear, chimpanzees possess a tom in the broad sense but, being unable to understand false beliefs, they do not possess a tom in the narrower sense. however, in the remainder of this article, we shall not pursue this important distinction but will instead focus solely on the first level of tom, namely the ability to decentre oneself in order, to a certain extent, to put oneself “in another’s place” and take account of what this other perceives or knows. we shall also attempt to suggest other possible observations based on clinical observations of human beings. 3. a new hypothesis: somasia we shall start by presenting a relatively detailed description of a case study (duval-gombert 1993; bellamy et al. 1994). this involved a patient, fm, who had suffered a sudden cardiac arrest (sca) at the age of 19 years, due probably to an acute viral myocarditis. several years later, he still manifested significant neurological sequelae which regularly required him to stay in a centre for brain injury rehabilitation. the neurologists treating him referred to bodily disorders, spatial disorders and problems relating to jean-michel le bot 96 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ verbal evocation. they also noted an anterograde amnesia coupled with a retrograde amnesia. fm retained some knowledge of history but was unable to organise dates or historical characters relative to one another. he was, for example, able to associate robespierre with the guillotine and the chouans but was unable to situate this period of the french revolution on the timeline. similarly, he would classify chopin as coming a century before mozart or louis  xiv as being significantly later than napoleon. knowledge of history was therefore preserved but the ability to distinguish a “before” and an “after” was lost. this loss of temporal anchors was also observed when fm was asked to situate himself in time. when asked about the day of the month, he could, for example, answer “tuesday”. when it came to knowing the day of the week, he based his answers on his activities. he knew, for example, that his neuro-psychological consultation took place on thursday because this was the day before he left to go home on friday. however, this technique could also catch him out: if his consultation was moved to another day then he would be convinced that the day of the new consultation was a thursday. like some children who are autistic, fm also found it difficult to cope with change. a single change to his therapist’s desk gave him the feeling that the desk never stopped changing. the absence of one of his therapists at the habitual time or a change to his timetable was a source of disturbance and distress. when asked to tell a story based on pictures which he first had to place in the correct order, fm was unable to do so. nothing in the material encouraged him to choose one order rather than another and adhere to it and he did not group the pictures together to form a set corresponding to a situation. in consequence, he would be satisfied with any order and each of the pictures could serve as a pretext for any number of different stories. this same absence of situational permanence could be observed in the way he recounted familiar stories from memory. when asked, for example, to tell the story of little red riding hood, fm would introduce characters taken from other stories (about which he had retained some knowledge). in addition to little red riding hood and the wolf, he might, for example, bring in an ogre or even tarzan. if the person conducting the examination reminded him of the grandmother then he might turn her into “granny”, “mamie nova” 2 or “mamy blue” 3. he introduced a sick grandson to whom the grandmother had just given something to eat. it was 2 brand of dairy products (yoghurts, cream cheese, etc.) that is well known in france. 3 song by nicoletta that was very successful in france in the 1970s and is still played regularly on certain radio stations. a clinical perspective on “theory of mind”, empathy and altruism 97 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ therefore possible to conclude that there was indeed a story with characters in it, but that there was no possible permanence of this story and these characters. characters that generally form part of the story could be omitted and others could be introduced. and this could change constantly in a completely arbitrary way. everything suggested that the arbitrary nature of the stories and the characters they could contain was not constrained by the permanence of a situation, namely that of a specific story. a similar disorientation was observed at the level of space. in the same way as he retained a knowledge of history, fm also retained some knowledge of geography. however, just as he was unable to organise historical persons, dates or ages relative to one another, he was also no longer able to situate places relative to one another. he could, for example, associate the city of lille with the north, mining communities and the singer pierre bachelet 4. he could equally well associate dijon with mustard. however, he was incapable of locating these cities, even approximately on a map of france either when asked to draw the map himself (he drew a simple circle) or when an outline map was given to him (in which he was unable to orient himself: he was not able to situate the west relative to the east or the top relative to the bottom). a more precise observation clearly shows just what this disorientation consisted of. during the week, fm was accommodated at a centre for brain injury rehabilitation located in a former château (the château des landes 5). however, at the weekends he returned to his home which was located approximately 80 km from the centre, in the town of montfort, where there is also a château. during a consultation at the centre, the researchers showed him a photograph of the château de monfort and asked him to identify it. he answered as follows: it’s a lovely château. seen from a distance, it’s the château des landes. that reminds me of something […]. i’m near a. if i was at home, i’d say it’s the château de montfort […]. but since we’re in a, i couldn’t say it’s the château de montfort. if i’d been in montfort, i would have said it’s the château de montfort. in some way or other, fm had indeed recognised the château de montfort. his visual recognition was intact. however, this did not enable him to conclude that the photograph was indeed of the château de montfort since he was not in montfort at the time the researchers showed him the picture. fm seemed to refer exclusively to the place in which he was located at the 4 now deceased french singer. one of his songs from the 1980s that deals with life in the mining towns in the north of france is still well known today. 5 the names of localities have been changed to help preserve anonymity. jean-michel le bot 98 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ time and did not seem able to perform the mental decentring necessary to accept that the photograph visible directly next to him might represent a reality at some distance from him. his environment therefore seemed to be limited to the immediate context. everything he did suggested that he was in some way “fixed” in the present situation and was unable to distance himself from it. to describe patients such as fm, jean gagnepain ([1991, 1993] 1995) has proposed the hypothesis of asomasia, that is to say the loss of a process of somasia. the asomasia hypothesis postulates that in order to stay the same in different situations, it is necessary to set a limit (that gagnepain suggests calling the soma 6) which simultaneously separates and constitutes the self and its environment. this limit makes it possible to distance, or to some extent decentre, oneself mentally from the immediate situation. it therefore allows subjects not to be held captive by the situation and permits what decety and jackson (2004, 81) refer to as “psychological continuity over time and space”. soma therefore enables individuals to hold onto an anchor point with reference to which they can situate a self and a non-self, a before, a now and an after, a here and a there. it permits them to adopt a viewpoint on the basis of which they can construct their perspective on the world. the hypothesis of an absence of soma in patients such as fm makes it possible to explain their disorientation in both space and time. in the absence of an internal “anchor point”, they are reduced to clutching at external fixed points (timetables, places, persons). however, these external anchor points subjugate them and they become extremely dependent on them. one consequence is that they always tend to do what those around them expect them to do. for example, fm’s opinions could be easily influenced and he himself said that he was in a state of constant doubt. all opinions appeared plausible to him but none seemed certain. this is because nothing in him could ensure the permanence of one single opinion with which he could confront all the others. conversations with him therefore became totally random: anything could be said and the subject of the conversation could change continuously (a conversation with fm tended to descend into a succession of non sequiturs). this dependence also makes such patients extremely vulnerable. the slightest change to their external anchors can be extremely disturbing to them and triggers panic attacks. 6 from the greek soma (“body”) because the process in question is in some way that of the “psychic body”, a limit that makes it possible to stay oneself even though the body itself changes (growth, aging). it resembles other expressions such as “skin-ego” (anzieu 1989). a clinical perspective on “theory of mind”, empathy and altruism 99 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the care team (this was the case at the centre for brain injury rehabilitation at which fm stayed) must therefore make sure that certain fixed elements are present in their lives (consultation times that are always the same, for example), something which is not always possible. 4. application to animals how can observations of this type of patient and the hypothesis that they lack the ability of somasia help us take a fresh look at the questions we have raised concerning the existence of a tom in chimpanzees as well as in other animal species? the answer is that we think that all the convergent observations that enable us to assert that chimpanzees are indeed able to understand the mental states of others also argue in favour of the existence of an ability of somasia in animals. an account of these observations in terms of somasia provides a more satisfactory explanation of them than any that has been advanced to date and enables us to develop new hypotheses that will require the collection of new observations. what, one can ask, did the experiments performed among chimpanzees that we have presented above actually show? they showed that when placed in a situation in which they have to compete for food, these animals are able to take account of what the competitor is able to see and hear in order to approach the food without him/her being aware of this. now, taking account of what another is able to see and hear is not simply a question of representation or “theory”. it also requires a “self-other awareness” (decety and jackson 2004) which permits a mental decentring in order to “put oneself in the other’s place” and understand or imagine what this other, in this place, sees, hears or is able to know, etc. and this “self-other awareness” itself presupposes the existence of a limit, which we call soma, which, by separating the self from the environment, provides an anchor point (a point of view) starting from which decentring then becomes possible (both in time and space). in the absence of any such limit and the “point of view” it makes possible, the chimpanzees involved in these experiments would undoubtedly be just as disoriented as patients like fm and would fail to get the food 7. 7 hypothesizing that chimpanzees have an ability of somasia simultaneously implies predicting the existence of asomasic chimpanzees. confirming this prediction would be the best way of proving the relevance of our hypothesis. however, it is probable that this would be difficult. it is unlikely that asomasic animals who are consequently unable to orient themselves in space, would be able to survive under natural conditions. it would therefore be better to try to find such animals in captivity. is it possible to find individuals jean-michel le bot 100 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ at a more basic level, the ability of many species to understand that it is possible to go round an obstacle in order to retrieve an object that is located behind it might also be explicable in terms of somasia (see fig. 1). in the much reduced experiment that we conducted in line with köhler’s (1925) experiments into “roundabout ways”, the cat spontaneously understands that if she cannot grasp the object from one side of the obstacle, then she can go round the obstacle to grasp the object from the other side. of course, in order to do this it is not necessary for the cat to put herself “in the place” of another. however, she does require a sufficient ability for mental decentring in order to understand that what is not possible from one side of the obstacle might be so from the other side. she must also possess a point of view on the basis of which she is able to envisage another possible point of view. a toy that is familiar to the cat is thrown to a. the cat rushes to catch it. the object is then picked up and thrown behind the piece of furniture (to b). the cat sees the object from position a through the gap between the wall and the furniture. she first attempts to get to it by passing through this gap to point a. however, understanding that the gap is too narrow for her to pass through and seize the toy, she goes round the furniture to get to b. exhibiting disorientation symptoms that might be due to asomasia among the animals present in wildlife parks or zoos or kept in research centres? this of course calls for new observations to be made. figure 1. – cat going around an obstacle. wall piece of furniture a b bo zz e di st am pa 04 g iu gn o 20 13 a clinical perspective on “theory of mind”, empathy and altruism 101 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ somasia is itself without doubt a complex process and it will be necessary to consider applying to the observation of animal behaviour a distinction, relatively well established in the case of humans, between the qualitative processing of identities and the quantitative processing of units. this distinction, which can be attributed to saussure ([1916] 1983), was taken from jakobson and halle (1956) who used it to attempt to explain the existence of two major types of aphasia, namely wernicke’s and broca’s aphasias, in terms of metaphor and metonymy. gagnepain and sabouraud (sabouraud et al. 1963) subjected jakobson’s hypotheses concerning these two groups of aphasias to a critical reexamination before attempting to transpose the identity/unit distinction to fields other than language. at this point, we shall say a few words about the way in which this distinction makes it possible to account not only for aphasic symptoms but also for the symptoms of agnosia before suggesting its trans position to the field of asomasia. the distinction between wernicke’s aphasia and broca’s aphasia is well known. it corresponds to a difference in the location of the lesion: behind the rolando scissura in the former case and in front of this scissura in the latter. as far as the symptoms are concerned, wernicke’s aphasia is usually fluent and broca’s non-fluent. with reference to the processes involved, it is possible to describe wernicke’s aphasia as a loss of differentiation and broca’s aphasia as a loss of segmentation (guyard 1987; brackelaire et al. 2006). indeed, in wernicke’s aphasia, patients are lost when they have to choose between distinctive features (e.g. unvoiced/voiced as in /p/ ≠ /b/) or between different semes (e.g. fork/knife, table/lamp, briefcase/suitcase, telephone/television, etc.). in broca’s aphasia, on the contrary, patients are lost when they have to control the plurality inside phonemes or groups of words. in the following example (guyard 1987), the patient had to repeat two groups of two words – a function word and a noun (see tab. 1). this difficulty in controlling a number of different semes together explains the well-known agrammaticism of these aphasics as well as the non-fluent character of their aphasia: in effect, because of the pathology, each seme tends to be treated as a unit and, in a group of words, these patients often retain only the lexeme (for another example of this type of production, see caramazza et al. 1981, 249). this difference between a differentiation and a segmentation-related disorder is also found in the visual perception field in which human clinical psychology has distinguished between apperceptive agnosia and simultagnosia (cambier 1995). in the former case, patients are able to perceive the qualities of the object (dimension, texture, colour, etc.) perfectly well but they no longer recognise them because they can only perceive the object in fragmented form. jean-michel le bot 102 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ table 1. stimulus item patient’s responses our commentary sa maison / ce garage (his house / this garage) sa maison / son garage (his house / his garage) there are three differences at the same time: possessive/ demonstrative gender (f/m) + lexeme → the patient has difficulty controlling more than one difference at the same time and maintains only the gender + lexeme difference. ce château / la voiture (this castle / the car) ce château / c’est “la” mais après …? (this castle / it’s “the” but after …?) there are also three differences at the same time: demonstrative/definite + gender (m/f) + lexeme → the patient maintains the demonstrative/definite difference but is unable to repeat the second lexeme. they are thus “unable to match two objects that are identical in shape or associate an object with the corresponding picture” (cambier 1995, 185). in the latter, patients perceive the shape correctly but find it difficult to see more than one object at the same time and therefore localise a given object relative to others 8. these few observations indicate that visual perception combines the identification of qualities and the delimitation of units in order to bring about object recognition and consequently makes it possible to match them based on both their quality and their shape. more recently, our colleagues hubert guyard and clément de guibert suggested that this distinction between two types of analysis might make it possible to explain the difference, which is well attested to in the literature, despite a relatively recent divergence of opinions, between kanner’s autism and infantile psychosis (de guibert, clerval, and guyard 2003). these authors hypothesised that there are two types of asomasia. independently of the etiology, while both disorders are characterised by a deficit in the experienced situation (relating to the permanence and continuity of the subject and the environment beyond the vagaries of internal and external events), autistic disorder seems to relate to the unity and cohesion 8 the distinction between these two agnosias conventionally corresponds to the distinction between the two “pathways” of visual perception: the occipito-temporal (or ventral) pathway and the occipito-parietal (or dorsal) pathway (charnallet and carbonel 2000). a clinical perspective on “theory of mind”, empathy and altruism 103 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ of the situation (which is apprehended in “parcels” or isolated fragments), whereas “infantile psychosis” appears to be a disorder that relates to the identity and coherence of the situation which is apprehended in a way that is confused and disparate. (de guibert and beaud 2005, 394) persons with autism would therefore attempt to compensate for their deficits in processing the unity of the situation by focusing excessively on the maintenance of identities (thus resulting in the well-known “sameness behaviour” emphasised from 1943 onwards by kanner) 9. conversely, psychotic children would attempt to compensate for their deficits in processing the identity of the situation by focusing excessively on controlling its unity and the breakdown of this unity (games of fragmentation and reconstruction, interactions with others experienced in a fused and invasive manner). just as the hypothesis that perception is processed in two different ways based on the difference between apperceptive agnosia and simultagnosia opens up interesting avenues of investigation that may help account for the complexity of perception, including in animal species (le bot et al. 2012), the hypothesis that situations might be processed in two different fashions could point the way to a reexamination not just of human pathology but also of the way different species of animals monitor, or fail to monitor, their own identity and unity, as well as the identity and unity of other members of their species and those of the situations in which they find themselves (for example “what is familiar/unfamiliar, usual/unusual, etc.?”). it may therefore also make it possible to come to a better understanding of what it is that underpins the ability of these species to interact. however, it will, of course, still be necessary to design the corresponding experiments. 5. discussion premack and woodruff chose to speak in terms of a “theory” of mind, given that the mental states of others are not directly observable but can only be deduced (or inferred) from a variety of clues. however, this idea of “theory” gives rise to some confusion since it does not adequately distinguish between: 1. the ability to theorize about other’s knowledge or state of mind (i.e. “[…] the ability to represent mental states”, baron-cohen et al. 1985, 43); 2. self-other awareness and the ability to “decentre” oneself in order to adopt another’s point of view. 9 although the etiology is different and the clinical appearance is not strictly the same, these autistic symptoms resemble some of fm’s symptoms. in fm’s case, this similarity permits the hypothesis of a unitary somasic disorder. jean-michel le bot 104 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the “representational” conception of tom assumes that both the self and the other(s) have already been formed (beaud 2010, 174). however, clinical studies of human subjects show that these relate to two different and independent abilities. patients like fm, for example, are neither aphasic nor agnosic. their deficits do not relate to representation or perception as such. in the case of fm, we hypothesised the presence of an asomasia which resulted in an inability to decentre and achieve self-orientation in either time or space. similarly, autistic or psychotic children, with reference to whom our colleagues have also hypothesised the presence of an asomasia, are neither aphasic nor agnosic. these observations, which are the result of the clinical study of human cognition, suggest that when considering animal species, we should again not focus exclusively on their ability to theorise or represent something. the question underlying the experiments and observations concerning “theory of mind” relates less to the ability to “theorise” or “represent” the mental states of others and more to the ability to distinguish between the self and the other (and therefore between one’s own knowledge and that of others). in other words, the question is “who is me and who is not me (internal/external, inside/outside, familiar/ unfamiliar) in the interaction” (quentel 1993, 235). taking this as our basis, we do not think that there is necessarily anything to be gained by including the question of tom in a more general theory of empathy as undertaken by baron-cohen from the 1990s onwards. to exhibit empathy, it would be necessary: (a) to possess “the ability to attribute mental states to oneself and others”; and (b) to have “an emotional reaction that is appropriate to the other person’s mental state” (baron-cohen 2005). compared with the way in which this question was asked in the past, this shifts the emphasis away from representation and towards the emotions. however, this merely shifts the problem. because, if it is one thing to be able to feel emotions, then it is another to distinguish between the self and the other and to be able to situate these emotions either in oneself or in the other. here again, the clinical study of human subjects makes it possible to dissociate the two processes: the disorders with reference to which we hypothesise the presence of an asomasia should not be confused with abulias, with frontal lesions that give rise to impulsive behaviours 10 or with pain asymbolia, that is, conditions which relate directly to affects, emotions and impulses. the hypothesis of an ability of somasia makes it possible to go beyond these confusions. according to this hypothesis, somasia is the process (automatic and non-reflexive) that gives the subject (human as well as 10 see, for example, the famous case of phineas gage (damasio 1994). a clinical perspective on “theory of mind”, empathy and altruism 105 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ animal) permanence and allows him/her to orient himself/herself in time, space and the environment. by differentiating between and delimiting the self from the environment, it simultaneously prevents the subject from confusing himself/herself with this environment, and instead allows him or her to distance himself/herself from it or “decentre” himself/herself mentally based on the “point of view” that somasia makes possible. in combination with specifically perceptual or emotional abilities, it is somasia that makes it possible to attribute to others the knowledge or emotions that one experiences oneself and thus clears the path toward a “theory of mind”, empathy and altruism 11. references anzieu, didier. 1989. the skin-ego. new haven, ct: yale university press. baron-cohen, simon. 2005. “autism and the origins of social neuroscience”. in the cognitive neuroscience of social behaviour, edited by alexander easton and nathan j. emery, 239-55. hove: psychology press. baron-cohen, simon, alan m. leslie, and uta frith. 1985. “does the autistic child have a ‘theory of mind’?”. cognition 21 (1): 37-46. doi: 10.1016/00100277(85)90022-8. beaud, laurence. 2010. “l’écholalie chez l’enfant autiste: un trouble pragmatique de l’unité interactionnelle?”, neuropsychiatrie de l’enfance et de l’adolescence 58: 168-76. bellamy, olivier, françoise guérin-bonvoisin, chantal le gal, and suzanne pelé. 1994. “clinique thérapeutique et asomasie. comment soigner quand le thérapeute fait être le malade?”. tétralogiques 8: 188-209. brackelaire, jean-luc, attie duval, jean giot, christine le gac, and laurence meurant. 2006. les mots se regardent. initiation à un questionnement clinique sur le langage en sciences de l’homme. namur: presses universitaires de namur. call, josep, and michael tomasello. 2008. “does the chimpanzee have a theory of mind? 30 years later”. trends in cognitive sciences 12 (5): 187-92. cambier, jean. 1995. “l’agnosie visuelle”. in perceptions et agnosies. séminaire jeanlouis signoret, edited by bernard lechevalier, francis eustache, and fausto viader, 183-97. bruxelles: de boeck. caramazza, alfonso, annamaria g. basili, and jerry j. koller. 1981. “an investigation of repetition and language processing in a case of conduction aphasia”. brain and language 14: 235-71. 11 here, we agree with decety and jackson who consider that “multiple dissociable systems [are] involved in the experience of empathy” (decety and jackson 2004, 93), with 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michael tomasello. 2006. “chimpanzees conceal visual and auditory informations from others”. journal of comparative psychology 120 (2): 154-62. penn, derek c., keith j. holyoak, and daniel j. povinelli. 2008. “darwin’s mistake: explaining the discontinuity between human and non human minds”. behavioral and brain sciences 31 (2): 109-78. penn, derek c., and daniel j. povinelli. 2006. “on the lack of evidence that nonhuman animals possess anything remotely resembling a ‘theory of mind’”. philosophical transactions of the royal society b 362 (1480): 731-44. a clinical perspective on “theory of mind”, empathy and altruism 107 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ in press. “the comparative delusion: the behavioristic/mentalistic dichotomy in comparative theory of mind research”. in joint attention and agency, edited by herbert terrace and janet metcalfe. new york: oxford university press. povinelli, daniel j., and jennifer vonk. 2003. “chimpanzee minds: suspiciously human?”. trends in cognitive sciences 7 (4): 157-60. premack, david, and guy woodruff. 1978. “does the chimpanzee have a theory of mind”. behavioral and brain sciences 1 (4): 515-26. quentel, jean-claude. 1993. l’enfant. problèmes de genèse et d’histoire. bruxelles: de boeck. sabouraud, olivier, jean gagnepain, and annette sabouraud. 1963. “vers un approche linguistique de l’aphasie”. revue de neuropsychiatrie de l’ouest 1: 6-13; 2: 3-38; 3: 3-38; 4: 3-20. tomasello, michael, josep call, and brian hare. 2003a. “chimpanzees understand psychological states – the question is which ones and to what extent”. trends in cognitive sciences 7 (6): 153-56. 2003b. “chimpanzees versus humans: it’s not that simple”. trends in cognitive sciences 7 (6): 239-40. ethology of the freed animal: concept, paradigm and implementations to the moral status of non-human animals 5 is sn 2 2 8 0 -9 9 5 3 beyond anthropocentrism 1 • january 2013 inside the emotional lives of non-human animals a minding animals international utrecht 2012 pre-conference event special issue (genoa, italy, 12-13 may, 2012) edited by m. andreozzi, r. bennison, a. massaro, s. tonutti capabilities approach and animal bioethics • michele panzera animals and our emotions. how to approach the study of an interspecific community? • sabrina tonutti advocacy and animal rights • kim stallwood the emotional lives of animals: a christian perspective • alma massaro – gianfranco nicora animalia: ontology and ethics in weak antispeciesism • leonardo caffo the contemporary debate on experimentation • susanna penco – rosagemma ciliberti non-human animals and genetic engineering • arianna ferrari the relationship between humans and other animals in european animal welfare legislation • paola sobbrio human’s best friends? • matteo andreozzi elationsre l a t io n s . b e y o n d a n t h r o p o c e n t r is m 1 • 2 0 1 3 r 10.1 june 2022 animal ethics, ethology, and food ethics edited by francesco allegri studies and research contributions korsgaard’s duties towards animals: two difficulties 9 nico müller ethology of the freed animal: concept, paradigm 27 and implementations to the moral status of non-human animals marco celentano dario martinelli il dilemma etico dei pet: tra bestie, animali e persone 47 matteo andreozzi being there: if the pairing of the birdwatchers affects the pairing 59 of the birds evangelina w. uskoković theo w. uskoković vuk uskoković comments, debates, reports and interviews vegetarianism and veganism from a moral point of view 85 francesco allegri author guidelines 93 relations – 10.1 june 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ relations – 10.1 june 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 27 ethology of the freed animal concept, paradigm and implementations to the moral status of non-human animals marco celentano 1 dario martinelli 2 1 università degli studi di cassino e del lazio meridionale 2 kaunas university of technology doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2022-01-cema marco.celentano@unicas.it dario.martinelli@ktu.lt abstract the essay focuses on the methodological and theoretical premises of an emerging research area with both ethological and (bio)ethical implications: the ethology of the freed animal (efa). unlike existing ethological fields, efa does not focus on the observation of nonhuman (nh) animals in a natural condition of freedom, nor on situations of captivity. rather, efa consists of a comparative study of nh animals that are removed from a condition of captivity, from the status of “living tool” of human beings and from any form of exploitation – instead relocated in an environment fairly appropriate to their speciesspecific and individual characteristics. ideal places for this study are animal sanctuaries and parks/reserves where a previously captive nh animal can be reintroduced in their natural habitat or, when this proves impossible, in a contest appropriate to their characteristics and needs. even though efa exists already, as a de facto practice of the personnel running sanctuaries and parks, the field still lacks a recognizable scholarly paradigm, and is not yet acknowledged at institutional/academic level, nor were its moral implications thoroughly discussed. consequently, one important aim for such a field is the establishment of an active interaction between the two parties involved (researchers and sanctuaries/parks operators). keywords: animal abuse; animal sanctuaries; anthropization; anthrozoology; captivity; epigenetic inheritance; etho-ethnology; moral status; non-invasive observation; semiotics. relations – 10.1 june 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2022-01-cema mailto:marco.celentano@unicas.it mailto:dario.martinelli@ktu.lt https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ marco celentano dario martinelli 28 1. introduction the present essay intends to introduce the methodological and theoretical premises for an emerging research area carrying out both ethological and (bio)ethical implications: the “ethology of the freed non-human animal” (efa, from now on). this particular kind of ethology, unlike the classical, does not focus on the observation of non-human (nh) animals in a natural condition of freedom in their own environment. neither does it compare to laboratory ethology, which observes nh animals kept in captive conditions (regardless of the quality of their welfare). rather, the efa consists of a comparative, interdisciplinary study of nh animals that are released from a condition of (legal or illegal, abusive or less abusive) “confinement”, from the status of “living tool” of human beings, from any form of exploitation (for profit or not) – and instead relocated in an environment as appropriate as possible to their species-specific and individual characteristics – including reinstalling the subject in their natural habitat, whenever possible. “confinement” is as neutral a term as we could find to describe forms of significant limitation or deprivation of the nh animal’s freedom: in this sense, we do not wish to include only the violent and physically damaging ones (and, as we shall see later, not only the physical ones tout court). “significance” is also a keyword, because it will be important to distinguish from forms of confinement that effectively limit/impair a nh animal’s freedom, from those that have no serious impact. to make a banal example, setting a few discreet, camouflaged video cameras in an area inhabited by a given nh animal in order to observe their behavior may be perceived as the quintessential limitation of freedom, due to its big brotherly/orwellian connotations. nevertheless, if that action has no implication on the natural course of that animal’s life (which, indeed, is merely monitored, without any intention to interfere with it), we may not define it as “significant”, for the hypothetical eventual removal of the cameras would not qualify as “liberation” (the nh animal shall likely behave identically, whether or not there are cameras around). if, on the contrary, the cameras – for whatever reason – causes some kind of limitation in the nh animal’s life (let us say they get noticed and cause some behavioral modification), then the confinement becomes significant. most importantly, however, the third and ultimate keyword of our study is “anthropization”. while, theoretically, not all forms of confinement can be ascribed to human action, in practice it is nearly undeniable that only the various human interventions on other species create relations – 10.1 june 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ethology of the freed animal 29 conditions of “confinement” in the sense we define here, and that only the liberation from these interventions makes a reasonable case for a veritable efa. ideal places for this kind of observation are what we may call “contexts of release”, that is, the so-called “animal sanctuaries”, of variable dimension and population (wild or domesticated nh animals, preys, or predators  …), and “monitorable” natural habitats, such as natural parks and reserves provided with non-invasive camps for research (e.g., “camp leakey” in borneo). sanctuaries are an increasingly widespread type of institution conceived to host nh animals rescued from diverse forms of exploitation/abuse, with the purpose of reintroducing them to a living condition that is as much as possible compatible with their needs. monitorable natural habitats have a longer history, but nevertheless they are still in a stage of development towards a more definite form (see, for instance, their transition from research-only areas to more open and educational spaces, where tourists and volunteers can experience, learn and acquire environmental awareness). as such, efa exists already, as a de facto practice of the specialized and/or volunteer personnel running these places – however, predictably, it lacks a recognizable scholarly paradigm, and it is yet to be acknowledged at institutional/academic level – a condition that is confirmed by authoritative representatives of that personnel itself, such as dr. birute galdikas: to the best of my knowledge, there is not yet an established area within the natural sciences that would account for a systematic study and observation of animals like my orangutans – animals that get released into the wild after captivity. (galdikas, personal communication, 2017) consequently, the information produced by efa are not, or too little, collected in form of open databases, archives and systematized data – aspects that are crucial for any field’s development. regrettably, only a small percentage of the numerous valuable observations and information gathered particularly by sanctuaries’ workers in various parts of the world become available to ethological research (unlike several parks and reserves, where the “monitoring” stage is part of the whole releasing action). the reverse is equally true, as people active in wildlife protection and sanctuaries themselves have their own challenges in keeping up with the developments of behavioral research. in light of all this, a primary aim, in order to structure a research field like efa, is the establishment of an active interaction between the two parties (researchers on the one hand and operators of contexts of relations – 10.1 june 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ marco celentano dario martinelli 30 release). based on that interaction, it should be possible to articulate a program for an operative efa – distributed among scientific and ethical objectives. while looking forward for an accurate discussion on what this program may look like, in a coherent and solid way, we shall like to propose eight goals – to begin with: 1. scientific objective i: a non-invasive, though not necessarily non-interactive, study of what we shall call “psycho-physical redemption” of the freed nh animals, of its course and of its possibilities and limits. that is: how they rely on the new condition of non-captive individuals; how they do (or do not) retake possession and control of their own bodies; how they develop (or, again, recover) a temporal-spatial umwelt, in a condition that is no longer rigidly constricted and manipulated by external factors. 2. scientific objective ii: a non-invasive, though not necessarily non-interactive, study of the inter-subjective, intra-specific and inter-specific communities built and nurtured by the freed nh animals, communities which humans themselves tend to be (accepted as) members of. 3. scientific objective iii: a non-invasive, though not necessarily noninteractive, study of the new inter-subjective, intraand interspecific cultural traditions developed by these communities: an opportunity, as we shall explain, carrying enormous scientific potentials for ethology and all the behavioral sciences. 4. scientific-to-ethical objective i: to establish a peertopeer-type of knowledge exchange between researchers and workers of contexts of release, with the purpose of improving the study, the preservation, the care and the rehabilitation of the freed nh animals. 5. scientific-to-ethical objective ii: to disseminate the above-mentioned acquired knowledge at both academic and popular level, with the main purpose to spread and promote the adoption of a biocentric paradigm in ethics. 6. ethical objective i: bring as many animals as possible to a condition of quality and dignity of life in accordance to the species-specific and individual needs of the freed nh animal. 7. ethical objective ii: establish a new channel of anthrozoological relationship, from which a novel, more accurate and respectful, level of communication and understanding between humans and other nh animals may emerge. 8. ethical-to-juridical objective i: establish a specific moral status for the freed animal, as something that inform appropriate juridical actions (e.g., the attribution of specific, context-pertinent rights to the freed animal). relations – 10.1 june 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ethology of the freed animal 31 the present article has no pretension to be exhaustive at any level of these first steps of the efa. the goal is not the systematization of the topic, but rather its problematization. simply put, we shall place some hopefully interesting (theoretical and methodological) items on the table, in an order that may be just temporary, with the specific goal to elicit a discussion and add more items (and/or replace the existing ones) in the near future. a conscious acceptance, from the readership’s part, of this explorative nature is essential for a proper understanding of this article. 2. behavior as a self-regulative interaction: post-mechanistic perspectives in the philosophy of ethology to a conceptual and theoretical extent, the approach to the comparative study of behavior here proposed shall explicitly bypass, not only the traditional mechanist and dualistic model of cartesian ancestry, but also the “psycho-hydraulic” model of the classical and the first cognitive ethology (marchesini 2016a, 2016b), the gene-centric one of “classical sociobiology” (de waal 2001), and the deterministic model of behavior currently dominant in evolutionary psychology (lieberman 2013). within an efa framework, behavior is studied as a self-regulative and cognitive interaction of organisms with their interand intra-specific environment, and as the results of an interactive relation between the internal components of every and each body, which in animals is modulated and transmitted through epigenetic and social inheritance, social conditioning and individual experience, and for which the genetic species-specific inheritance functions as a condition of possibility (celentano 2000, 2011, 2017). “self-regulative activity and interaction” means here that all organisms, of every species, need at any time to internally maintain or restore conditions, processes and physiological states which allow them to stay alive, and perform this function through explorative and energy trading activities, absorbing and transforming matter and energy present in the external environment, modifying both the latter and themselves. this self-regulating and cognitive activity are undoubtedly limited and channeled through the constraints imposed by the anatomy and morphology of the species, the intra-specific and inter-specific context, the individual characteristics or biographical circumstances, and the contingencies. however, it allows us to understand both the history of each existed and existing species and the history of each single organism relations – 10.1 june 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ marco celentano dario martinelli 32 as an active and selective exploration of the environment and construction of their ecological and social niche and their “homeorhetic” path (waddington 1976). what we mean by “cognitive”, here, is all the activities through which organisms explore their survival chances and test their ability to actively change their physiological and/or perceptual states. each “cognitive” activity is in this sense a production of behavioral forms, or of selfregulative internal and external interactions, enabling the performance of the organism’s life cycle. in this perspective, cognitive activities are notable not only in animals, but in all the organisms, because the simple fact that organisms are capable of surviving constitutes evidence of their ability to somehow make an object of knowledge out of their own living conditions (lorenz 1977; riedl 1980; celentano 2000, 2017). as already suggested by jakob von uexküll, each organism displays the ability of knowing the elements present in its “umwelt” as factors that influence or may affect its physiological states. as lorenz liked to remember, each organism, even the paramecium which, when encountering a sour acid stream, rotates on itself until it manages to change direction, is able to selectively discriminate some factors present in its environment based on the “negative” or “positive” effects they have on their survival possibilities and “health” status. 3. epigenetic inheritance and selective behavior as driving forces of evolution: post gene-centric perspectives in the evolutionary and behavioral studies since the 1990’s, two notions, previously introduced by two great scholars of the 20th century, ch. waddington and j. piaget, began to find consensus through experimental findings and took on a central relevance in the evolutionary studies: the “behavior as motor of evolution” (piaget 1976) and the existence of that non-genetic hereditary systems, able to produce phenotypic modifications much faster than genetic mutations (waddington 1975; piaget 1976), which now we call epigenetic inheritance systems (jablonka and lamb 2005; jablonka and lamb 2020; nuno de la rosa and müller 2021). to conceive behavior, and the hereditary epigenetic variations which it can trigger, as driving forces of evolution (here understood as a process of differentiation of organisms) means that individuals, populations and species, in the face of changes that endanger their survival or offer them new growth opportunities, do not passively remain to wait for a favorable relations – 10.1 june 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ethology of the freed animal 33 genetic mutation that allows some of them to overcome those obstacles, or exploit those resources. individuals, populations, and species, facing with new difficulties or opportunities, engage all the innate and/or learned resources they possess, all their cognitive endowment and experiences, to find various possible solutions. this means, in turn, that, often, evolutionary divergences start from the sphere of behaviors, from changes in the ethological attitudes that develop as active responses to social and environmental stresses, and genetic changes intervene, not as preconditions, but as “followers” events. that is, as changes that reinforce divergences already begun at the epigenetic and ethological level (westeberhard 2003; jablonka 2006; jablonka and lamb 2020). this approach, already introduced by evolutionary epistemology and defined by k. popper as an “exploratory or active darwinism” which assumes that, very early in the history of life on earth, “living organisms […] become active explorers, actively and curiously searching for new environments […] for new places to live in or, sometimes, merely from slightly modified ways of living, for slightly new ways of behaving” (popper 1982, 39), is integrated, in the contemporary evolutionary studies, with the discoveries of the last thirty years relating to epigenetic inheritance and its relevance for development and evolution, which are supported by increasingly empirical and experimental evidence. one of the most important studies in this field was, in the first decade of the new millennium, evolution in four dimension (jablonka and lamb 2005), in which the authors presented, since the introduction, four important acquisitions of the contemporary ecological-evolutionarydevelopmental biology: there is more to heredity than genes; some hereditary variations are nonrandom in origin; some acquired information is inherited; evolutionary change can result from instruction as well as selection. (jablonka and lamb 2005, 1) they documented the fact that, in the course of evolution, alongside the slow processes of genetic variation, three other types of selection, heredity and variation, respectively defined epigenetic, behavioral and cultural, cooperated with the first and reciprocally producing phenotypic adaptations independently of genetic or genomic mutations. in chapter 4, jablonka and lamb described also four different kinds of eis which have in common the ability to transmit from mother to daughter cells information “that is not related to dna” (jablonka and lamb 2005, 402), and are relations – 10.1 june 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ marco celentano dario martinelli 34 indispensable to deal with rapid changes, contiguous variations or oscillations of their living and social environments. this epigenetic inerithance systems are triggered by behavioral habits and/or environmental stimuli, and can preserve or modify, within very few generations, food preferences, immune systems, cognitive abilities, psycho-physical and emotional attitudes. for instance, today a rich documentation illustrated cases of epigenetic transmission of the effects of stress or of traumatic experiences and immune deficiencies (jablonka and lamb 2020; celentano and marchesini 2021), as well as cases in which new phenotypes are produced in absence of any dna modification (jablonka and lamb 2005, 339) and cases of no random genetic mutations, induced by stress or changes in the environment (jablonka and lamb 2005, 97-116). these developments are making increasingly evident the close correlation between bis (behavioral inheritance systems) and eis (epigenetic inheritance systems), led to the birth of a new field of inquiry: behavioral epigenetics (mcgowan and szyf 2010; champagne and rissman 2011; meloni 2014; jablonka 2016), which, according to jablonka, includes “the investigation of the role of behavior in shaping developmentalepigenetic states and the reciprocal role of epigenetic factors and mechanisms in shaping behavior” (jablonka 2016, 42). what are the implications and consequences of these new approaches in the fields of animal welfare and efa? we can today prove that two groups of factors turn out to be the primary ways of triggering and channeling the modification of individual and group behaviors and their trans-generational transmission. these sets of factors include: • events that mark the individual’s biographical path from its conception onwards, and particularly all those social, emotional and cognitive experiences which produce, in the most sensitive phases of individual development, effects similar (or partially similar) to those that the classical ethology attributed to the imprinting (mainardi 1992); • experiences and living conditions capable of influencing the develop of a wide range of physiological and behavioral responses ranging from the immune system to emotional, relational and cognitive attitudes, both in the organisms directly exposed to them and in their descendants, without modifying their genetic code. these are fundamental acquisitions for a field of study such as the efa, whose starting point, as we shall see, is precisely the reconstruction of the “personal history”, a biographical profile of every single nh animal observed, and of its provenance context, and whose objective is to learn to encourage as much as possible a dis-anthropization (a word relations – 10.1 june 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ethology of the freed animal 35 which we shall deepen in the next paragraph) of the freed nh animals, and to study its course with non-invasive methodologies. this is why a place like an animal sanctuary is an ideal context to study the constraints and limitations that past living conditions may impose on this dis-anthropization process by the freed animals and their descendants, and to identify the factors that can be instead favor its course. in other words, this is exactly the places where a knowledge of the “molecular scars” that each individual carries behind can become a prerequisite for research aimed at favoring their self-liberation. 4. anthrozoological considerations with this in mind, the next step must be an extensive analysis of the taxonomy, characteristics and operativity of anthropization. the forms of anthropization that we consider worth of analysis are not only, so to speak, factual (that is, physiological, ethological, physical, etc.), but may often trespass the line of the cultural, the mythical, the metaphorical. this is due to two reasons: (a) socio-cultural processes, albeit not necessarily translating into tangible anthropized characteristics in a given nh subject, retain the same value and dignity of any other process (for the same reason why cultural imperialism is worth of the same scholarly attention as military imperialism, or emotional abuse is equally significant as physical abuse); (b) socio-cultural processes affect the human treatment of nh animals with equal (or occasionally superior) strength as all other processes (e.g., the mythical perception of the “bad wolf” has resulted in phobias, extermination of specimens, distorted understanding of wolves’ behavior, etc.). the nh animals that efa can study are “freed” animals – not necessarily (or not yet) “free” ones. the difference emerging from these two words firstly implies that the conditions preceding the release – the past indeed – is of foremost importance. the long tradition of ethology has primarily focused on two types of condition: the free/wild one and the captive one. since anthropization is obviously a process that materializes only in the latter situation, we can identify the study of free/wild nh animals as a study of “an-anthropization” (the condition of total absence of anthropization) or – when some form of confinement is likely or bound to happen – “pre-anthropization” (the temporal condition antecedent to anthropization). as soon as an actual anthropizing process occurs, we can classify at least twenty different types of confinement, distinguished by practices, context, strength and other factors: relations – 10.1 june 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ marco celentano dario martinelli 36 1. ab-anthropization (a. developed apart from humanity); 2. anthro-anthropization (a. aimed at anthropomorphizing – physiologically, ethologically, culturally, etc. – the nh animal); 3. anti-anthropization (a. developed autonomously by nh animals, which may also damage humanity); 4. archeo-anthropization (a. developed in pre-historic times, often as results of co-evolution); 5. auto-anthropization (the nh animal, so to speak, “volunteers” to be part of the human environment, accepting its dynamics); 6. corpo-anthropization (a. that requires a significant manipulation of the subjects’ bodily constitution, physiology, etc.); 7. credo-anthropization (illusory form of a., that may reveal itself as fallacious); 8. grapho-anthropization (written/visual a.); 9. legi-anthropization (a. that occurs or changes status by means of juridical or scientific regulations); 10. ideo-anthropization (a. occurring at ideological, cultural, mythical level); 11. idio-anthropization (a. that occurs in a confrontational manner: the nh subject/s is anthropized out of fear or specific wish to subdue); 12. liber-anthropization (a. within which the nh animal is allowed to follow their natural biology); 13. logo-anthropization (a. due to linguistic dynamics); 14. loco-anthropization (a. that is characteristic of certain contextual/ environmental conditions and that is not possible in others); 15. macro-anthropization (a. as “large”, possibly global, phenomenon); 16. micro-anthropization (a. as circumscribed, very local, phenomenon); 17. philo-anthropization (a. due to emotional attachment, affection, sexual attraction, etc.); 18. semi-anthropization (partial a. in which the nh subject/s retain elements of their natural condition); 19. sub-anthropization (a. that was a consequence of another anthropization); 20. sin-anthropization (a. involving the anthropization of different species/specimens at the same time). each entry is not isolated from the others, but in fact often intersecting and overlapping with, containing, or being contained by, other entries. a “freed” nh animal may thus come from radically different conditions – radically different pasts. keeping up with the ways these different conditions relate to anthropization, the termination of a period of relations – 10.1 june 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ethology of the freed animal 37 confinement may result in two distinct states: “post-anthropization” and (as anticipated) “dis-anthropization”. post-anthropization occurs when nh animals that were previously anthropized and can now live outside the human environment/control/manipulation, bear significant traces of the anthropized condition, and – for instance – prove to be unable to re-acquire certain behavioural patterns/skills that would have characterized them if they were not subject to anthropization. on the other hand, dis-anthropization is the condition of a nh animal that was previously anthropized and now has disengaged at all levels from that condition, (re)gaining a reasonably an-anthropized status. here, the nh animal, at least to a reasonable extent, gets rid (physiologically, psychologically, etc.) of their previous condition of human control, and retakes significant possession of their original profile. an example of the difference could be the ability of a predator, who had been deprived of the possibility to predate, to reacquire or not their predatory skills and therefore be able to survive on their own. to generate “anthropization”, the human being needs to have enough reasons and intentions to engage in some sort of relationship with one or more nh animals. this goes without saying and is a compulsory step of the process, so, we may establish a general set of motivations that push human beings to interact with other animals, whatever form these interactions may assume. we shall indicate eight of them (for details, see martinelli 2010, 129-130): (1) adaptation; (2) progress; (3)  work; (4)  needs; (5) pleasure; (6) tradition and culture; (7) philosophy and research; and (8) daily life. these eight categories of motivation materialize in twelve different roles that human beings assume as “anthropizing agents” (see sebeok 1998, 67-73 plus the update provided in martinelli 2010, 130-132): (1) predator; (2) partner; (3) player of sports/hobbies/games; (4) parasite; (5) pseudo-conspecific; (6) insensible agent; (7) domesticator; (8) trainer; (9) manipulator; (10) information learner; (11) signification learner; (12) defender/protector/promoter. 5. proposals for an efa paradigm and possible research lines having hopefully legitimized, from both a scientific and a humanistic perspective, the need and the existence of efa, we can begin to articulate the paradigm as such, elaborating on the reflections proposed in the introduction to this essay. relations – 10.1 june 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ marco celentano dario martinelli 38 concept. reiterating on what we already suggested, we can define the efa as a comparative and interdisciplinary study of nh animals that are released from a condition of more or less abusive anthropization and relocated in an environment as appropriate as possible to their speciesspecific and individual characteristics – including reinstalling the subject in their natural habitat whenever possible. objectives. also, we have already mentioned in the introduction our preliminary proposal for a program of objectives in eight points. it is obviously an open program which needs to be updated and upgraded by other researchers and operators and put to the test in field work. this program includes three “scientific objectives”, two so-called “scientificto-ethical objectives”, two “ethical objectives” and one “ethical-tojuridical objective”. in the next paragraph, we shall elaborate on these objectives. methods. if concept and objectives were already mentioned in our introductory notes, we still need to highlight some approaches and practices that nowadays characterize both the ethological research and the activities performed in contexts of release, and which are fundamental for the efa. also, one needs to to focus on some activities, such as playful ones, or the spontaneous exchanges of care, not only between conspecifics but also at interspecific level, an aspect which, in our view, is not only of high scientific interest, but may also play a central role in increasing welfare and social cohesion, and reducing tensions or conflicts, within interspecific communities, such as those established in contexts of release like animal sanctuaries in particular. with this in mind, the first concept we shall discuss is that of ethology as an “animal ethnography” designed in studies like lestel 2001, 2006, 2014, and lestel, brunois and gaunet 2006. lestel believes that only recently ethology has begun to emancipate itself from a mechanistic and deterministic approach, attributing this important turn firstly to the discovery of animal cultures and the resulting assimilation, by ethologists, of methodological approaches which were already in use in the ethnological field: “unlike classic etho-ecology, etho-ethnology can be described as a discipline that studies the dynamics of agents which combine actions and interpretations in an ecological, historical and individual perspective” (lestel, brunois, and gaunet 2006,166). convinced that sociality, culture and individual differences are phenomena widely spread in the animal world, which only arrogance and prejudices prevented us for two millennia to recognize (lestel 2001), lestel observes that “the convergence between ethology and ethnography has significantly transformed studies of animal subjectivity and culture. the future of both fields lies relations – 10.1 june 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ethology of the freed animal 39 in a cultural zoology that treats animals as subjects partaking in culture” (lestel 2006, 147). etho-ethnology became therefore “an ethnography of the way the individual beings perceive and conceive, in the course of their interactions, the behaviors of other living beings and the way they react to these behaviors” (lestel, brunois, and gaunet 2006, 167), a form of comparative study of the animal behaviors, minds, and cultures which places at the center the animal understood as “a coherent agent that interprets significations in a homogenous manner […] and attempts to understand it in a historical (which calls on a temporal dimension) and social (an agent always acts in coordination with other agents) perspective” (lestel, brunois, and gaunet 2006, 166). therefore, to assume an etho-ethnologic approach means primarily: • to adopt observations and data logging methods which allow to distinguish, in the least invasive possible way, each individual as such, within an observed group, and each observable local or regional intraspecific difference of uses and communication systems in the populations belonging to the same species. • that each animal is not a simple repeater of behavioral patterns typical of their species; they are a selective agent whose behavioral, cognitive, emotional and communicative features are the results of their historical and social roots and their biographical paths. • that each social group, in every social species, confronts environmental contingencies and internal dynamics that can differentiate it from others, leading to the development of divergent interpretations of the same signals, or of modifications of the same communicative codes, preferences and uses, and so to the birth and consolidation of different interpretative and behavioral traditions. by way of a protocol for each context of release, the data collection methodologies of efa would include: • a biographical profile for each nh animal hosted, inclusive of an anamnesis of the past experiences and trauma suffered – as exhaustive as possible; • a clinical profile which illustrates the animal’s overall health status, obtained with the less invasive techniques today available; • a filmic and photographic documentation of physical status and behavior of every hosted individual at the time of their introduction in the context of release; • a methodical monitoring of their post-anthropization pathway. relations – 10.1 june 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ marco celentano dario martinelli 40 observation techniques according to the efa approach, the ethologist planning to study nh animals hosted in contexts of release will have to: a. create a research project that is fully compatible with the ethical regulations of the hosting structure and that is generally respectful of the freedom of the nh animals studied; b. be accepted as a non-disturbing presence within the interspecific community in which they wish to be involved, e.g., by initially contributing to the caring of the community itself (animal feeding, maintenance of the living environment …); c. adopt exclusively observation and documentation techniques that do not imply any constraint on the animals subject to them. 6. conclusions: what moral status for the freed animal? we consider it beyond our scope to develop an argument on the moral status of nh animals in general. before proceeding, however, it may be useful to state (at a very general level, and putting aside nuances for the time being) that our position is based on three pillars: 1. we reject any form of “human exceptionalism”-based morality. we consider the latter a result of a self-assigned ontological superiority that has no ground in the ethical sense. in martinelli 2021 the term “anthropotheosis” was introduced in order to describe the process by which (a) humanity explains the world through humanity; (b)  humanity as it is becomes the belief that embodies the ideal of humanity; (c)  such belief is implemented with a number of scientifically and/or ethically unfounded notions (“unfounded” as in “not yet scientifically proven”, “scientifically proven wrong” and/or “ethically inadmissible”); and (d ) with a number of imaginary elements that merge with the real ones, forming a mythical discourse. human exceptionalism in a quintessential form of anthropotheosis, as it founds its anthropocentric moral hierarchy on capacities that are thought to distinguish humans as morally considerable beings, but which have been observed in the non-human world. since human behavior and cognition share significant roots with the behavior and cognition of other species, any argumentation on sharp behavioral or cognitive boundaries between humans and other animals is controversial at least, and any attempt to define human uniqueness by identifying given capacities is at least misleading when it comes to establishing a moral status of nh animals. relations – 10.1 june 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ethology of the freed animal 41 2. we consider “sentience” as the key condition around which any idea of moral status should be founded. not intelligence, not taxonomy, not intentionality, or else. sentience is what entitles to make a solid case for a right to bodily liberty and a right to bodily integrity in nh animals. when scientific evidence is lacking on a given species’ sentience (that is, when no scientifically proven counterargument exists), luisella battaglia’s notion of “critical anthropomorphism” (1997) should be applied: “any doubt [about sentience or else] should be gauged to benefit the weakest subject. in particular, the presupposition of similarity, when there is no clear counterproof, should be interpreted in favor of the animals” (battaglia 1997, 124). 3. we support, both in ethical and legal terms, the recognition of the legal status of sentient beings to animals, ratified in 2007 by the eu (lisbon treaty), and believe that all the existing legal systems must conform to it. for us, to recognize to nh animals the right to dignity of life and self-determination, it is not necessary that them have a selfconcept. instead, it is sufficient that they possess that specific characteristic of sentience which is self-perception, or sense of self. that is: the condition of perceiving every modification of one’s body and of the environmental context, as qualitative modifications, or, in other words, as events that create, or can create, states of discomfort or relaxation, suffering or well-being, attraction or repulsion. with this in mind, we are interested in proposing a few moral implementations that may derive from an efa, and that should inform future legislation but also good practice from operators, volunteers and visitors of contexts of release. these are not necessarily “specifics” of the freed animals (that is, features that separate them from free and captive ones, and which therefore require ad hoc legal/moral approaches): rather, they are “focusers” – aspects that may have been considered less important (or even overlooked) when reasoning on the moral status of free and/or captive nh animals, and that freed animals help us drawing our attention to. firstly, an unmistakable reinforcement of the acknowledgment of individuality, in the etho-ethnological sense described above. that means: distinguishing each individual as such, and acknowledging any observable local or regional intraspecific difference; not treating each animal as a simple repeater of behavioral patterns typical of their species, and acknowledging the environmental contingencies and internal dynamics that differentiate each social group in each social species from others. secondly, an accurate acknowledgment of the past. each freed nh animal comes from different pasts, that is, different life conditions. the relations – 10.1 june 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ marco celentano dario martinelli 42 (re)gaining of an an-anthropized status must necessarily go through a thorough analysis of what type of anthropization (and with what specifics) the animal was subject to. this way only the animal may get at least partially rid of their previous condition of human control, and related abuse suffered. thirdly, by consequence, there must be also a specific acknowledgment of what we may call the traumatological profile (information on suffered distress, abuse, mutilation …), and therefore all the conditions of release (including whatever amount of more or less monitored time the animal spends in facilities like a sanctuary) must be arranged in order to avoid the repetition of similar traumas and the healing process. fourth, a moral obligation (that translates directly into factual commitment) to ensure both quality and dignity of life to each freed animal taken care of in any context of release. if we take, as example, daniel raphael’s theory of human motivation (raphael 2015), we understand why it is necessary to talk about both quality and dignity of life (of course, by now, we hope we do not have to explain that any conclusion that raphael seems to apply to “human” subjects and communities, are in our opinion applicable to all the nh subjects and communities in lestel’s sense). “dignity” is a concept that expresses an intrinsic right to be (a) valued and (b) treated ethically. raphael discusses three basic values, as foundations of human motivation: quality of life, growth and equality. in his opinion, quality of life pursues growth for a “liveable society”, dignity of life pursue it for a “just society”, which in our case means a society respectful both of the rights of all the sentient beings and of the individual, gender, cultural and species-specific differences. quality of life wants people to be treated well, dignity of life wants them to be treated ethically: the member of a given ethnic minority who is wealthy beyond their basic needs and is properly educated and assisted by the state, is a subject who receives quality of life; but if, in the meanwhile, he is still discriminated against for belonging to that ethnic group, then it is not given to him “dignity of life”. similarly, a freed animal in a context of release must be entitled to both (a) proper care, assistance and nourishment, and (b) considerations and facilitation of their individuality in direct connection with their anthropized past and state of distress. to exemplify these four points, we can use a case-study from the lithuanian animal sanctuary trys paršeliai (three little pigs), the first of such facilities in the entire baltic region (https://trysparseliai.com/ en/), which one of the co-authors of this article, dario martinelli (who lives and works in lithuania) has visited numerous times. the sanctuary hosts several mostly farm animals coming from different, and all relations – 10.1 june 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ethology of the freed animal 43 equally disturbing, experiences of abusive anthropization. one of the most touching stories concerns the cow zuika. zuika is a dairy cow that was rescued from slaughterhouse at age 12, when she had become too old to be once again impregnated and deprived of her calves. during her life – martinelli was explained by one of the sanctuary managers, mr.  edvardas stalionis – she had been impregnated ten times, which means that ten calves were subtracted to her and either sent to slaughter or to other dairy farms if they were females. zuika spent all 12 years in a small family-run farm, chained outside most of the year and kept in a small dark barn during winter. she was also often beaten with farming tools like pitchforks or shovels, particularly when she would try to move beyond a “designated” area and, for instance, reach the fence. with that in mind, during martinelli’s visits, the cow displayed several behavioral patterns of clearly pathological origin. among these, some were perfectly recognizable as consequences of her life experience. first, even if she was now given an ample area where to graze and relax, and of course no chains whatsoever, she would still cover a perimeter that was safely distant from the fences, evidently fearing a punishment in case she approached them. second, mr. stalionis explained that zuika could get extremely distressed, and occasionally hysterical, at the sight of pitchforks and shovels, and that he and the rest of the operators had to pay attention not to use those tools in her presence. third, while of an extremely mild nature, zuika was never particularly pleased to interact with human adults. she would not be aggressive with them, of course (who knows what kind of punishment she might have received in the past, in case she would dare), but she had a way of gently pushing the visitor with her head towards the outside of the enclosure, as if showing that she was not too pleased to interact with them. on the contrary, she had no problem whatsoever with kids (and, incidentally, she is adored by them – including martinelli’s son). without going too much into detail, here is a simple case that calls for an attention to individuality, past, traumatological profile, and quality+dignity of life. zuika, in other words, has her own history, her own traumas, and must be ensured a certain standard of life that is not applicable to other cows or other guests of the sanctuary. e.g., no other animal living in trys paršeliai fears fences or farming tools, and certainly not all cows do. relations – 10.1 june 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ marco celentano dario martinelli 44 references battaglia, luisella. 1997. etica e diritti degli animali. bari roma: laterza. celentano, marco. 2000. etologia della conoscenza. napoli: la città del sole. celentano, marco. 2011. konrad lorenz e l’etologia contemporanea. milano: francoangeli. celentano, marco. 2017. “from konrad lorenz’s ‘phylogenetic apriorism’ to the birth of evolutionary epistemology”. in readings in numanities, edited by oana andreica and alin olteanu, 333-342. cham: springer. celentano, marco, and roberto marchesini. 2021. critical ethology and postanthropocentric ethics. cham: springer. champagne, frances a., and emilie rissman. 2011. “behavioral epigenetics: a new frontier in the study of hormones and behavior”. hormones & behavior 59 (3): 277-278.  de waal, frans. 2001. the ape and the sushi master. new york: basic books. jablonka, eva. 2006. “genes as followers in evolution: a post-synthesis synthesis”. biology & philosophy 21: 143-154. jablonka, eva. 2016. “behavioral epigenetics”. sage journal 64 (1): 42-60. jablonka, eva, and marion lamb. 2005. evolution in four dimensions. cambridge: mit press. jablonka, eva, and marion lamb. 2020. inheritance systems and the extended evolutionary synthesis. cambridge: cambridge university press. lestel, dominique. 2001. les origines animales de la culture. paris: flammarion. lestel, dominique. 2006. “ethology and ethnology: the coming synthesis. a general introduction”. social science information 45 (2): 147-153. lestel, dominique. 2014. “the question of the animal subject”. angelaki 19 (3): 113-125. lestel, dominique, florence brunois, and florence gaunet. 2006. “towards ethoethnology and ethno-ethology”. social science information 45 (2): 155-177. lieberman, philip. 2013. the unpredictable species. princeton: princeton university press. lorenz, konrad. 1977. behind the mirror: a search for a natural history of human knowledge. london: meuthen & co. mainardi, danilo, a cura di. 1992. dizionario di etologia. torino: einaudi. marchesini, roberto. 2016a. etologia filosofica. milano udine: mimesis. marchesini, roberto. 2016b. “philosophical ethology and animal subjectivity”. angelaki 21 (1): 237-252. martinelli, dario. 2010. a critical companion of zoosemiotics: people, paths, ideas. cham: springer. martinelli, dario. 2021. “veganism and carnism: (semiotic) analysis of a (semiotic) conflict”. paper presented at the conference foodologies: nourishment, language, communication, university of turin, june 14, 2021. relations – 10.1 june 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://philpapers.org/asearch.pl?pub=1659 https://philpapers.org/go.pl?id=lestqo-3&proxyid=&u=http%3a%2f%2fdx.doi.org%2f10.1080%2f0969725x.2014.976056 https://philpapers.org/asearch.pl?pub=1659 http://philpapers.org/s/roberto marchesini http://philpapers.org/go.pl?id=marpea-16&proxyid=&u=http%3a%2f%2fdx.doi.org%2f10.1080%2f0969725x.2016.1163859 http://philpapers.org/asearch.pl?pub=61 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ethology of the freed animal 45 mcgowan, patrick, and moshe szyf. 2010. “the epigenetics of social adversity in early life: implications for mental health outcomes”. neurobiology of disease 39 (1): 66-72. meloni, maurizio. 2014. “biology without biologism: social theory in a postgenomic age”. sociology 48 (4): 731-746. nuno de la rosa, laura, and gerd müller, eds. 2021. evolutionary developmental biology: a reference guide. cham: springer. piaget, jean. 1976. le comportement, moteur de l’évolution. paris: gallimard. popper, karl. 1982. “the place of mind in nature”. in mind in nature, edited by richard q. elvee, 31-59. san francisco: harper and row. raphael, daniel. 2015. social sustainability handbook for community-builders. denver: daniel raphael consulting. riedl, rupert. 1980. biologie der erkenntnis. berlin: parey. sebeok, thomas a. 1998. come comunicano gli animali che non parlano. modugno: edizioni dal sud. waddington, conrad h. 1975. the evolution of an evolutionist. edinburgh: edinburgh university press. west-eberhard, mary. 2003. developmental plasticity and evolution. new york: oxford university press. relations – 10.1 june 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ animal deaths on screen. film and ethics animal deaths on screen film and ethics barbara creed professor of screen studies in the school of culture & communication at the university of melbourne doi: 10.7358/rela-2014-001-cree bacreed@unimelb.edu.au abstract do animals understand death? how does the cinema represent death? the concept of death has played a crucial role in anthropocentric discussions of the representation of human/ animal relationships in cultural practices. this paper will explore the representation of animals and death in the cinema from its beginnings to the present in relation to questions of ethics, and the cinematic representation of human/animal intersubjectivity. it will argue that while some individual filmmakers have attempted to represent animal death ethically, this topic remains largely unexamined in theoretical writings on the cinema. this paper will suggest that the spectator frequently seeks ways to displace fears about the death process onto the animal and images of animal death. finally, i will argue that the space created between spectator and the image of actual animal death on screen is an ethical space that gives rise to a creaturely gaze with the potential to break down boundaries, and to affirm communicability between human and non-human animals in a non-anthropocentric context. keywords: animals, death, cruelty, film, documentary, creaturely, gaze, vulnerability, ethics, anthropocentrism, emotions. 1. introduction in his essay on bullfighting, death every afternoon, the influential french film theorist andré bazin says: “for every creature, death is the unique moment par excellence” ([1958] 2003, 30). alone among the arts, film has the power not only to capture the moment of death, but also to replay that moment continuously. this is bazin’s “eternal dead – again of the cinema” ([1958] 2003, 31). for bazin recording the actual death of human and animal on screen is an “obscenity”. vivien sobchack analyses the cultural taboo on the representation of death in her 1984 article on death and the http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ barbara creed 16 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ documentary film. she argues that the representation of an actual death – human and animal – raises important ethical issues. such death signifies a “ferocious reality” ([1958] 2003, 247). anat pick, in creaturely poetics (2011) explores the shared embodiedness and vulnerability of all creatures, human and animal. it is precisely because animals are so powerless that they should be treated ethically. throughout the history of the cinema, a number of landmark films have addressed the topic of death, ethics and the animal. although rarely analysed in any depth, the most famous film from the early history of the cinema to record an actual death is thomas edison’s electrocuting an elephant made in 1903. this one-minute actuality filmed the public electrocution of topsy, an elephant from luna park, coney island, who was accused of killing three handlers over a three-year period. topsy was deemed guilty of criminal acts and executed as if she were a person. another landmark film, which raises questions about the ethics of representing animal deaths on screen, is georges franju’s documentary, le sang des bêtes (blood of the beasts, 1949). this is a chilling and strangely poetic account of the slaughter of animals at abattoirs, which are located inconspicuously in the outer districts of paris. in 1985 peter greenaway released his new film, a zed and two noughts, or zoo, in which he set out to complicate the human and animal relationship through an examination of evolution, death and decomposition and the way in which these forces impact on all living beings. in an interview, greenaway said one of the film’s central visual sources was an ape who lived in the rotterdam zoo and possessed only one leg. he said his film explored “without judgment, man’s persistently dubious relationship with animals” (espejo 2006, 3). werner herzog’s grizzly man, a feature documentary, presents the story of timothy treadwell, a young man who spent thirteen summers living alongside wild grizzly bears in an alaskan nature reserve. in the end treadwell, and his partner, are killed and devoured by one of the bears. hunters later shoot the grizzly in their search for human remains. throughout treadwell identifies passionately with the bears, telling the viewer that he would die for them. he would no doubt have been horrified to know that one of his grizzles was killed-despite the fact it was the bear that killed him and his partner. herzog’s film presents a fascinating study of the finitude shared by human and animal. other notable films which explore the theme of death and the animal include robert bresson’s au hasard balthazar (1966), vittorio de sica’s umberto d (1952), john huston’s the misfits (1961), frederick wiseman’s meat (1976), clint eastwood’s white hunter black heart (1990) and daniel nettheim’s the hunter (2011). animal deaths on screen 17 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the concept of death has played a crucial role in anthropocentric discussions of the representation of human/animal relationships in cultural practices. philosophers have argued throughout the centuries that it is man’s unique knowledge of his own death that separates him from the animals. in his discussion of heidegger’s attempt to distinguish between human and animal death, matthew calarco writes that in “contrast, animals (as instances of the kind of beings that merely have life but have no relation to finitude) never properly die or demise; they can only perish” (2008, 17). in assessing the traditional view, akira lippit argues: a paradox surrounds animal death. since animals are denied access to the faculties of language, they remain incapable of reflection, which is bound by finitude and carries with it an awareness of death. undying animals, simply expire, transpire, shift their animus to other animal bodies. (2002, 125) it is not true that animals do not have an awareness of death. elephants, for instance, engage in rituals of mourning over their dead as well as burial ceremonies (moussaieff and mccarthy 1995, 95-6). some creatures, such the virginia opossum and various snakes, beetles and spiders will feign death when presented with a threat. what does it mean to say that animals do not comprehend death? what role do the emotions (as distinct from intellectual reflection) play in sensing/anticipating/experiencing death? if we agree with charles darwin that the emotions evolved in human and animal alike, and that animals share many emotions expressed by humans including fear, distress and grief, why wouldn’t animals have an understanding of death? what are the implications of this for the representation of the death of animals in film? should there also be restrictions on the filming of the actual death of animals? what is the responsibility of the filmmaker to the animal in a post-darwinian, post-humanist age? what is the role of ethics in this mediated engagement between the filmmaker, the spectator and the animal on the screen? this paper will argue that the space created between spectator and the image of actual animal death on screen is an ethical space that gives rise to a “creaturely” gaze with the potential to break down boundaries, to affirm communicability, between human and non-human animals 1. the creaturely gaze, however, does not necessarily involve only an exchange of looks; it also encompasses the tactile by appealing to the viewer’s awareness of, and sensitivity towards, bodily engagement. the creaturely gaze 1 the concept of a “creaturely” gaze draws on anat pick’s theory of the shared embodiedness of humans and animals and on laura u. mark’s concept of “haptic visuality”, which acts like a sense of touch in that it releases memories associated with smell, touch and taste. see pick 2011 and marks 2000. barbara creed 18 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ does not erect a barrier between the spectator and the object of the look. it is evoked particularly in response to images of dead and dying beings and in knowledge of the shared finitude of all beings. 2. “electrocuting an elephant” (edison, 1903) in the early days of cinema, the public expressed a strong interest in the potential power of film to capture the moment of death in actualities and fictional narratives. as a result, the “execution film” flourished. one of the first examples was edison’s 1895 execution of mary, queen of scots, which created an illusion of beheading. viewers could watch the film through the kinetoscope. spectators were fascinated by the new medium and its capabilities. could film capture the fleeting moment and the permanent event, could it capture anything and everything – even the moment of death? according to mary ann doane this came down to a question of representability – “the representability of the ephemeral, of the archivability of presence” (2002, 24-5). the first actualities 2 set out to capture the real, fixing the present moment in time. the popular demand to see death on screen led to the filmed reenactments of other executions including beheading a chinese prisoner (lubin, 1900) and execution of czolgosz (1901). in 1903 as mentioned above thomas edison shot a sixty-second actualité, electrocuting an elephant. the film is historically significant for a number of reasons: it was the first film of a live execution of an animal; it led to a public debate about humane versus cruel attitudes to animals; and it once again reinforced the important role played by animals in the history of the cinema in terms of both technology and subject matter. as jonathan burt explains: however, by constantly raising the profile of the animal body and saturating visual culture with all forms of animal imagery, film locates questions of the place of the animal in modernity at the junction where technology and issues of the treatment of animals meet. (2002, 87) a four-ton african elephant, topsy performed throughout the united states for over twenty eight years. she spent the last years of her life at the zoo on coney island. topsy had become increasingly aggressive; killing 2 actuality films, also called actualités or realités, were the first films ever made, a form of primitive documentary which were 17 metres long and which, when cranked through a movie projector, ran for approximately 50 seconds. animal deaths on screen 19 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ three trainers. when the last of her trainers, noted for his cruelty, tried to feed her a lighted cigarette she crushed him. the tabloids made much of topsy’s electrocution and over 1,500 people paid to watch the event, which took place at luna park, coney island. apparently, topsy’s popularity with the public increased as a result of these deaths. lisa cartwright points out that “an uncontrollable, man-killing beast was a much more exciting attraction than a docile anima” (1995, 17). at first officials discussed the possibility of hanging topsy. other elephants had been hanged before and were hanged after topsy’s execution. in europe from the thirteenth to the eighteenth century, animals were frequently charged with crimes against people, given a lawyer and tried in court. in his book, the criminal prosecution and capital punishment of animals, evans describes nearly two hundred animal trails, including those of horses, pigs, bulls, cows, sheep and dogs. many were charged with criminal damage and frequently sent into exile, others with killing a human being for which they were executed by hanging. in topsy’s case, however, the american society for the prevention of cruelty to animals protested. thomas edison intervened in the debate and offered to carry out an electrocution. this was considered preferable to hanging as execution by electrocution had been used on humans since 1890 and had proven very reliable. luna park commissioned edison to construct an assemblage, which would be suitable for the electrocution of such a large creature. edison’s main intention was to discredit a new form of electricity – george westinghouse’s alternating current – which challenged his own form, the direct current. topsy was tied between two posts and wooden sandals with copper electrodes were attached to her feet and a copper wire run to edison’s electric light plant. a 6,600 volt of electricity was discharged into her body. the film commences as topsy is led towards the camera by a trainer. crowds of onlookers fill the background. at first topsy stands alone, but is later tied to a post. we next see a distressed topsy, wearing the execution apparatus. she faces the camera her right foot restlessly pawing the ground; suddenly we see smoke rise from her feet and gradually envelop her body. she pitches forward to the left of screen. after 10 seconds the smoke clears. topsy lies on the ground, her body jerking for up to another eighteen seconds. she then becomes still. the spectator has a direct and unmediated view of topsy. she has been put on display as if a sideshow attraction. the question of whether or not she should have the right to die in privacy is not raised. in her discussion of death in documentary cinema, sobchack argues that death “confounds all codes” of representation. barbara creed 20 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ that is, we do not ever “see” death on the screen nor understand its visible stasis or contours. instead, we see the activity and remains of the event of dying. whereas being can be visibly represented in its inscription of intentional behavior (the “having of being” animated concretely in action that is articulated in a visible world), nonbeing is not visible. it lies over the threshold of visibility and representation. (2004, 233) all that the film viewers can see are activities associated with the act of dying. topsy’s fall, her bodily twitches, the sudden transformation of her moving body into a stilled one – these events make her death seemingly visible but the exact moment of death itself cannot be seen, only registered as having taken place. sobchack argues that in our “highly technologized culture […] death has come to be inscribed and understood as an objective ‘technical phenomenon’ of the body rather than as a subjective lived-body experience” (2004, 234). the electrocution of topsy is clearly part of this new technical phenomenon of death; it is not only recorded on film but her mode of death is affected by a new invention of the modern period. for topsy herself, death is, in sobchack’s words, “a subjective lived-body experience” (sobchack 2004, 234). in her study of medicine’s visual culture, screening the body, lisa cartwright writes that edison’s film both “documents the moment of the elephant’s death” and also “public fascination with scientific technology” and its power “to determine the course of life and death in living beings, even those as physically and symbolically powerful as the elephant” (1995, 18). electrocuting an elephant reveals a public fascination with execution, and that this fascination was part of a broader scientific fascination with the instrumentation of life and death. audiences took “scientific” pleasure in the sight of death – a pleasure that involved witnessing the precise moment of death and studying the moment on film again and again. (cartwright 1995, 42) in his essay, cut: execution, editing, and instant death, scott combs explores the development of “amateur execution ‘theory’” in the late nineteenth century (2008, 31). prior to the invention of moving film, scientists had begun to experiment with electrical current to determine the exact amount of charge needed to kill instantly. experiments were carried out on dogs, horses, cats and an orangutan, many of which died agonising deaths. in case topsy did not die instantly, she was fed carrots laced with 460 grams of potassium cyanide, which would have resulted in a painful and prolonged death. topsy’s public execution was designed to fulfill the human desire to experience death first-hand. the crowd at coney island was there because they wanted to see topsy punished as well as witness the power of the electrical current to kill a large animal instantaneously. animal deaths on screen 21 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ mary ann doane refers to a report from the new york world of january 5, which stated, “fifteen hundred persons looked on in breathless excitement” (2002, 145). topsy, however, was not an anonymous figure – an animal without a history and identity. rather she was a figure with whom spectators could readily identify. she had achieved a degree of fame during her period of life-long servitude entertaining circus audiences. she was famous for balancing her huge body on a small bicycle and riding it in the circus. she also had a name. it is also worth notifigurng, however, that the name “topsy” both endowed her with a personable identity but also transformed her into a potentially dangerous beast. doane points out “topsy’s name ineluctably reverberates with the racial politics of uncle tom’s cabin as well as with the colonialist aspirations distilled in the representational repertoire of the circus” (2002, 152). lisa cartwright writes: “at luna park, the elephants were also used in stagings of ‘exotic’ cultures. in turning a docile and compliant animal into a violent beast, topsy became the object of displaced western anxieties about resistance to colonial authority” (1995, 18). topsy’s death therefore carried a significant representational burden in that topsy signified many things – tamed jungle animal, beloved circus performer, dangerous monster, and colonised other. those who felt a bond with topsy and who fought to save her life would not have watched edison’s film without experiencing a sense of deep loss, without extending to topsy a creaturely empathetic gaze. even today many of those who by chance come across electrocuting an elephant on youtube do not depart unscathed – as witnessed by the numerous tributes posted to topsy on the internet 3. in 1944 when luna park burned down, the conflagration became known as “topsy’s revenge”. in 2003 the coney island museum erected a memorial to topsy. more recently, artist sue coe collaborated with scholar kim stallwood, to create a series of works dedicated to topsy. one entitled thomas edison kills topsy the elephant to promote the electric chair (2007) depicts topsy chained to posts surrounded by a crowd, which has gathered to watch her execution. this series draws on an artist’s creaturely recognition of topsy’s vulnerability and her horrific death 4. in his essay, death every afternoon, bazin analyses his response to pierre braunberger’s documentary bullfight (1951). bazin discusses the 3 in recent years, most likely because of the posting of electrocuting an elephant on the internet, topsy has become a popular culture icon. sections of edison’s film have been incorporated into at least 5 films, and there are references to topsy in 3 music videos, 3 songs, 2 novels, several poems and a play. 4 coe and stallwood, thomas edison kills topsy the elephant to promote the electric chair. this and other sue coe works can be viewed on google images. barbara creed 22 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ power of the cinema to capture the moment of death – for human and animal. for bazin, this is the moment in which something changes fatally and irreversibly. “the representation of a real death is also an obscenity, no longer a moral one, as in love, but metaphysical” (bazin 2003, 30). bazin was particularly interested in the power of film to represent the finality and irreversible nature of changes such as death. well known for his love of animals, bazin regarded the death of an animal and the death of a human being as of the same moral order. “for every creature, death is the unique moment par excellence […]. death is nothing but one moment after another, but it is the last” (2003, 30). in discussing the power of film to repeat endlessly the actual images of a human or animal creature dying, or being killed, by repeated screenings (even by screening the film backwards and then forwards) bazin used the phrase “ontological obscenity” (2003, 31). “thanks to film, nowadays we can desecrate and show at will the only one of our possessions that is temporarily inalienable: dead without a re quiem, the eternal dead – again of the cinema” (bazin 2003, 31). bazin also drew an important distinction between the experience of spectators at the actual bullfight and spectators watching a film of the bullfight in the cinema. i have never been to a bullfight, and it would be ridiculous of me to claim that the film lets me feel the same emotions, but i do claim that it gives me its essential quality, its metaphysical kernel: death. the tragic ballet of the bullfight turns around the presence and permanent possibility of death (that of the animal and the man). that is what makes the ring into something more than a theatre stage: death is played on it. […] death is surely one of those rare events that justifies the term […] cinematic specificity. (2003, 29-30) in bazin’s view the power of the moving image to capture the moment of death (although not death itself) gives clear meaning to the concept of “cinematic specificity”. this far outweighs the power of photography. how would a photograph “give us back the essence of the spectacle, the mystical triad of animal, man, and crowd?” (2003, 29). the cinema’s power to capture the “essential quality” of the ritual, its “metaphysical kernel”, also suggests that watching the death of the bulls (or the bullfighter) enables the viewer to come close to death – closer than any other art form allows. this proximity to death might also offer an escape. rather than accept the fact of his/her own death as unknowable, (some) cinema spectators are given the opportunity to displace their own fears onto the animal other. death is an event that human and animal experience alike, although it could be argued that the human imagination has endowed human death with spiritual and poetic significance precisely in order to draw a boundary between human and animal death. the former is supposedly meaningful: the latter animal deaths on screen 23 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ is not. in the end, however, death attests to what derrida describes as “the finitude that we share with animals” (2002, 396). 3. “blood of beasts” (1949) georges franju’s le sang des bêtes (1949), a documentary about the daily workings of a slaughterhouse is almost impossible to watch. this is because franju carefully positions us as “witnesses” to the gruesome and often brutal daily practices involved in the killing of animals for human consumption. although the animals are killed professionally, the film stands as a testament to human cruelty – its horrors however cannot compare to the cruelty, including acts of sadism, revealed in contemporary footage shot in secret by animal activists in many slaughterhouses around the world today 5. le sang des bêtes has engendered controversy and a range of conflicting interpretations. it could be argued, on the one hand, that the film presents a powerful record of the actual practices of the slaughterhouse in an objective, lyrical style. the animal butchers at the slaughterhouse are simply doing what is expected. the question of ethics is not relevant. franju himself presents this interpretation in the scene in which the narrator recites baudelaire’s lines “i shall strike you without anger and without hate, like a butcher”. anat pick refers to this statement and asks: “what is this violence that kills without hatred and without emotions?” (2001, 139). on the other hand, it could be argued that franju’s film directly raises issues about whether or not the killing of animals is ethical. this franju claims was his actual intention. in order to elicit the spectator’s sympathy, prior to the scenes of slaughter, franju uses the figure of a white cart horse. the ageing cart horse trustingly lets itself be led through the streets and into the yard of the slaughterhouse. the horse stands quietly in the darkened courtyard, its white coat almost translucent in the light. then suddenly, a man delivers a blow to its forehead with a behr-gun. a loud crack fills the space as the horse, killed by the blow, falls to the ground. workers cut the animal’s throat. its’ front legs jerk as a knife slices open its neck and mouth. blood spills on the ground. the horse is dragged away by a hind 5 there are also now many short video films of animal cruelty in abattoirs that have been posted on the internet. in australia there has been a public outcry in response to the televised screenings of documentaries, filmed secretly in abattoirs in indonesia, egypt and israel as well as australia, which revealed shocking acts of sadism towards animals. in response, one australian company, which stated that it was appalled, has now installed cameras so that it can monitor its workers. barbara creed 24 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ leg as if it now counted for nothing. for a moment, however, it seems to look through black eye sockets straight at the camera and the viewer. the narrator states dispassionately: “the bleeding process ends with the horse being hoisted by cable. it is immediately lowered for skinning. air pumped under the hide, loosens the skin”. the alignment of the matter-of-fact commentary with the shocking scenes of animal death reinforces the horror. adam lowenstein also comments on this. “the horror of franju’s film is truly brutal, as it chronicles the activities of paris slaughterhouses (chiefly in la villette) in unflinching, transfixed clinical detail” (1998, 39). this scene depicts a terrible betrayal of the vulnerable animal. unaware of its fate the horse makes no attempt to break free. it walks alongside its human “companion” just as it has always done. graphic scenes of killing, skinning and dismemberment of other animals in the slaughterhouse follow the death of the horse as man and beast fight each other amidst blood and excrement. after watching the killing of the white horse, every other death now appears also like a betrayal. steel spikes are sent through the skulls of cows, calves have their throats cut, sheep are dismembered, their legs, still kicking, arranged in stacks. sensing danger, smelling blood, hearing the cries of other doomed creatures, these animals fight for their lives. yet as pick notes, there is also something “muted” about these scenes, which franju connects with images from everyday life in the world outside the abattoir. violence, in short, is simultaneously surprising and utterly mundane: this type of violence is not merely the city’s subterranean flipside or dark unconscious; it is the very paradigm of civilized urban modernity. what is disquieting here is not so much the goriness of slaughter as the shock of its banality – its extreme yet wholly quotidian occurrence. (2001, 134) in his book, franju, durgant writes of the director’s oeuvre: the films themselves confirm franju’s reiterated claim that his interest is in the victim, whether it’s a white horse in a slaughterhouse, a salmon with the hook tearing at its mouth, a war criminal with shrapnel-twisted lips, or a mental patient staring at the wall. (1968, 31) durgant argues that franju is aware of his own sadism (“no-one has no sadism in his unconsciousness”) and the sadism of others but that he cannot be accused of “relishing” it (1968, 31). franju intercuts scenes from the slaughterhouse with images from the nearby city, making it clear that the two domains are closely intertwined. ignorance is no excuse for citizens who might wish to divest themselves of any moral responsibility for the suffering of the animals that is happening so close to their own homes. durgant refers to the abattoirs as “the heart of the atrocious”. he quotes henri agel: “the ordering of the dismemberments takes on an almost ritual animal deaths on screen 25 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ character, the stunned horse falls in a curtsey, while the killers, bathed in vapours of blood, seem to officiate […]” (1968, 34). it is possible that documentary films about actual animal death enable the spectator to explore the meaning and horror of death vicariously through the animal. the animal suffers on behalf of the human. this is not just because of what derrida refers to in eating well: an interview as the “carno-phallo go centrism” of the human order (1991, 113) and its seemingly insatiable desire to eat the other, but also because of human anxiety about death – its unknowability and capriciousness. the belief that animals are vulnerable sentient beings, raises the crucial question of ethical viewing in relation to the representation of actual death on screen. sobchack’s proposition concerning the representation of real death on screen is of particular relevance to this discussion. she writes: “before the nonfictional screen event of an unsimulated death, the very act of looking at the film is ethically charged, and this act is itself an object of ethical judgment” (2004, 244). sobchack makes it clear that she is referring to the filmmaker and spectator both of whom are “ethically implicated in their relations with the viewed event” (2004, 244). “thus, responsibility for the representation of death by means of the inscribed vision of cinema lies with both filmmaker and spectator – and in the ethical relationship constituted between the vision of each” (2004, 244). this is particularly so, given the normal taboo on visually recording an actual death on screen. the response of the viewer is important. sobchack asks: do we shrink in our seats or lean forward towards the screen? do we cover our eyes or peek through our fingers? do we stare at the vision before us or watch from the corners of our eyes? do we sit there deciding to act on what we’ve seen once we’re outside of the theater, or do we shrink a bit, knowing we will do nothing but watch what is presently before us? (2004, 244) sobchack discusses the example of the actual shooting of a rabbit in jean renoir’s fiction film rules of the game (1939). she concludes that this “ruptures and interrogates the boundaries (and license) of fictional representation”. quoting a phrase from critic amos vogel, she states that the image of the animal’s death, as with all images of death, has a “ferocious reality” (2004, 247). sobchack refers to the legislation introduced in the period after the making of renoir’s film, which forbids the harming of animals in the making of fiction films. sobchack recognises this as an important development; however she does not pursue the implications of her argument about the ethical space of documentary films which depict actual animal deaths. barbara creed 26 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 4. the creaturely gaze what then are the ethical implications for making and viewing documentary films such as electrocution of an elephant and franju’s blood of the beasts? clearly, many spectators find it difficult if not impossible to watch the slaughter of the animals. jane giles writes of franju’s film: “viewable only through spread fingers or a hailstorm of tears, it defies the very act of looking” (1999, 3). here sobchack’s notion of ethical viewing, if revised, has much to offer. in her conclusion, sobchack focuses on the ethical behaviour and responsibilities of the filmmaker and film spectator. sobchack is referring only to the filming of the actual death of a human subject, which she states is “normatively regarded as forbidden” (2004, 249). she writes that if the filmmaker is to record an actual death then he or she must provide an inscription which indicates that he or she was in no way party to the actual death and that viewing the death is not more important than preventing it. in short, the filmmaker must make it clear that “the representation of a particular death is somehow more socially important than the death of the individual who suffers it” (sobchack 2004, 249). in my view this proposition is equally applicable to the representation of animal deaths on screen. there are many forms of looking in the cinema 6 but the gaze, which is crucial in this discussion, is the one which most strongly establishes a connection between the human spectator and the animal on the screen. this gaze is best described as the creaturely gaze in that the word “creaturely” emphasises the shared relations between human and animal, as anat pick argues, and in so doing undermines the conventional anthropocentric bias of the gaze. as discussed earlier a creaturely gaze affirms communicability between human and non-human animals. it speaks to the viewer’s familiarity with, and sensitivity towards, bodily engagement – thus bringing into the relationship the animal body covered variously in fur, hair, wool, feathers, scales, skin. in watching the white horse in franju’s blood of the beasts we do not exchange looks, the horse is not filmed in such a way that it can return our gaze – rather we are aware of its large, ghost-like body, and its white hair smeared with blood. we feel the horse’s bodily distress. laura u. marks’s concept of “haptic visuality” is relevant here. in her study of intercultural cinema, marks argues that film has the power to represent “embodied perception” (2000, 145). her thesis offers a new way of thinking about the screen-viewer relationship, invoking the idea of cinema as skin – material and tactile – which i would 6 for a discussion of the various forms of the gaze, which ranges from sadistic to masochistic, see mulvey 2009; elsaesser and hagener 2009. animal deaths on screen 27 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ argue has clear implications for the way in which we view animals on film. the creaturely gaze draws on a range of senses – not just sight. it is first and foremost an ethical gaze. 5. “au hasard balthazar” (1966) a number of filmmakers have explored animal death in fictional narratives, which offer a different challenge from the representation of actual death in the documentary. au hasard balthazar (french for “by chance balthazar”) directed by robert bresson, offers a complex study of shared human and animal suffering, which encompasses the theme of animal death. the film director jean-luc godard said of the film: “a dreadful vision of the world and the evil in it” (pipolo 2010, 204). it tells the story of marie, a young farm girl, and her donkey, balthazar, whom she has raised from infancy when he was first taken from his mother. the narrative follows their lives, which mirror each other in relation to their respective abuse, mistreatment and suffering at the hands of others. julian murphet argues that the scenes of the donkey’s suffering, ending with his death in the shepherd’s field, remind us continually through “the visible traces of a real animal’s pain, of what must finally resist symbolization altogether: the real of human history and its violent social contradictions […]” (2008, 109). the film ends with the death of balthazar, which some critics have described as a scene of martyrdom. they have noted the film’s religious imagery and christian allegory: balthazar’s name is that of one of the wise men who bore witness to the birth of christ; marie baptizes him in a whimsical night time scene; he suffers beatings, starvation and torture; and he is described as a saint. not all, however, agree that the film is religious. “it therefore seems to me mistaken to regard au hazard balthazar as a religious allegory, with the donkey as the innocent christ figure. although the film contains much allegorical paraphernalia, balthazar does not stand in for anything or anyone. he is quite literally the embodiment of creaturely suffering” (pick 2011, 190). throughout the narrative bresson quietly depicts balthazar’s sufferings, brief moments of pleasure, and exploitation at the hands of his human tormentors – all the time making it clear that balthazar’s masters will never recognize his pain or grant him the right to live a life free from hunger, cruelty, deprivation and hard labour. the animal is sacrificed to satisfy human needs, but the human refuses or is unable to recognise the creature’s contribution to society. to do so, is to come too close to the animal, to questions notions of what it is to be human, to undermine the carefully constructed boundary between human and the animal which is central to barbara creed 28 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the anthropocentric world view. marie’s mother breaks the taboo. in a scene towards the end of the film she pronounces balthazar a “saint”. as with all of his films, bresson insisted that his actors, including balthazar, express as little as possible in terms of emotion, movement, gesture and sounds. balthazar carries out various tasks before the camera, but his “performance” remains throughout impenetrable. although we see him subjected to cruel treatment, he gives no indication of what he is feeling – apart from an occasional plaintive cry. the spectator feels empathy for balthazar, revealing that he or she can interact with balthazar on the screen as with a human actor. in john maxwell coetzee’s novel, elizabeth costello, the eponymous heroine states that: there are no bounds to the sympathetic imagination […]. if i can think my way into the existence of a being who has never existed [such as a character in a james joyce novel] then i can think my way into the existence of a bat or a chimpanzee or an oyster, any being with whom i share the substrate of life. (coetzee 2004, 80) because film uses specific aesthetic devices such as point of view filming, the subjective camera, voice over and music to encourage audience identification with its characters, it is not difficult to think one’s way into the lives and deaths of otherwise unknown characters in film whether human or animal. balthazar’s death is one of the most remarkable scenes of animal death – of any death – in the history of the cinema. in the final scene, balthazar, who is being used to smuggle contraband goods across the border between france and spain, is accidentally shot by marie’s sadistic lover, gèrard, who is one of his main tormentors. fittingly, there are no human figures in the landscape: only nature, the sheep and the dying balthazar. bresson focuses on balthazar’s death as both meaningful and meaningless. pipolo states that “in having only the sheep bear witness to balthazar’s death and returning him to his animal nature, bresson underlines the distance between the christian message and the world’s indifference” (2010, 206). bresson’s film demonstrates the power of the cinema, and the workings of the creaturely gaze, to present a narrative of animal suffering and death in an empathetic manner. balthazar lives a bare life which bresson also compares to marie’s tragic existence – both suffer in a pitiless universe in which the downtrodden are equally exploited, regardless of whether they are human or animal. derrida explores the implications of animal vulnerability. he argues that “mortality resides there, as the most radical means of thinking the finitude that we share with animals […] the anguish of this vulnerability and the vulnerability of this anguish” (2002, 396). animal deaths on screen 29 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 6. conclusion film has changed the way we might think about the representability of death – human and animal. in her analysis of the early execution film, such as electrocuting an elephant doane discusses the meaning of death. perhaps death functions as a kind of cinematic ur-event because it appears as the zero degree of meaning, its evacuation. with death we are suddenly confronted with the pure event, pure contingency, what ought to be inaccessible to representation […]. (2002, 164) peter greenaway’s fictional narrative, a zed and two noughts, offers a disturbing study of the common physical fate and shared mortality of all beings – human and animal – in that we all must die, our bodies decomposing in an earthly process that is an inescapable part of the evolutionary cycle. one of the main characters, a doctor, films, frame by frame, the decomposition of many dead creatures: prawns, fish, a crocodile, zebra and finally himself and his twin brother. there is no relief in greenaway’s film for the viewer who might hope to displace the cycle of death and decay onto the animal. lawrence l. langer argues it is the body in the modern era that signifies “the universal dilemma of dealing with one’s ‘creatureliness’ – of living critically and self – consciously while so vulnerable to the physical cruelties of men, nature, and science” (1978, 63). various directors have explored the significance of ethics and the death of animals in hunting films. in white hunter black heart (1990) clint eastwood, who is both the director and the main protagonist, wilson, argues that it is not just a crime against nature to kill such a majestic animal for sport, it is a “sin”. despite this, he still desperately wants to shoot the big “tusker”. when he finally has the bull elephant in his sights, the creature runs straight towards him, halts, paws the ground and bellows directly at wilson. the elephant towers over him, his massive tusks poised. overwhelmed, wilson stares in amazement. realising finally the ignoble nature of his pursuit, he is unable to pull the trigger. the protagonist of daniel nettheim’s the hunter (2011) has similar desires. played by willem dafoe, the hunter finally catches a glimpse of his prey – the last thylacine. in an earlier scene, he thinks to himself: “i wonder if she is the last one – hunting and killing – waiting to die”. he has been camping out in the tasmanian wilderness, through the seasons, determined to hunt her down. it is winter. one night the animal presents herself at the opening of the cave where he is sleeping. a shadowy figure, she slips away into the darkness. he races after her, but when she stands still and stares back at him he is unable to shoot – momentarily. she seems to shimmer in the snow and the moonlight, barbara creed 30 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ a mythical unattainable phantasm. the two exchange looks, which he recognises all too late is a creaturely gaze. then in a strange gesture she stands her ground, refusing to flee from him. the moment after he shoots her, he races across the snow to where she lies. he reaches out hesitantly to touch her furry body. overcome by the horror of what he has done, he kneels before her body weeping. in the tradition of white hunter black heart, the hunter presents a chilling critique of a culture that fails to understand that the vulnerability of all animals should be valued and not used as a justification for murder. references bazin, andré. (1958) 2003. “death every afternoon”. in rites of realism, edited by ivone margulies, 27-31. durham london: duke university press. burt, jonathan. 2002. animals in film. london: reaktion books. calarco, matthew. 2008. zoographies. chichester, ny west sussex, uk: columbia university press. cartwright, lisa. 1995. screening the body: tracing medicine’s visual culture. minneapolis: university of minnesota press. coetzee, john maxwell. 2004. elizabeth costello. london: vintage books. combs, scott. 2008. “cut: execution, editing, and instant death”. spectator 28 (2): 31-41. derrida, jacques. 1991. “eating well – an interview”. in who comes after the subject?, edited by eduardo cadava, peter connor, and jean-luc nancy, 96-119. new york london: routledge. 2002. “the animal that therefore i am (more to follow)”, translated by david wills. critical inquiry 28 (2): 369-418. doane, mary ann. 2002. the emergence of cinematic time: modernity, contingency, the archive. cambridge, ma london: harvard university press. durgant, raymond. 1968. franju. berkeley: university of california press. elsaesser, thomas, and malte hagener. 2009. film theory: an introduction through the senses. united kingdom new york: routledge. espejo, daniela. 2006. “a zed and two noughts”. in peter greenaway. last modified october, 2010. accessed may 9, 2013. http://petergreenaway.org.uk/zoo.htm. evans, edward payson. 1906. the criminal prosecution and capital punishment of animals: the lost history of europe’s animal trials. london: w. heinemann. giles, jane. 1999. “the white horse, seul contre tous and notes on meat as metaphor”. vertigo 1 (9): 1-3. langer, lawrence l. 1978. the age of anxiety: death in modern literature. boston: beacon. lawrence, amy. 1997. the films of peter greenaway, cambridge: cambridge university press. animal deaths on screen 31 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ lippit, akira mizuta. 2002. “from wild technology to electric animal”. in representing animals, edited by nigel rothfels, 119-38. bloomington: indiana university press. lowenstein, adam. 1998. “films without a face: shock horror in the cinema of georges franju”. cinema journal 37 (4): 37-58. marks, laura u. 2000. the skin of the film: intercultural cinema, embodiment, and the senses. durham london: duke university press. moussaieff, jeffrey, and susan mccarthy. 1995. when elephants weep: the emotional lives of animals. new york: dell publishing. mulvey, laura. 2009. visual and other pleasures. london: palgrave macmillan. murphet, julian. 2008. “pitiable or political animals?”. substance #117, 37 (3): 97-116. pick, anat. 2011. creaturely poetics: animality and vulnerability in literature and film. new york: columbia university press. pipolo, tony. 2010. robert bresson: a passion for film. oxford: oxford university press. sobchack, vivian. 2004. carnal thoughts: embodiment and moving image culture. berkeley: university of california press. the problem of evil in nature: evolutionary bases of the prevalence of disvalue the problem of evil in nature evolutionary bases of the prevalence of disvalue 1 oscar horta professor of moral philosophy, university of santiago de compostela doi: 10.7358/rela-2015-001-hort oscar.horta@usc.es abstract this paper examines the problem of evil in nature, that is, the issue of the disvalue present in nature, and the question of whether or not it prevails over happiness. the paper claims that disvalue actually outweighs happiness in nature. this is an unavoidable consequence of the existence of an evolutionary process in a context where resources are scarce. because of this, suffering and early death are the norm in nature. the number of individuals who come into existence just to die in pain shortly after, vastly outweighs the number of those who survive. the paper also claims that the idea that the interests of nonhuman animals need not be considered in the same way as those of humans is speciesist and unacceptable, and that animals not only have an interest in not suffering, but also in not dying. in light of this, the paper concludes that the good things present in nature are vastly outweighed by the huge amount of disvalue that exists there, and that we should try to reduce such disvalue. keywords: anthropocentrism, disvalue, population dynamics, speciesism, egalitarianism, harm of death, interventionism, natural evil, problem of evil, suffering. what a book a devil’s chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering, low, and horribly cruel works of nature! 2 1 this work was done with the support of the spanish ministry of science and innovation (research project ffi2008-06414-c03-01/fiso). a previous version of this paper appeared in spanish in 2011 in a special issue on the problem of evil in nature in the journal ágora. papeles de filosofía 30 (2): 57-75. the current version includes a number of modifications to the initial paper. 2 thus starts a letter by charles darwin to joseph d. hooker, dated on july 13, 1856, reflecting how darwin was appalled at the disvalue caused by natural processes (darwin [1908] 2005, 94). mailto:oscar.horta@usc.es http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 oscar horta 18 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 1. what does the problem of disvalue in nature consist of? the problem of the disvalue present in nature, and of its prevalence over the value in nature, is one of the most significant aspects of the classic problem of evil. despite this, the importance of this question remains for the most part unrecognized in the literature. this is because life in natural environments is commonly seen as good for animals. of course, most of us are aware that nonhuman animals suffer different kinds of harms in nature, which cause them to suffer, undergo deprivations and mutilations, and die prematurely. still, even though we know this occurs, we usually do not give much importance to it. we tend to think that these are just a few occasional episodes that can occur in the lives of some animals, within a general framework in which pleasant life is the norm. we believe this is a perfectly acceptable cost in comparison to the good which a life in natural habitats provides animals. in addition, it is believed by many that these harms are trivial even though they would be really tragic if human beings suffered them, because it is assumed that nonhuman animals are not morally considerable, or at least not in the way humans are. furthermore, it is often considered that the suffering of animals in nature is just something that should occur because it is part of the processes that occur in nature, and the contemplation of nature is something valuable for human beings. finally, it is sometimes argued that nature embodies some values that outweigh the disvalue that animals may suffer in it. this paper will claim that these ideas about the value and disvalue present in nature do not correspond with what happens in reality, and that the moral arguments to dismiss this as unimportant fail. this is a very serious ethical issue which should receive careful attention. in support of this, sections 2, 3 and 4 will present the reasons why, contrary to what is often believed, suffering (and premature death) in nature vastly outweighs wellbeing. sections 5 and 6 will argue that we should reject the views which claim that animal suffering is not something worthy of moral attention. these arguments also imply not just that our pleasure in the contemplation of nature is not a sound reason to deny the disvalue present in it, but also that the disvalue is more relevant than such pleasure. section  7 will maintain that we must reject the idea that natural processes embody certain values so significant that they make the disvalue suffered by nonhuman animals trivial by comparison. finally, section 8 will examine the conclusions that can be inferred from all this concerning our reasons for action. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 the problem of evil in nature 19 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 2. the disvalue suffered by animals in nature although many see nature as a paradisiacal place, an immense amount of disvalue takes place in it. there is one way this occurs that is especially visible, which traditionally has raised the most doubts and concerns about this issue: the way animals attack each other. this consists basically in predation and parasitism. it is known how this affected one of the first theorists who started to reflect about the question of the disvalue in nature, charles darwin. he thought the idea that we live in a good world is hardly compatible with the fact that in nature there are nonhuman animals who suffer enormously and die due to attacks by other animals that occur not occasionally but continually. he therefore confessed in 1860 (in a letter to asa gray): “i cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent god would have designedly created the ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars” (darwin [1901] 2004, 105) 3. it would be misguided, however, to think that predation and parasitism are the only ways animals are harmed in nature. there are many other ways. animals suffer from malnutrition and starve to death, endure terrible diseases, suffer from cold, heat and other weather conditions, and are hurt in accidents, among other harms. as i have pointed out above, many could think that all these circumstances would be exceptions throughout the more or less happy lives animals lead. this idea, however, is contradicted by the fact that there are animals who die young as a result of them. moreover, there are animals who die after living lives in which they cannot experience virtually any wellbeing, though they do experience a great deal of suffering. in these cases it cannot be claimed that the harms undergone by the animals are just anomalous episodes. nevertheless, it could still be argued that those harms would be sporadic and secondary within a general scheme in which wellbeing prevails in nature. as we will see later, we have reasons to doubt these are infrequent cases. at any rate, even if these cases were anomalous, the evaluation we would make of this problem would not necessarily be positive. on the contrary, that would depend on the kind of position we assume in value theory and ethics. we will see now why this is so. 3 on this see also mill (1874) 1969 and gould 1994. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 oscar horta 20 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 3. different theories about aggregate value and disvalue there are certain conceptions of value which entail that how good or bad an outcome is is determined by the total sum of wellbeing and suffering of the individuals that are present in it, regardless of how that wellbeing is distributed. this is what utilitarianism claims. according to this view, if the total amount of animal suffering existing in nature were less than the total amount of positive wellbeing present in it, the balance would be positive overall. other theories reject this. there are two types of theories that could find such an outcome negative. first, there are theories for which the way value and disvalue is distributed also matters. if some individuals live good lives, while others live lives that contain more suffering than wellbeing, that would not be good according to these theories. this would be the case even if the total amount of positive value were higher than the total disvalue present in that situation. and this is actually the way things are in nature. many of the animals who come into existence have lives that contain little more than suffering. due to this, according to these views, the enormous amount of suffering present in nature cannot be compensated by the fact that others are enjoying wellbeing. these are all the views according to which the unequal distribution of wellbeing and suffering is something negative, such as egalitarianism and prioritarianism (temkin 1993; holtug 2007; faria 2014). and all those that consider that an outcome cannot be good if there are individuals whose lives do not reach a minimum level of wellbeing for their lives to be worth living, such as sufficientarianism (crisp 2003). there are others theories according to which positive value, if it exists, can never compensate for the existence of disvalue. this is the case with negative consequentialist theories. other non-consequentialist theories, such as deontological ones, can also assume this value theory (mayerfeld 1999). according to these views, the disvalue present in nature cannot be countervailed in any way. this means that even if cases in which wild animals have to endure terrible lives were scarce, that would still be a very negative situation according to a number of views. all this, however, does not mean that those accepting an aggregative viewpoint such as the one assumed by utilitarianism would reject intervening in nature to help animals as those defending the theories we have just seen would promote. those accepting an aggregate viewpoint such as the one assumed by utilitarianism would also have reasons to support doing so. even if value in nature exceeded disvalue, they would still have to conclude http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 the problem of evil in nature 21 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ that it is a bad thing that such disvalue occurs. they would thus be in favor of reducing that disvalue as much as possible as long as the total amount of value were not reduced. most importantly, there are reasons to think that in fact it is not the case that the value present in nature outweighs the disvalue found in it. this means that those who accept an aggregative viewpoint such as a utilitarian one will reach a similar conclusion to those who do not accept an aggregate viewpoint. 4. the reason why disvalue vastly outweighs value in nature the question we need to address here is whether suffering prevails over positive wellbeing, or it is the other way around. how can that question be assessed? in parerga and paralipomena schopenhauer gave an answer which is simple but on the right track, when he wrote: whoever wants summarily to test the assertion that the pleasure in the world outweighs the pain, or at any rate that the two balance each other, should compare the feelings of an animal that is devouring another with those of that other. ([1851] 2000, ii, § 149) to be sure, schopenhauer’s criterion is not a very rigorous one, since in nature there are other sources of suffering and pleasure apart from eating and being eaten. nonetheless, there is some truth in it. wellbeing and suffering are tools for the self-regulation of the homeostasis of organisms and for other aims that maximize the transmission of their genetic information. they work by motivating them positively or negatively depending on whether or not they get what they need for that matter. animals suffer when they lack the resources they need (for instance, when they cannot eat). they also suffer when they are hurt, as it happens when other animals use them as resources in harmful ways (being eaten by another animals is a clear instance of this). this means that the availability of resources and the way they are distributed determines the balance between the value and the disvalue in nature. unfortunately, as schopenhauer appears to think, this balance ends up being negative. this is due to two circumstances. the first is the fact that those resources are indeed limited. the second is the existence of an evolutionary process that favors the maximization of the transmission of genetic information. these two circumstances together cause many beings to come into existence, for whom there will not be enough resources. moreover, http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 oscar horta 22 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ in many cases the beings who survive use other animals as resources for themselves. there are animals who starve to death or are eaten by others. because of the two conditions presented above, this is commonly the case. the maximization of the transmission of genetic material implies, in most cases, a process that also maximizes disvalue. this occurs because the reproductive strategy prevailing in nature tends to maximize the number of sentient beings who starve or are eaten 4. this process can be explained in population dynamics as follows. for a population to continue existing through time it is necessary that a sufficient number of animals of the next generation survives. for their numbers to remain stable it is necessary that on average, a number of individuals approximately equal to that of the previous generation survives. the different reproductive strategies achieve this (of course, these strategies are not chosen as such by the animals themselves, but are the result of the two factors pointed out above). there are two main strategies. (i) the first consists in maximizing the survival chances of the animals who come into existence. this implies that parents provide their progeny with the care necessary for them not to die prematurely. this is possible only when that care is focused on just one offspring, or on a very small number of them. this strategy is commonly known in population biology as k-selection. k-selected animals are also known as k-strategists. (ii) the second consists in maximizing the number of animals who come into existence. this means that every time an animal reproduces she has an enormous number of offspring. this makes it very hard, if not impossible, for parents to give their offspring the care they could have provided if they had had just one or a few offspring. animals who follow this strategy thus have a very low survival rate. as so few individuals are born, the available resources needed for them to survive are reduced. this reproductive strategy is commonly called r-selection, and the animals following it r-strategists. 5 4 even if the available resources in nature were scarce it would be possible for suffering and premature death to be at relatively low levels if sentient beings did not acted in ways that maximize the transmission of their genetic material. however, this could not be, since those beings would not persist through natural history. 5 the names of these two reproductive strategies are due to an important equation used in population dynamics to account for the variations in population numbers: dn/dt = rn(1-n/k). in this equation, given a population whose initial number of individuals is n, its variation during time t depends on two variables: r, which represents the reproductive rate of the population (the number of individuals that come into existence) and k, which represents the carrying capacity of the ecosystem in which this population is (ultimately, the odds each new individual survives). r-strategists maximize r, while k-strategists maximize k (macarthur and wilson 1967; pianka 1970). contemporary life history theorists http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 the problem of evil in nature 23 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ if all animals, or at least most of them, were k-strategists, the amount of disvalue that exists in nature would be relatively small. however, this is not what happens. the animals who follow this reproductive strategy must have very complex behavior, which is the result of a long and complicated evolutionary process. they are usually specialist animals who thrive in very particular environmental conditions. due to this, they are very sensitive to important changes in their habitats. these are very restrictive requirements, which favors the predominance of r-selection in nature. therefore, the vast majority, in fact almost all the animals that exist in nature, are r-strategists. only some vertebrates, such as certain mammals and birds, have just one offspring each time they reproduce. others have reproductive strategies that combine both options, so they have several offspring who receive some parental care, though less than the care k-strategists usually give to their progeny. still, the great majority of the animals existing in nature are much more characteristically r-strategists, and reproduce by laying enormous amounts of eggs (often thousands or tens of thousands, and in some cases millions of them) 6. this means that the number of animals that come into existence only to die shortly after is extremely high. on average, if we consider a context in which populations remain stable at least in the mid term, for each animal that reproduces, only one of her or his offspring survives (otherwise animal populations would grow exponentially very fast, and would become massive with just one generation). this means that all the rest of the animals die. many of them die shortly after coming into existence. these animals starve to death, are eaten by other animals, or die for other reasons that usually entail a great deal of suffering. this means that an enormous number of animals come into existence only to suffer. their lives contain virtually no enjoyment, since they die shortly after they start to exist. however, their lives do contain significant suffering, because of the painful ways in which they die. they thus live lives in which disvalue outweighs value. living their lives causes them more harm than good. in fact, in many cases it causes them great harm and no good at all. all this determines the balance between value and disvalue in nature. what we have just seen entails that the animals whose lives contain predominantly suffering are an overwhelming majority. in fact, they account have criticized r/k selection theory for several reasons different from the simple claim that some animals reproduce by maximizing their offspring and others by maximizing their offspring’s survival (stearns 1992). this paper just assumes this basic claim without endorsing the whole r/k selection theory. 6 the vertebrate that lays more eggs, the sunfish, may deposit up to 300 million eggs each time (froese and luna 2004). http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 oscar horta 24 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ for almost all the animals that come into existence. this is because (i) virtually all the sentient r-strategists suffer this fate (all except around one per parent); and (ii) because the overwhelming majority of the animals existing on this planet are r-strategists. the wellbeing that thus exists in nature pales in comparison to the astronomical amount of disvalue, because of the suffering and premature death that it also contains (sagoff 1993; ng 1995; tomasik 2015). we might point out that such disvalue is not so significant by noting that not all the animals that come into existence and die without becoming adults suffer so terribly. this is because many of these animals are not sentient when they die, so they do not experience any suffering (or, it could be pointed out, any loss when they die). many others, while sentient, may not have very vivid experiences. it seems very plausible that sentience develops gradually. accordingly, maybe the suffering they endure is reduced (at least in comparison with the suffering other animals may feel). in addition, there are animals who have very quick deaths. finally, there are many animals who may die before adulthood yet live long enough to enjoy some positive experiences. all this means that not all the animals that come into existence and do not make it through adulthood have lives that contain more suffering than positive wellbeing. this limits significantly the negative effects which otherwise may occur as a consequence of r-selection. however, it does not eliminate them totally, but only to some extent. even if some animals die without being sentient, or without suffering a great deal, many others have more developed nervous systems when they die, and die in ways that cause them great suffering. moreover: even if there are beings with a very low level of consciousness who almost do not feel their experiences, their experiences still count for something. all suffering counts, including mild suffering. this means that if mild suffering is undergone by a huge number of individuals, as occurs in nature, its total sum gets enormously high. all this apart from the fact that, as we have seen, from those viewpoints for which distribution is relevant, and those for which disvalue is not compensated by value, the existence of individuals whose lives contain little more than suffering is enormously negative, even if that suffering is not as bad as the suffering that other individuals are capable of undergoing. finally, even though many animals may have some enjoyments before they die, there are others who do not. and there are many who may have some enjoyments but not enough to compensate for the disvalue of their suffering and early death. due to all this r-selection can be said to be the main cause of suffering in the wild. this does not mean that there is no positive wellbeing at all in nature. nor does it mean that k-selected animals do not suffer significantly http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 the problem of evil in nature 25 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ as well. it is, though, the factor that makes suffering outweigh positive wellbeing. in fact, this is something that could hardly have been different. as we have seen, r-selection is just the result we should expect of processes which tend to maximize the transmission of genetic material to new generations in combination with the fact that resources are limited. this is something most of us do not think about. one important reason for this is that when we think of animals living in nature we tend to think of adult animals. moreover, we also tend to think of vertebrates, especially, in most cases, mammals or bids, and often large animals. that is, we tend to think of those among which k-selection is more common. this drives away from our minds r-strategists, and with them the disvalue that is present in ecosystems. but this happens only because the animals we tend to think of are not representative of those who really exist in nature. as we have seen, most of the animals who come into existence are very young animals who will die very soon. 5. the disregard for nonhuman animals there are people who think all this is irrelevant, because they believe that animal suffering and death is not really a disvalue, or because they think we should only care for the harms that human beings suffer. there is a widespread view according to which nonhuman animals are not worthy of full moral consideration, that only humans deserve. this viewpoint is defended commonly 7 by indicating that only humans possess certain complex cognitive capacities, or other related capacities (paton 1984; ferry 1992; scruton 1996), that only they have certain special relations of solidarity between them (whewell 1852, 223; becker 1983), that they are more powerful than others, etc. (narveson 1987; goldman 2001). but for those arguments to succeed they must fulfill a necessary requirement. they must appeal to a criterion that is satisfied by all human beings and only by them. however, the aforementioned criteria (the possession of certain capacities or relations) do not satisfy that condition. some human beings with intellectual functional diversity, as well as babies, have intellectual capacities that are less developed than those that a number of nonhuman animals possess. there are also many human beings with whom 7 in other cases this view is defended by appealing to the mere fact that humans are members of our own species or by appealing to criteria which cannot be verified, such as religious reasons (diamond 1995; reichmann 2000; gaita 2003; posner 2004). these claims fail to provide any sound reason to support disregard for nonhuman animals. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 oscar horta 26 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ no one has any relation of solidarity or who are helpless among others who are more powerful than them. if we assume the moral relevance of these criteria we will accept that none of these humans be granted full moral consideration, and so may be considered disadvantageously or not taken into account at all. if we think that, despite this, these human beings should be respected, and their interests should be fully taken into account, we cannot accept that in order to be morally considerable we need to have special relations of solidarity, sympathy, power, or other similar relations. this shows that these criteria fail to draw a difference between human beings and other animals. in addition, we would also reject these criteria if we understand that when it comes to taking an entity into account in our moral decisions, what is relevant is that entity’s capacity to be affected by those decisions. if we make our decisions based on relevant factors, all beings who can be benefited or harmed by our actions must be considered. this includes nonhuman animals, given that they can feel suffering and wellbeing. accepting criteria that are based only on relevant factors implies that we cannot justify the view that considers the interests of nonhuman animals disadvantageously in comparison to those of humans (pluhar 1995; dombrowski 1997; horta 2014). that view is a form of discrimination, which is called speciesism. to hold the view that the harms suffered by nonhuman animals in nature should not be of moral concern but accept that those same harms would be of moral concern if they were suffered by human beings is to assume a speciesist position. in light of this, consider the idea that the emotional satisfaction or the pleasure we may obtain from contemplating nature outweighs the disvalue that nonhuman animals can suffer in it. that idea assumes that our interest in that kind of benefit would be more significant than the interests animals have in not being victims of the harms they suffer in nature. this, however, appears to be totally implausible, given how significant those harms are. in fact, if we had to undergo the harm animals suffer in nature to be able to enjoy its contemplation it is clear that we would conclude it would not be worth it. even if we were not the ones suffering and the total benefit derived by those contemplating nature were greater than the total harm of those who suffered for it, to many this would still be unfair, since it would mean benefiting some by harming others. this shows that the disvalue suffered by animals in nature is not worth the benefits we enjoy out of its contemplation. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 the problem of evil in nature 27 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 6. the harm of death it might be thought that the fact that animals agonize in nature only harms them to the extent that it makes them suffer, but not because it causes them to die. it is sometimes argued that in order for death to be a harm to a being, that being must be conscious of being a separate entity that exists through time (cigman 1981). there are, however, strong reasons to challenge this view. according to an argument that dates back at least to epicurus ([ca.  300  bc] 1964), death cannot harm us, because it cannot affect us before we die and, not being something one can experience, it does not affect us after we die either. the standard reply to this argument claims that death is not an intrinsic harm, but an extrinsic one: a harm by deprivation. dying at a certain time t would harm us because it would deprive us of the positive things we would have had after that time t had not we died at t (nagel 1970; mcmahan 2002; broome 2004; bradley 2009). if a being has the capacity to have positive experiences it would be possible for that being to have them in the future. this means that any being with this capacity can be deprived of positive experiences. therefore, sentient animals are harmed by death. if this is right, we must conclude that animals are not harmed only when they suffer in nature: the fact that they die prematurely is a disvalue as well. this entails that the total negative balance in nature caused by the vast prevalence of suffering over wellbeing is also increased by the enormous number of premature deaths taking place in it. 7. is there a value in natural processes that overshadows natural disvalue? we have seen in the previous sections that any view which values the wellbeing of sentient beings will have to conclude that in nature disvalue is the norm for them. however, there are theories of value according to which it is not individuals, but other kinds of entities that are the real locations of value. according to these theories, it is entities such as the sum of all living beings (that is, biocenoses), or the systems resulting from the interactions between these entities and between them and their physical environments (ecosystems) that are valuable. for these holistic positions individuals count only instrumentally as long as they further other aims. accordingly, sacrificing their interests will be something positive if it grants the conservation of natural entities such as ecosystems. this means that the suffering and death of animals in nature will be of little or no concern to anyone holding such views. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 oscar horta 28 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ moreover, we must bear in mind that the suffering and death we find in nature is something intrinsic to how ecosystems work. it is not that in the natural world several things occur in a disconnected way so we have on the one hand the processes of which ecosystems consist (or which give rise to them) and on the other hand the circumstances that make it the case that the suffering and death of animals takes place massively. rather, these are all the same: the very interactions that shape ecosystems in their present form are what cause, directly or indirectly, the suffering and death of animals. this is why different environmentalist theorists (callicott 1989; rolston 1992 and 1999; sagoff 1993; hettinger 1994) have argued against the viewpoints that defend the moral consideration of all animals, or at least against the moral consideration of nonhuman animals in the wild as individuals. they have done so because they are aware that there is a conflict between granting consideration to wholes and granting it to individual animals, and they choose the former instead of the latter. it is important to note that these theorists do not maintain the same view in the case of human beings, even though today most people (including these theorists themselves) believe that human beings alter ecosystems very significantly, and much more than other animals do. holding a truly holistic view would entail having to promote radical restrictions to human activity, and more than that, it would also entail the massive killing of humans to reduce their impact on natural systems. this can help us to see why views that value wholes more than individuals are very questionable, and also why those theorists who claim to accept them are actually not really doing so, but just combining a holistic approach with an anthropocentric speciesist one. in fact any theory of value seems implausible if it entails that the suffering of sentient beings is not disvaluable. so these holistic theories are hardly credible when they entail that the plight of nonhuman animals living in the wild is not something that should count as very negative. in addition to this, it can be pointed out that ecosystems and biocenoses as such do not feel suffering and wellbeing, as individual sentient beings do. they do not appear to have experiences. this has important consequences if we think having experiences is what matters in order to be negatively or positively affected by our actions in a way that is relevant for that which is intrinsically valuable or disvaluable. it means that we have to conclude that ecosystems or biocenoses do not belong to the group of those that suffer disvaluable things, while sentient animals do. other theorists have tried to combine the consideration of environmental wholes with a concern for individual sentient beings (jamieson 1998; everett 2001; raterman 2008). this combination, however, is implausible if it claims that the disvalue suffered by nonhuman animals cannot outweigh http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 the problem of evil in nature 29 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the value of natural nonsentient entities, as these theorists assume. for, even if the latter had a significant value, the aggregated disvalue of trillions of animals suffering to death has to be enough to outweigh it at some point. all this entails that if we want to reject a speciesist viewpoint and to consider the interests of individual sentient beings, we have to reject holism and to accept the conclusions reached in previous sections. 8. conclusion: the question of intervention we have seen that the problem of evil in nature is much more relevant than it might seem at first sight. the amount of suffering present in the natural world is enormous. the arguments regarding the moral consideration of animals entail that this suffering must be considered morally relevant. this gives us reason to conclude that we should intervene in those cases where it is feasible in order to reduce the disvalue suffered by nonhuman animals. that is, in those cases in which we can reduce it as a whole, not in some isolated way that reduces disvalue for some in ways that trigger processes that result in more suffering elsewhere (sapontzis 1984; bonnardel 1996; cowen 2003; fink 2005; nussbaum 2006; horta 2010 and 2013; mcmahan 2010a and 2010b; donaldson and kymlicka 2011; sözmen 2013). any plausible ethical theory must assume that the way we should act must aim somehow to achieve a better world, either indirectly or to a certain degree (as in deontological theories) or directly and completely (as in teleological theories). this being so, the amount of disvalue in the wild is hugely relevant and gives us strong reasons to change this situation no matter what approach we take to ethics. as i have stressed before, most people assume nature is a good place for nonhuman animals. due to this, the conclusion that we should intervene in nature for the sake of wild animals may seem counter-intuitive. in addition, we can think of other reasons to reject it, such as our lack of information about the ways our intervention may affect natural processes, the harm that altering these processes can cause for animals and the idea that nature is sacred and thus we have a duty not to intervene in it. we have already seen throughout this paper that some of these reasons are not valid. it is false that animals are benefited by the way ecosystems work; in fact, it is the other way around: they are harmed by it. neither are there sound reasons to think nature is sacred, at least if we accept that sentient beings are morally considerable, rather than ecosystems or biocenoses. it might be argued against this that, even accepting that only sentient beings are morally considerable, without proper information interventions http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 oscar horta 30 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ may be counter-productive because they can indirectly increase, rather than reduce, the harms suffered by animals in the wild. this does not mean that we should abandon the idea of acting for the sake of animals in the wild. on the contrary, it means we need to research in more detail ways we might intervene successfully. in addition, in order to succeed in an enterprise such as this there is something more important than being well informed about how to act: it is necessary to view it as something that should be done. however, as i have pointed out before, the intuitions most people have do not favor intervening significantly in nature to help animals. this means that there are some important things that we must do today so that in the future there will be a will to help animals in nature. they include the following: (i) promoting the arguments for the necessity to reject speciesism, (ii) raising awareness about the huge disvalue that is present in nature for animals, and (iii) spreading the idea that intervention in nature to help nonhuman animals is not only fully justified, but necessary if we want a better world. references becker, lawrence. 1983. “the priority of human interests”. in ethics and animals, edited by harlan miller and william williams, 225-42. clifton: humana press. bonnardel, yves. 1996. “contre l’apartheid des espèces: à propos de la prédation et de l’opposition entre écologie et libération animale”. les cahiers antispécistes 14. last modified december, 1996. http://www.cahiers-antispecistes.org/ article.php3?id_article=103. bradley, ben. 2009. well-being and death. new york: oxford university press. broome, john. 2004. weighing lives. oxford: oxford university press. callicott, john b. 1989. in defense of the land ethic: essays in environmental philosophy. albany: suny press. cigman, ruth. 1981. “death, misfortune and species inequality”. philosophy and public affairs 10 (1): 47-54. cowen, tyler. 2003. “policing nature”. environmental ethics 25 (2): 169-82. crisp, roger. 2003. “equality, priority, and compassion”. ethics 113 (4): 745-63. darwin, charles. 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(1851) 2000. parerga and paralipomena: short philosophical essays, translated by eric f.j. payne. oxford: oxford university press. scruton, roger. 1996. animal rights and wrongs. london: metro. sözmen, beril i. 2013. “harm in the wild: facing non-human suffering in nature”. ethical theory and moral practice 16 (5): 1075-88. stearns, stephen c. 1992. the evolution of life histories. oxford: oxford university press. temkin, larry. 1993. inequality. oxford: oxford university press. tomasik, brian. forthcoming (2015). “the importance of wild-animal suffering”. relations. beyond anthropocentrism 3 (2). whewell, william. 1852. lectures on the history of moral philosophy in england. london: john parker. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/the-meat-eaters/ http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/28/predtors-a-response/ on dolphin personhood. an interview with karsten brensing on dolphin personhood an interview with karsten brensing jessica ullrich phd, university of lueneburg doi: 10.7358/rela-2014-001-ullr jesmarullrich@t-online.de ju: you are one of the leading dolphin and whale experts worldwide. could you tell us a little bit about your personal background and how you became a marine biologist? kb: i wouldn’t say that i’m one of the leading experts – there are just too many – but i’m one of the few scientists focusing explicitly on the protection of theses amazing animals. however, i have dreamt of becoming a marine biologist since my early childhood. i was always fascinated by the sea and i love swimming and diving. after studying marine biology in kiel, i started my career as a phd student in behavior research at the free university of berlin in 1997. i spent a year in florida at the dolphins plus and i made several trips to israel conducting research at the dolphin reef  – both facilities are fenced pens with captive dolphins. i was interested in the self-motivated behavior of dolphins towards human swimmers. it was a shock when i realized that the dolphins are not excited about swimming with humans. it is widely promoted that dolphins in the swim programs enjoy human company, but that’s not true: the dolphins in florida tried to escape (without success due to the limited space) and showed signs of stress. the dolphins in israel were only interested in the trainer and not the visitors, but at least they could escape because the facility was about 10 times as big as in florida. to be honest, after my phd i felt a bit guilty because i saw myself as someone who abused those animals, not for money but for my career. that led me to the decision to work for an ngo which has a clear policy against cetaceans in captivity and so i started to work for the international charity whale and dolphin conservation in 2005. ju: is there a special individual animal that changed your life? http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ jessica ullrich 124 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ kb: yes indeed, it is a bit embarrassing but i really believe that flipper had an important impact on my life. today i see that from a totally different perspective as that tv show cost the lives of several bottlenose dolphins. ju: what does your daily routine look like as a marine biologist? kb: it starts in a similar way to the daily routine of many people; i press the power button on my computer! but seriously, my life is, for the most part, not very exciting. working for an ngo means policy work; in other words, i try to figure out the best ways to increase the protection of whales and dolphins. if i have identified a problem and a solution, i just try to convince the decision-makers to make the necessary change. sounds easy, doesn’t it? in fact it is quite complicated and the work of a conservation ngo has changed a lot over the last few decades. we have a lot of legal frameworks in place and we have to work out what we can do within those frameworks. in reality, that means that we participate in the relevant agreements and working groups. for example, i’m a member of a working group from the european commission which is focusing on marine noise pollution, which is a serious and increasing threat for cetaceans (whales and dolphins). ju: you are with wdc. what are the primary tasks and aims of this organization? kb: wdc, whale and dolphin conservation (formerly wdcs) is the leading global charity dedicated to the conservation and protection of whales and dolphins. we defend these remarkable creatures against the many threats they face through campaigns, lobbying, advising governments, conservation projects, field research and rescue. our vision is a world where every whale and dolphin is safe and free. in other words, every single individual counts. ju: in your new book persönlichkeitsrechte für tiere (personal rights for animals) you demand personal rights for animals. what rights should be granted to animals? kb: “personal rights for animals” means that every non-human person should deserve the same protection as a human person. i believe that would be the logical progression of existing moral frameworks; we protect humans as single individuals with their own independent will. if individual species rights were recognized, it would be impossible that someone else on dolphin personhood 125 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ could own an animal, in the same way that it became impossible to own a slave once these humans had their rights recognized. it would also then be illegal to kill or to abuse a species that had been recognized in law as a non-human person. ju: which animals do you consider to be persons? could you define personhood? what are the characteristics that make dolphins and whales persons? kb: personhood is the status of being a person, but defining personhood is a controversial topic in science and philosophy. however, most humans have a clear concept about personhood. they see a person as a “who” and not as a “thing”. persons have self-recognition and a theory of mind, meaning they have a concept of the existence of others and are capable of empathy. persons have a concept of space and time, a good memory, and therefore a lifetime history and future. persons are capable of strategic thinking and acting upon this. they are able to communicate and to identify those they communicate with as particular individuals. they often [but not always] live in communities, some of which may even have their own culture, they may use tools and so on. i think to be recognized as a person you need to fulfill more or less all of those criteria i.e. it would not be enough to have a theory of mind but no self-recognition. however, that all depends on our knowledge as researchers and this implies a great risk of false negative results in our experiments. for example, a pig may be able to find food with help of a reflection in a mirror, but it is not recognizing itself even if it stands right in front of the mirror. but what if the pig needs its own smell for selfrecognition? in my book i use many small anecdotes, like the following: an alien species is examining earth looking for intelligent life. this alien species is quite different to us, they have only a limited visual view but they are able to communicate by smell and are even able to control their spaceship by smell. their selfrecognition test may look quite different to ours. just imagine being tested with a smell identical to your own. you will pass that test if you are able to recognize a tiny space behind your left shoulder which does not smell like you. and now think about the ethical consequences: if you show no signs of this self-recognition in that test, you may be defined as food. now you may understand that there are difficulties in defining which animal species have developed to the level of a person. i believe we have enough knowledge about great apes, whales and dolphins, and elephants, but what about birds where some species show signs of self-recognition and others signs of a theory of mind? jessica ullrich 126 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ju: you are stating the importance that dolphins have personal names that they use in communication. could you briefly outline how scientists discovered this? why is the existence of personal names in dolphins so important for their status as persons? kb: the knowledge of the so-called signature-whistle goes back to 1965. the caldwells (a couple involved in cetacean research) discovered that dolphins produce individual and unique whistles if they’re isolated from their mates – thus, the signature whistle hypothesis was born. since then we have learned a lot: for example, the signature whistle is developed in the first months of life and is originally based on the signature whistle of the mother; dolphins uses the signature whistles to introduce themselves if they are approaching another groups in the wild; dolphins call to each other, and recent research has shown that they remember the signature whistle from other dolphins even decades later. it needs to be pointed out that this communication works without names. most animals are not able to identify the sender, which means that individuality doesn’t play an important role in their social communities. some animals like dogs have the ability to identify individual barking, which is quite similar to recognizing the voice of another human. from that point of recognition, even we as humans do not need names to communicate. but names are important if you want to talk about someone else or if your social status as an individual is important. just imagine yourself without a name and you understand the importance for a person. ju: in your book you are saying that dolphins and whales have culture. could you specify what you mean by this? kb: culture in behavior research is defined as a knowledge/behavior/ tradition which is transferred from one individual to another or one generation to another. however, the observation of culture is something that can easily be misinterpreted e.g. different techniques for ant dipping by chimpanzees were described as culture until scientists discovered that different aggressive ants caused the use of different sticks. what you need to prove culture is a clear information path. let me give you two examples: • humpback whales sing complex songs which have changed over the years, and every region has different songs. in one instance, some whales introduced new songs to another region. these new song types were traveling through the pacific as if they were some kind of fashion wave. • bottlenose dolphins in the wild do not generally ride high above the water on their tail fins, as seen in dolphin shows. however, some dolon dolphin personhood 127 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ phins learned exactly this behavior from a dolphin which was entangled in fishnets and rehabilitated in captivity. this dolphin had the opportunity to observe the shows (without being part of them), she then started to tail walk herself and after she was released back into the wild, other dolphins learned the same trick from her. both examples cannot be interpreted as anything else than non-human culture. ju: in your book you are attributing self-consciousness, culture, tool use, the ability for strategic actions to whales, dolphins, apes, elephants and crows. do you think that animals who do not possess these qualities (or of whom we just do not know yet that they do) should not be granted rights or that we have not as much responsibility towards them? kb: no, not at all, we as highly developed humans are fully responsible for our impact on nature and consequently on each individual animal, and there is even more accountability if we use or abuse animals in our care. however, the status of personhood would result in the individual’s right not to be the property of any other person. however, other “persons” may still be responsible for protecting their welfare, just as is the case with small children, who are not owned by their parents or guardians, but these people have a duty of care towards these younger humans. this is probably the biggest difference, that human societies must recognize a duty to protect all those beings recognized as non-human persons, but it doesn’t mean that we can ignore animal welfare if an individual does not have the status of a person. ju: those animals with features we usually consider “human” (self-consciousness, tool use etc.) seem to be especially worthy of protection. should the absolute otherness of an animal not also be considered just as valuable and deserving of attention? kb: in general, all life should deserve attention and no life should be killed, but nature is full of killing. in fact, killing is the essential element in creating biodiversity and otherness. but the question is, is one species more worthy than something else? in the light of life on earth, biodiversity is absolutely vital and therefore everything that makes up that diversity is important. ju: some of your claims have also been made by the initiators of the great ape project. the great ape project has been criticized for privileging one jessica ullrich 128 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ species – apes – over other animals. the same could be said about your argument. you are opening the circle of animal persons by including dolphins and whales (and some other mammals and birds). what about the other species? shouldn’t they also be considered as persons or shouldn’t they also have rights? kb: yes, they should have rights but not all can be persons, or certainly we don’t have the science to support such an assertion at this stage. but let’s go back to the great ape project. i believe the great ape project relied on a very convincing argument where they pointed out that chimpanzees share 98% of our genes, so those animals are so close to us that they should receive an equal status. i believe this is true but not the whole picture; that’s why i really like the book in defense of dolphins by thomas white. he argued that it is not genetic relatedness to humans but the level of cognitive development that is important. the big question in his view is the question of personhood, because this status qualifies the protection of an individual. i believe this approach is much more feasible because it opens the discussion to all animals, which is only fair. however, this status can only be reached by some highly cognitively developed species, which certainly at present is excluding the majority of other animals, due to the fact that we don’t have the supporting scientific evidence. ju: it seems that there are many similarities between us and animals but is there still something that makes us as humans unique? kb: oh yes, there is something that makes us totally unique. only some species are able to cooperate. by this, i mean real cooperation, e.g. a group of hunting wolves may work together but they do not cooperate. real cooperation is based on the understanding of the situation together with a concept of the problem. as i mentioned, only some species are able to do this but humans are the “masters of the universe” when it comes to cooperation. this is the fundamental aspect of the success of our species and makes it obvious that we are special: with cooperation, we built streets and skyscrapers, we fly to the moon, and are able to destroy the whole world. but this has nothing to do with an individual which has reached the level of personhood. that’s why the belief that our ability to be a person is the main factor is somewhat outdated. ju: there is the photo of an ape on the cover of your book while you are dealing mostly with whales and dolphins. why did the publisher decide to use this picture? on dolphin personhood 129 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ kb: haha, as far as i know that was the decision of the marketing guys. the cover and title are not really under the control of the author. ju: you are supporting the helsinki declaration. could you briefly summarize the most important claims of this declaration? kb: the helsinki declaration (www.cetaceanrights.org) was published in 2010 from a group of cetacean scientists, philosophers and legal brains. the declaration consists of 10 paragraphs and is based on the fact that whales and dolphins should be treated as nonhuman person. the first, and maybe most important, point is: every individual cetacean has the right to life. ju: some people fear that personal rights for animals belittle human rights. what do you reply to that? kb: that’s two completely different things – no-one is asking for human rights for animals. to be honest, i believe this is a big misunderstanding. human rights are defined for humans and no one wants to change them. i can understand that some people may feel uncomfortable when it comes to discussion of humans who have lost the cognitive abilities of a person (perhaps through illness or accident). do those humans still have human rights? the answer is simple: yes, human rights cannot be divided or graduated; all humans, regardless of their cognitive abilities, have human rights. combining both discussions is misleading and creates senseless fear. ju: if animals had some (or all) of the rights you are claiming, most (or all) of the scientific research that is conducted on dolphins right now probably could not be carried on. some of the data you are presenting in your book would not be available. isn’t that too high a price to pay for a scientist? kb: this is a complex issue, and yes, scientific experiments in captivity would be stopped. however, you can conduct research in the wild and that is more valuable anyway. e.g. the two most impressive findings (the signature whistle and the observation of third order alliance) need more research in the wild. you cannot observe complex social behavior in captivity because dolphins do not act naturally, the group size is much too small, and you cannot observe the natural use of the signature whistles in a tank where all of the dolphins are always present. ju: some of the findings you are recapitulating in your book are based on research done with dolphins in captivity. what do you think about such research results? jessica ullrich 130 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ kb: that’s important pieces and we have to use this scientific knowledge as well as we can. there is no need to condemn that research or to criticize the scientists. our decisions can only be based on our current knowledge and no one can blame us (as humans) for something that we did not know in the past. the question is: how do we act now? i believe that if we don’t take the right action now, future generations will have the right to criticize us. from my point of view, we have the responsibility to incorporate that kind of knowledge into our ethical system and we have to recognize that rights of non-human persons. ju: what do you think of dolphinaria? kb: wdc gained access to all of the files from the dolphinarium in nürnberg based on the freedom of information act. the data clearly shows that there are dolphins kept there which do not behave normally and those which are aggressive are put on psychotropic drugs and hormones. this is proof that dolphins are kept under conditions which do not fulfill their biological requirements. in that respect, keeping dolphins in captivity is illegal. this is not a just question of personhood or any ethical considerations, it is a legal issue. to put it simply: dolphins do not belong in captivity. ju: what do you think of whale watching for tourists and of swimming with dolphins as a therapy for handicapped human beings? kb: those are all quite different things. if whale watching is organized in a proper manner, it doesn’t seem to be a threat for the observed whales or for the population. however, there are many examples which show that whale watching can be a problem. wdc does support well managed whale watching and we believe that this activity is of high educational value, if it is done with respect. swimming with dolphins and dolphin assisted therapy (dat) is mostly conducted in captivity with all the associated disadvantages – and there is no proof that dat even works at all. additionally, there are scientific observations that even swimming with dolphins in the wild is problematic. on the other hand, there are so many wonderful stories about interactions between humans and wild dolphins. my advice is simple: don’t pay to swim with dolphins – if it happens to you in the wild, just enjoy it and be respectful. ju: what is your most recent project? what are you working on at the moment? on dolphin personhood 131 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ kb: i have three main projects. one is the increasing marine noise pollution, where i try to be involved in all relevant working groups. another is captivity, where i am writing a scientific article about our evaluation of the nürnberg files. and last but not least my public awareness work around the personhood question. this is absolutely fundamental for our organization because it explains why we have our mission statement: a world where every whale and dolphin is safe and free! ju: what is the biggest danger for whales and dolphins today? kb: that’s still fisheries, hundreds of thousands of individuals are killed as so-called bycatch. this is a real shame because no one wants to kill them but traditional fishing methods are cheaper than new selective fishery technologies. an underestimated threat is noise pollution. at the moment, we are just beginning to understand the dramatic impact and consequences. ju: what could each of us do to help dolphins and whales? kb: first of all, you could sign the helsinki declaration at www.cetaceanrights.org, or adopt a whale or a dolphin at www.whales.org. but you also can do something every day e.g. avoid eating big predatory fish species like tuna or swordfish, reduce your plastic consumption and energy waste. those are simple things and you can feel much better about yourself. ju: your book starts with a utopian story of a world in which animals are granted personal rights. do you really think this is what the world will be like in the near future? kb: yes, i think so. we grew up with disney’s talking animals, but then we learned there is no santa claus and animals are not people. i believe we have to rethink that last statement, it may take a generation but if many people accept the fact that the status of a person has nothing to do with technology or being human, they may understand that we are not alone on our planet. ju: your book is in german unfortunately, what english book would you recommend? kb: i would suggest a book by my two colleagues philippa brakes and mark simmonds called: whales and dolphins: cognition, culture, conservation and human perceptions and also certainly in defense of dolphins by thomas white. review to: melanie joy, why we love dogs, eat pigs, and wear cows (2011) alma massaro 1 paola sobbrio 2 1 phd candidate in philosophy at university of genoa, italy 2 phd, department of veterinary science, university of messina, italy almamassaro@gmail.com psobbrio@hotmail.com joy, melanie. 2011. why we love dogs, eat pigs, and wear cows. san francisco: conari press. 216 pp. $ 16.95. isbn 978-1-57324-505-0. since ancient times, within the western tradition, vegetarianism – the refusal to kill nonhuman animals to eat their meat – has developed based on philosophical and ethical motivations. the first indication of this ethical-food policy dates back to ancient greece, when first of all orphic philosophers and subsequently pythagoras and his followers – the so-called pythagoreans – adopted a vegetarian diet, differing from other schools of thought, not only by virtue of the rules relevant to their nutrition but also, and most importantly, regarding the ethical principles behind such a choice. until this day, the term ‘vegetarian’ might evoke the image of someone guided by a definite worldview – an ideology – from which stems, among other behavior, the no meat diet. oddly enough, a similar situation did not occur as far as the opposite worldview was concerned; on the contrary it has never been regarded as a single belief system and therefore has not been investigated in its profound motivations, and has never even been defined by a particular name. the term ‘carnivores’ has been traditionally used to identify those who base their behavior on the basis of such a worldview; yet – taking a closer view – this definition belongs to the field of biology and counters the notion of ‘herbivore’, not ‘vegetarian’: the term lacks an ethical scope which can explain its ideological character. the term ‘meat eaters’ has also been used but once again the definition does not express a choice opposed to vegetarianism, but merely outlines a simple food practice without referring to a specific belief system. melanie joy – a social psychologist and professor of psychology and sociology at the university of massachusetts, boston – devotes his research, why we love dogs, eat pigs, and wear cows specifically to this conceptual and semantic gap, identifying the cause of this absence, by no means in a random manner, but rather by deliberate omission. as joy declares, echoing the famous wittgenstein’s consideration “the limits of my language are the limits of my world”: “the primary way alma massaro paola sobbrio 94 relations – 1.2 november 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ entrenched ideologies stay entrenched is by remaining invisible. and the primary way they stay invisible is by remaining unnamed. if we don’t name it, we can’t talk about it, and if we can’t talk about it, we can’t question it” (p. 32). for this reason, the author first makes a point of giving a name to this deeply entrenched – and violent – ideology, calling it carnism (pp. 28-30). she then examines its basic socio-psychological and economic assumptions (pp. 95-134). thus, it emerges the role played by both mental numbness (i.e. the psychological process through which we mentally and emotionally dissociate ourselves from our experience) and its action mechanisms (i.e. rejection, elusion, routinization, justification, objectification, de-individualization, dichotomization, rationalization and disassociation) in the conceptual sequence that allows us to refer to the meat we eat using the pronoun ‘what’ rather than the more suitable ‘who’ on a daily basis. in her study melanie joy also deals with the breaking down of the same mythology of meat into its constituent elements: that array of more or less rational explanations generally used by those who eat meat in order to validate their choice. in this regard, melanie talks about “the three n’s of justification”: eating meat is normal, natural and necessary (pp. 105-12). the critical analysis of these principles can be summed up emblematically when the author focuses on the choice of which animals to eat – why pigs, for example, and not dogs (pp. 23-8). on second thoughts, there are no ‘normal’ or ‘natural’ nor ‘necessary’ reasons for choosing to eat a particular animal rather than another, and the same concept of normality simply refers to what we are accustomed to consider a gesture or an action as such. the naturalness of a certain behavior does not guarantee its morality – just bear in mind infanticide and rape – and the same necessity of eating meat is being increasingly questioned by contemporary medical research, which in turn reveals the dangers connected with a meat diet. instead, there is a system of power – states joy – able to make normal what would be humanly abnormal, that is to accept the violence of intensive rearing (pp. 95-113). again, there is a system within which we are placed – the carnistic matrix – that speculates on our eating meat and does not allow the truth of things to arise. in this respect, the scholar presents a considerable amount of data relevant not only to what takes place within the herds of animals, but also to the dynamics of power which exist between the meat industry and government apparatus. the fact that joy’s survey was conducted in america does not prejudice the usefulness of her work in the european context. socio-psychological assumptions underpinning the eating of meat are common to the entire western world and the meat industry in europe is not unrelated to the m. joy, “why we love dogs, eat pigs, and wear cows” 95 relations – 1.2 november 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ violent practices of its american ‘cousin’. why we love dogs, eat pigs, and wear cows therefore remains a key work, which undoubtedly will be quoted on every occasion, over the next few years, by any western scholar who writes about vegetarianism/carnism or the industrial system of meat production. joy’s book shows how invisibility, de-individualization, and routinization are, at the same time, both the weak points and the strong points of the carnistic system. in fact, they can perform opposite roles. they are weak points since on being shown what happens inside slaughterhouses or factory farms people could change their eating habits; but they are also valid points because, as joy emphasizes, these habits could sometimes be even stronger than our natural empathy; a case in point are the people working in such structures, who, as psychological defense, tend to detach themselves to such a degree that they are no longer able to empathize. in so doing the book points out that the victims of carnism are not only nonhuman animals but humans as well. for this reason one of the most important achievements of this book is that activists should address both sides cited as victims of the carnistic system, instead of saving one and blaming one another. preface. animals are our relations 13 relations – 1.i june 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ animals are our relations preface kim stallwood independent scholar, deputy chief executive, minding animals international and co-founder and european director, animals and society institute kim@kimstallwood.com two firsts are to be celebrated. the first is the inaugural volume of this journal, relations, and the second is the emotional lives of animals, the first conference of its kind in italy. together, they signify the continuing emergence of human-animal studies in italy and across the world. i understand human-animal studies (has) to mean the study of our relations with animals and their relations with us. “our interest lies in the intersections between human lives and human cultures”, writes margo demello, “and those of nonhuman animals, whether real or virtual” (demello 2010, xi). ken shapiro, co-founder of the animals and society institute (asi) and editor-in-chief of society & animals elaborates has is the only field that directly investigates relationships between human and nonhuman animals and their environment. the forms of bonds, attachments, interactions, and communications under investigation are impressively variable because of (1) the number of species of nonhuman animals, (2) the ingenious (and often exploitative) ways that humans have used other animals, and (3) the ways that humans view other animals. these latter views also have played a critical role in the complex and often contradictory ways that we compare ourselves to them. the different names of the current field reveal these contradictions in their disregard of the fact that humans are also animals. (shapiro 2008, 1) the journal society & animals began publication in 1993. since then, has has established itself in the humanities and social sciences as a legitimate field of academic endeavour. for example, the asi website (www. animalsandsociety.org) publishes the details of courses in nearly 10 countries, including the usa, canada, britain, germany, australia, new zeahttp://www.ledonline.it/relations/ kim stallwood 14 relations – 1.i june 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ land, israel, poland, sweden, and puerto rico. there is also information about 15 journals, seven listservs, syllabi, and books. by its very nature, has is trans-disciplinary bringing together such diverse fields as anthropology and psychology, criminology and religious studies. with such significant growth across the world covering many different subjects and perspectives, it is to be expected that has develops various specialised research areas, including anthrozoology (http://www. anthrozoology.org) and critical animal studies (http://www.criticalanimalstudies.org). indeed, the focus of this journal, relations, is “research adopting a non-anthropocentric ethical perspective on both interspecific and intraspecific relationships between all life species – humans included – and between these and the abiotic environment” (relations 2012). any new academic endeavour experiencing rapid growth throughout the world is in need of an international organisation that provides a platform for its development. in his commendation, dr. rod bennison briefly describes the formation of minding animals international (mai), which seeks to “act as a bridge between academia and advocacy and is a network of academics, artists, activists and advocates, dedicated to the study and protection of all planetary life through the advancement of animal studies” (minding animals 2012). dr. bennison and myself welcome you, as mai’s chief executive and deputy chief executive respectively, to our third conference in delhi, india, january 14-20, 2015. sign up for our e-newsletter to stay in touch: http://www.mindinganimals.com. in addition to triennial international conferences and bimonthly e-newsletters, mai partners with others to co-sponsor conferences throughout the world which helps to further has in the academy. one such conference took place in may 2012 and was organised by minding animals italy – manita (http://mindinganimalsitaly.wordpress.com). the two-day conference was a huge success and played an important role in helping to establish this journal, relations. keynote speaker professor marc bekoff addressed participants with a two-part presentation which explored animal emotions and wild justice. the program also included plenary panels and parallel workshop sessions. the titles of presentations indicate the trans-disciplinary nature of has. the plenary panels included, for example, the emotional lives of animals: a christian perspective; antispeciesm: morality and politics; nonhuman animal emotions and genetic engineering; and the contemporary debate on experimentation. whereas the workshops addressed such issues as animal or human? liminal identities in margaret atwood and alice walker; advancing understanding of animal science; and my own paper, animal rights: moral crusade or political movement?. animals are our relations 15 relations – 1.i june 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ i would like to take this opportunity to express my appreciation to alma massaro and her colleagues and everyone at the university of genoa for such an important and successful event. in a recent conversation with scholar and author paul waldau, he made the observation that the academic study of our relations with animals in human-animal studies was a necessary prerequisite to persuading society to embrace moral and legal rights for animals (http://www.paulwaldau. com). as someone who has been personally committed to animal rights since 1974 and worked professionally in the animal rights movement in the uk and usa since 1976, i was taken aback by his comment. even though i had co-founded the animals and society institute with ken shapiro in 2005, it had never occurred to me that what paul waldau had to say was, indeed, true. now, i realise he is correct. i believe it is necessary for us to peel away the layers of contradiction and confusion which are the hallmarks to our relations with animals. only then we will be able to see how animal rights is not in competition with human rights as they are essentially one and the same. most social movements appear to have corresponding fields of academic study. animal rights need not and should not be the exception. this is why i am proud to have been invited to participate in both the emotional lives of animals conference and the publication of the inaugural issues of relations. references demello, margo, ed. 2010. teaching the animal. new york: lantern books. minding animals. 2012. “mai objectives & principles”. minding animals international. accessed december 6, 2012. http://www.mindinganimals.com/index. php?option=com_content&task=view&id=92&itemid=116. relations. 2012. “aim and scope”. led on line. accessed december 6, 2012. http:// www.ledonline.it/relations. shapiro, kenneth j. 2008. human-animal studies. ann arbor, mi: animals and society institute. foreword. commendation of the special edition of relations dedicated to the emotional lives of animals 11 relations – 1.i june 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ commendation of the special edition of relations dedicated to the emotional lives of animals foreword rod bennison independent scholar, founder and ceo of minding animals international mindinganimals@gmail.com in 1996, i attended a conference in melbourne, australia, dedicated to environmental justice. it struck me how little of the content of the conference was dedicated to a consideration of nonhuman animals. such champions of nonhuman animals as peter singer, tom reagan and val plumwood were there, but much of the content was directed more to how humans interact with the environment in a more general sense. as an environmentalist, i decided there and then that once my own postgraduate studies were completed, i should dedicate more of my academic career to exploring how humans should also bring animals into the equation, and to eventually organise a conference on that very issue. how things have progressed. animal studies has since developed as a discipline in its own right and the question of the animal has been given its turn in environmental ethics and many other academic areas of pursuit. this development did not dissuade me from running a conference and when the opportunity arose for my colleague, jill bough, and i to run the third australian animal studies group conference in newcastle, we snapped up the chance. minding animals as a concept, let alone a conference, has since developed into an international organisation supported by national groups, partner events and a recurring international conference. minding animals italy developed as a national group after the first international conference in newcastle, australia, and before the second held in utrecht in the netherlands. it is gratifying to see such young academics steering manita such as alma massaro, matteo andreozzi, and paola sobbrio, amongst others. and now we see others taking an active interest like roberto marchesini and luigi lombardi-vallauri. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ rod bennison 12 relations – 1.i june 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ this new and vibrant journal, relations, has also entered the equation, already making its mark on bringing the animal back into the consideration of all matters environmental. matteo andreozzi is especially to be congratulated for doing such a fantastic job whilst also undertaking his postgraduate studies. manita decided to take on a conference of its own early after its formation, joining forces with the facoltà di sdf, the natural history civic museum g. doria of genoa, the istituto italiano di bioetica, and the consiglio nazionale delle ricerche (cnr) to co-host an event. we saw alma massaro garner funding and logistical support and guide what was to become the emotional lives of animals that took place in genova in may, 2012. the conference was dedicated to a consideration of the bond between human and nonhuman animals, both in a practical as well as spiritual sense, and how humans need to take more care in our interrelationships with nonhuman animals. and now we have relations dedicating this special edition to that event. minding animals patron, professor emeritus, marc bekoff, headlined the emotional lives of animals, and i hear that, as usual, provided both a thought-provoking and controversial set of arguments as to why humans must consider other animals when they think about the greater environment. also present and providing why we should consider animals in any broader context were, among others paolo de benedetti, annamaria manzoni, luigi lombardi vallauri, and roberto marchesini. i would also like to thank my minding animals deputy ceo, kim stallwood, for taking part and providing an overview of how social activism plays its part. i thank manita once again for organising the genova conference and commend this special edition of relations to all readers. i welcome all to take part in future minding animals events, and especially the third international conference in india in 2015. seeking to increase awareness of speciesism and its impact on all animals: a report on ‘animal ethics’ seeking to increase awareness of speciesism and its impact on all animals a report on animal ethics * leah mckelvie co-founder “animal ethics” doi: 10.7358/rela-2015-001-mcke leah.mckelvie@animal-ethics.org animal ethics is a non-profit organization that seeks to raise awareness of speciesism. the organization’s aim is to create a better world for all sentient animals. the group’s work is based on the core belief that all sentient beings should be taken into moral consideration. founded in 2012, animal ethics is based in the usa. the organization provides educational materials in several languages, and has given talks in both englishand spanish-speaking countries. work will soon begin in italy, with more countries to follow in coming months. the organization was established after the founders realized how difficult it was for the public to find basic explanations of issues in animal ethics and for academic researchers in the field to find useful study results. animal ethics also addresses the concerns of animal advocates who have difficulty acquiring up-to-date information and relevant scientific knowledge. in addition, the founders realized there was a need for an organization with a focus on addressing speciesism in all its forms. although there is a worldwide movement advocating greater respect for nonhuman animals, there is a need for more antispeciesist education and research. while animal advocates often draw attention to particular ways nonhuman animals are harmed, the root cause – speciesism – is not usually stressed and is sometimes overlooked. as a result, some of the greatest harms animals suffer are under-addressed and there is little challenge to the speciesist beliefs and institutions that drive the lack of respect for animals in so many ways. * animal ethics can be found online at http://www.animal-ethics.org. mailto:leah.mckelvie@animal-ethics.org http://www.animal-ethics.org http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 leah mckelvie 102 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ animal ethics differentiates itself from other animal advocacy organizations by focusing on the following: 1. achieving an attitude shift about speciesism. 2. providing information about under-addressed topics in animal ethics. 3. producing academic research and publications. the core issue in animal ethics is not that animals are callously treated and used as resources in particular circumstances. the real problem is that nonhuman animals are commonly disregarded in general, primarily due to speciesism. speciesism is the discrimination against individuals or a group based on species membership and is the most widespread form of discrimination in the world today. like other forms of discrimination, speciesism is unjustified because it disregards relevant factors such as whether the individuals in question can be harmed by our actions or inactions. once the spurious assumptions of speciesism are rejected, it becomes clear that we should give nonhuman animals the same consideration we give to humans. respecting animals means not just avoiding causing them harm, but also helping them where and when we can. just as racism and sexism are embedded in people’s unexamined beliefs and in society’s institutions, speciesism appears to most people as part of the natural order of things. it seems obvious to many that humans are inherently more important than other animals, and that some nonhuman animals matter more than others. for example, it is often taken for granted that it would be wrong to treat dogs the way pigs are treated. in order for societies to change, their members must first recognize that there is a problem. that is why education about speciesism is crucial. one of the key things the work of animal ethics shows is that all major ethical theories, if followed consistently, require that nonhuman animals, both domesticated and wild, be given much greater moral consideration than they are currently given. the organization’s work also shows that if we are to be impartial, we must give the interests of all sentient beings the same consideration. this does not mean treating all animals the same as humans. it simply means that their interests, whether the same as those of humans or different, be impartially considered. it is becoming increasingly understood that exploitation of nonhuman animals is unfair and unacceptable according to most ethical theories. however, attitudes towards animals in the wild are different. many people think that for animals living in the wild, unaffected by humans, life is mostly good. it is simply not true. most animals who ever live actually die shortly after coming into existence. this is because most animals are r-selected, meaning they give birth to many offspring in their lifetimes, sometimes laying thousands or even millions of eggs. in order for populahttp://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 seeking to increase awareness of speciesism and its impact on all animals 103 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ tions to remain stable, on average only one offspring per parent will survive long enough to reproduce. the rest will die, often painful deaths due to either starvation or predation. wild animals who survive for any length of time face many threats. these include disease, malnutrition, starvation and thirst, extreme weather conditions, accidents and injuries, parasitism, attacks by other animals, and psychological stress. many people believe that nothing can be done to help these animals. others claim that humans should not interfere. this is often due to a lack of pertinent information about the needs of animals and the possibilities for helping them without impacting their habitats in ways that do more harm than good. there are many ways we can aid these fellow beings to alleviate their suffering and improve their lives. for example, vaccination programs for wild animals under threat of disease have been carried out for decades, providing wild populations with immunity to diseases such as polio, measles, and rabies. there are supplemental feeding programs focused on certain populations in situations of hardship. there are also organizations that rescue orphaned wild animals and care for injured animals. our knowledge continues to grow each year, and rapid technological advancements make it increasingly easy and inexpensive to provide help in ways that were not even possible a few decades ago. unfortunately, attitude changes towards helping wild animals in need have not grown at the same pace. we may face a situation in the future where it would be entirely possible to help wild animals on a large scale yet it will not occur in practice due to a lack of public support. spreading the idea that wild animals really need our help paves the way for us to aid them in more ways and on a larger scale in the future as our technology improves. animal ethics also encourages research to develop more ways to help nonhuman animals in the future. animal ethics has a website, http://www.animal-ethics.org, with a range of information on topics such as ethical theories and nonhuman animals and the relevance of nonhuman animal interests in everyday life, as well as news stories and updates on current events relevant to nonhuman animals. the site’s resources are useful to animal advocates and to philosophy and ethics students who require resources for academic papers. in addition, the site provides fact sheets and public outreach materials that can be downloaded and used by the public. individuals can also learn how they can get involved in a way that promotes animal wellbeing and an ethical approach to nonhuman animals. spokespeople for the organization give talks around the world, discussing speciesism, the arguments against it, and the relevance of sentience. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 leah mckelvie 104 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ talks also address the fact that most of the world’s suffering takes place in the wild, and that nonhuman animals often need our help in situations in which humans are not the cause of their harm. a table is set up weekly at berkeley university to give interested students and faculty an opportunity to learn more. animal ethics has plans to organize conferences to encourage academic discussion and debate about the discrimination against nonhuman animals and related topics. the annual animal ethics essay prize is given for the best essay on a subject in the field. one of the goals of animal ethics is public education, both online and in person. in addition to providing extensive information on its website, print materials are distributed to libraries, restaurants, cafes, and community centers. representatives of the organization set up tables at community events to share information and discuss animal issues with members of the public. an annual animal ethics day will take place in different cities starting in 2015, in which talks, roundtable discussions, and activities for both adults and children will help increase awareness of and engagement with issues affecting nonhuman animals. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 animal theology: an interview with paolo de benedetti animal theology an interview with paolo de benedetti gianfranco nicora 1 alma massaro 2 1 independent scholar 2 phd, university of genoa, italy doi: 10.7358/rela-2014-002-nico gianfranco.nicora@libero.it almamassaro@gmail.com gn-am: in recent decades italy has joined the rich discussion about the relationship between humans and animals from a biblical perspective. what are the key points to start this reflection in a productive way? pdb: the bible offers a number of suggestions on how to build our relationship with animals, from the creation account. in this account, after the story of creation, which says “every living creature that moves […] according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind”, it is stated that “god saw that it was good. and god blessed them”. this same statement of genesis 1 is repeated for reptiles and wild beasts. however, our biblical faith goes further: we remember the scriptural affirmations of the “good shepherd” and of “the lamb of god”. in the christian tradition there are plenty of stories that let us be “closer” to the animals: i am referring to the desert fathers, saint francis and the franciscan tradition, but also, more recently, to a secular sensitivity, especially anglo-saxon. gn-am: in contemporary western society we are now witnessing a moral “schizophrenia”. on the one hand human beings’ value is progressively raised above the whole of creation and, sometimes, even above the creator, to the point that the human being becomes a demi-god. on the other hand we are witnessing a gradual devaluation of the value of human life. where does this ambiguity come from and what can be done to curb this phenomenon? pdb: i think it does not derive only from an ideology, so-called, “materialism”, but rather from an inability to perceive and accept the dignity of life, i.e. the ethical and psychological equality that is possible (although not always, because of men’s fallenness) in the human-animal relationship. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ gianfranco nicora alma massaro 134 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ indeed a vast amount of religious and non-religious literature reveals what might be called a “dialogue” between men and animals, and even plants. and even with god: theology of life reveals us that trees invoke god for rain. gn-am: on several occasions in the bible we are given evidence of the direct relationship existing between god and animals. is it possible to encounter the reality of these teachings in our daily life? pdb: very often yes, but not always. especially when animals are used as “tool”. in fact we must not forget that the human-animal relationship is twofold: on one hand there are the animals of affection, companion animals, and poetry animals; on the other hand there are animals of use, to put it plainly, exploited animals. we mentioned the theological “weight” of some animals: the lamb, the sheep, the dove, the donkey, the whale, etc. we should also quote the theological poverty related to this topic: i always remember that a cardinal answered one of my protests against the killing of lambs for easter by stating the danger that we may become animals too in so doing. but we really are animals, as it is expressed by the etymology of this very word. gn-am: does a common thread exist which unites christian animal theology to other religious beliefs? pdb: judaism and christianity from millennia eliminated animal sacrifice – conceived as a tribute to god and as god’s nourishment – and in this they share the position with other ancient and eastern religions. gn-am: in your books you offer several images in order to show god’s love for his creation, is there a particular one you want to share with us? pdb: at the end of the biblical account of creation, “and god saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good” (genesis 1,31). god’s love for creation is not only self-gratification but – if i may say so – is also the recognition of the creation itself as his neighbour. and this is what we too must recognize. however the teachers have, as always, added an “other interpretation” of “very good”: with a play on the hebrew words not possible to reproduce in english, one can read “very good” as “good is the death” – a statement required to justify precisely the introduction of death in the creation. gn-am: today great emphasis is given to the issue of ritual slaughter. the debate is twofold: on the one hand there are jews and muslims and on the other christians and non-believers. not to rehearse the arguments of animal theology 135 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ each side how can christians today show a more compassionate example towards animals to those believers who share faith in the god of abraham, isaac, and jacob? can the holy scriptures show us a common path to follow together? pdb: according to genesis 9,3-4, god allows the eating of meat after the flood, because of a certain divine pessimism towards men. but with a fundamental reservation: “every moving thing that lives shall be food for you; and as i gave you the green plants, i give you everything. only you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood”. the blood was understood as the seat of life, i would say of the soul. this is why, although god allows meat-eating, he requires the total bleeding of the animals. and the blood taken from the living being must be covered with the sand or ground, that means it must be buried and in some sense offered to god, representing his little but crucial victory over death. it is a law still valid, even if the blood-life identity is understood in symbolic sense today. but as the bible teaches us, we should recognize the “theological” value of this symbol. as we should recognize the theological symbol of another alimentary law: if the animal suffers while taking away its blood, it is forbidden to eat its meat. hence it is clear that in the dietary laws is implied a fundamental idea: compassion. gn-am: what are the biggest cultural barriers that need to be removed in order to spread a biblical culture about animal ethics issues? pdb: one of the biggest barriers is the current way to produce food: no one today takes away a “life” from a living being to eat meat but rather goes to shops (butchers) where life, in the biblical sense, has already been removed. i believe that “awareness” of food is the hardest thing, i would say almost unthinkable, in today’s world. it remains a “possibility” of compassion in the way of killing – which happened a long time ago in domestic places – of chickens, rabbits, and birds. i remember that my grandmother, when we were kids, did absolutely not allow us to watch her while she was killing a chicken. and it is still in my mind the image of the scissor penetrating the throat of the poor animal. gn-am: pope francis in the first few months of his ministry often speaks about creation and the protection of creation. what is the difference between the theology of creation and animal theology? pdb: the theology of creation is based on the understanding of creation (the whole creation) as my neighbour. and not only my neighbour, but also god’s neighbour. there is a little play of words in jewish mysticism in which god, before creating anything, is defined ajn = nothing, in the sense gianfranco nicora alma massaro 136 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ that there are no words to describe or define him. but one fine day (allow me this popular formula) god, who knows to be ajn, makes an anagram, and defines himself anj = i. describing himself as “i”, in the very instant he creates “you”, that is the creation, god’s “you”. in other words, god’s self-definition gives birth to his neighbour, which is the whole creation. this is why our existence, the existence of the stars and the existence of my cat are all based on god’s “you”. gn-am: the original sin is linked to the eating of the forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. a suggestive interpretation sees the killing of animals for nutrimental purpose as real sin, which leads to the expulsion from the garden, with the consequent knowledge of sufferance and death. what do you think about it? pdb: men must not pretend to have the knowledge of good and evil. and why should they not expect it? because, as it appears from the whole bible, the knowledge of good and evil is – if i may say so – a divine revelation entrusted to the law, the torah. a revelation that god has linked to sin and death. for this reason he did not intend to show it to adam and eve in order to save them from sin and death. but curiosity, the knowledge of the whole “all” (that is, of life and death), has prevailed in adam and eve over the obedience to god. a bestiary in five fingers review: tom tyler, ciferae: a bestiary in five fingers (2012) a bestiary in five fingers seán mccorry phd candidate in english literature, university of sheffield s.mccorry@sheffield.ac.uk tyler, tom. 2012. ciferae: a bestiary in five fingers. minneapolis: university of minnesota press. 376 pp. $ 30.00. isbn 978-0816665440. as a discipline and a practice, philosophy has historically relied upon the mobilisation of ideas about what a human is, or might become, and these ideas have for the most part tended towards narcissistic self-flattery. in response to the question “who practices philosophy?”, the conventional response has been some variation on “we reasonable ones”, and this in turn has been too-readily conflated with “we humans”. the effect of this move is to install the figure of the human at the centre of all manner of philosophical projects. the human becomes at once the metaphysical centre of thought and being (a kind of ontological anthropocentrism) as well as the sole possessor of justified knowledge about the world. this last claim, an epistemological anthropocentrism which asserts that all knowledge originates from and is determined by the human, is deftly parodied in a short story by franz kafka. for what is there actually except our own species? to whom else can one appeal in the wide and empty world? all knowledge, the totality of all questions and all answers, is contained in the dog. (kafka 1971, 97) the narrator of investigations of a dog dispenses with anthropocentrism and substitutes instead a form of epistemological caninocentrism, revealing in the process something of the contingency of this presumed link between the human species and the limits of possible knowledge. tom tyler’s ciferae: a bestiary in five fingers continues kafka’s project of troubling the unthinking humanism of the philosophical tradition. tyler’s project involves returning to the “multitude of birds and beasts crowding into the texts” of the philosophical canon, paying special attention to the ways in which these unruly creatures disrupt or problematize the anthropocentric assumptions of traditional epistemologies (p. 3). this strategy is formally reproduced in the book itself, with a series of attractive http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ seán mccorry 140 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ animal illustrations taken from bestiaries, natural history texts and wildlife photography (among other sources) all reproduced in the margins, pushing up against and deforming the text of the philosophical argument. he takes as his organising principle the human hand – that anatomical figure which has attested to human exceptionalism in (to give one of many possible examples) martin heidegger’s distinction between the properly human hand and the “grasping organs” of other primates. over five chapters – one for each digit – tyler relocates animals from their customary habitat at the margins of philosophy, bringing them into the centre of epistemological debates. he begins with a chapter elaborating the concept of anthropocentrism before turning to examine three established approaches to epistemology (realism, relativism and pragmatism), concluding with a chapter which suggests that “the human” of humanism and anthropocentrism is not such a static and unambiguous object as philosophy had conventionally assumed it to be. in his first chapter, tyler elaborates the important concept of the animal as cipher, which names the process in which animals themselves are erased as significant presences in philosophy and become instead “arbitrarily chosen placeholders, unwittingly serving some higher pedagogic purpose”, as figures in philosophical thought experiments, for instance (p. 29). tyler gives the example of j.l. austin’s deployment of a pig to make sense of the plurality of meaning in everyday language. austin’s pigs are used to specify the concept of “realness”, or authenticity, and his “real pigs” are opposed to those “piggish” animals (tapirs, for instance) which merely resemble pigs. what is significant for tyler is that pigs, in this case, may be substituted for any other animal (or indeed any object) without upsetting the argumentative schema. “there is nothing about the pig, qua pig that lends itself to this discussion. […] the pig fills a place but is of no importance or worth in his or her own right as a pig. the pig, in short, is a cipher” (pp. 24-5). this disappearing animal trick erases the specificity of animal lives, and relegates animals to philosophical beasts of burden. they can provide the raw materials for philosophical disputes (as abstract figures in an argumentative procedure), but are not themselves worthy topics of philosophy. “disputants have frequently conversed by means of animals, in ways that are not at all about animals”, as tyler says (p. 28). “they remain invisible, figurative phantoms, installed purely as examples of epistemological problems or metaphysical speculations” (p. 28). this is just one of the ways in which “philosophy has sought to tame its animals […]. it has disciplined and domesticated them, required them to submit, has accustomed them to the hand” (p. 71). another is the generic animal invented by the philosophers, which suppresses differences between t. tyler, ciferae: a bestiary in five fingers 141 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ widely divergent forms of animal life and asserts the essential homogeneity of all animal species – excepting, of course, the human animal. this animal works as a device which functions “by restricting and delimiting the possibilities of both what animals can be and what philosophy itself can know” (p. 74). tyler’s response to this is to insist on the irreducible plurality of animal life: “if we wish to understand what an animal is, if we want to kill off the animal, we must refrain from seeking a definition of ‘the animal’ or of ‘animality’ and look instead to the animals” (p. 44). the recognition of the plurality of animal lives and animal perspectives militates against the blinkered mono-perspectivism of humanist philosophy which seeks to “isolate just one of the infinitely many understandings of the world and accord it transcendental status” (p. 105). tyler argues that this multiplication of nonhuman perspectives will transform philosophical epistemology by undoing some of its fundamental assumptions. to give one example, tyler’s discussion of the qualified relativism of immanuel kant highlights the way in which kantian epistemology places the transcendental (and specifically human) subject at the centre of all acts of knowing. the structure of human transcendental subjectivity is the condition of possibility of knowledge as such, and for this reason all knowledge can be apprehended only after passing through the specific perspective of the human (this is the position of kafka’s dog-narrator). tyler returns to kant’s texts with a careful reading which refuses the humanism that has marked the interpretation of kant by historians of philosophy, noting that kant himself granted the possibility that “there may in fact be thinking beings with entirely different forms of sensibility and understanding which would make possible for them entirely different apprehensions of the objects with which they come into contact” (p. 127). while kant’s speculations on this matter are restricted to possible future encounters with as-yet-unknown forms of rational life, tyler insists instead that we already live in the midst of multiple perspectives in our worldly relations with nonhuman animals. from this vantage point, the human exceptionalism which links intellectual inquiry to the privileged perspective of the human looks set to come undone. tyler’s critique of human exceptionalism returns to the figure of the hand which, as noted above, has been deployed throughout the history of philosophy as the unique mark of the human. he complicates this deployment by returning to the evolutionary history of the human species via darwin, who was the first to show “just how specious the notion of species can be” (p. 247). what he discovers is a multiplicity of hands, and he mobilises this multiplicity to undercut any straightforward claim of the uniqueness of our own species: “[…] we should eschew the myth that opposable thumbs, and thus perfect hands, originate with humanity. there seán mccorry 142 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ is no one, true hand … but a multitude of particular hands, each gripping and grasping after its own fashion” (p. 243). ciferae is first and foremost an engagement with the history of philosophical epistemology, attempting to trouble the humanism of the canon of philosophy by taking seriously the animal figures which populate its marginal habitats. for this reason, its readings are for the most part drawn from seminal or canonical figures in the history of philosophy, with kant, heidegger and especially nietzsche figuring prominently. the text might have benefited from a closer engagement with more recent work in the cross-disciplinary field of animal studies, and i would have particularly liked to have seen tyler more carefully situate his project in relation to comparable works being produced by cary wolfe, matthew calarco and others; though this is only a minor objection. its lucidity and clarity make it suitable for those whose home discipline is not philosophy, and it even works as a kind of introduction to epistemology, albeit with a distinctly posthuman take on the matters at hand. written in a lively, punning style, ciferae deserves to be read by anyone with an interest in responding to the challenge of thinking – and living – in a multi-species world. references kafka, franz. 1971. metamorphosis and other stories, translated by willa and edwin muir. harmondsworth: penguin. antispeciesisms. a report on the antispeciesisms in discussion conference, villa mirafiori, roma, italy, june 11th, 2013 antispeciesisms a report on the antispeciesism in discussion conference, villa mirafiori, roma, italy, june 11th, 2013 alma massaro phd, university of genoa doi: 10.7358/rela-2014-001-mass almamassaro@gmail.com the workshop entitled antispeciesism in discussion held in rome on june  11th, 2013 was organized by lav (the most important animal italian advocacy group) in collaboration with minding animals italy together with the academic journal animal studies: rivista italiana di antispecismo  / animal studies: the italian antispeciesism journal. on that occasion four italian scholars entered into discussion regarding four different aspects of antispeciesism, sustained and helped by four representatives from lav. during the first two sessions held in the morning leonardo caffo (labont, university of turin, italy), hosted by ilaria innocenti (responsible for the dog and cat sector of lav), spoke about philosophical antispeciesism, while alma massaro (university of genoa, italy), in dialogue with ciro troiano (responsible for zoo mafia control in lav), presented a dialogue on theological antispeciesism. in the afternoon paola sobbrio (università cattolica del sacro cuore, piacenza, italy), in dialogue with carla campanaro (representative of the lav legal department), presented juridical antispeciesism. the final session of the day was led by marco maurizi (university of bergamo, italy) and matteo gasparin (layer of lav) who dealt with aspects of political antispeciesism. despite the specific nature of the issues and personal views in question it is evident that the entire workshop provided the opportunity to reconsider antispeciesism as a unique movement which strives for the liberation of animals from contemporary human exploitation. it is worth considering the subject of each session in brief. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ alma massaro 116 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ philosophical antispeciesism in the opening session leonardo caffo presented his idea of the “third antispeciesism” or weak antispeciesism, based on the recognition of antispeciesism as a moral phenomenon which needs to be revaluated from the basis of the hard reality of the suffering and death of animals. rejecting all indirect arguments, he advocated the necessity of recognizing the specificity and unicity of the animal movement. the history of the animal movement, he stated, has led to a point where indirect arguments have no place as they are fallacious. caffo urged, therefore, for people to recognize the moral implications of animal exploitation, without considering the usefulness of these misuses – a point, as we will see, also stressed by sobbrio in her session. theological antispeciesism in this panel alma massaro presented the contemporary debate of animal theology to the public. she emphasized how, stemming from a new reading of the holy scriptures, as proposed by authors such as paolo de benedetti, lewis regeinstein, mattew scully, and david clough among others, it is possible to formulate a new christian spirituality in which animals are seen as subjects – and not merely objects. this new dimension of christian faith, she argued, will not only affect the life of every single believer but also affect their relationship with the whole of creation – animals included. massaro pointed out the ancient dichotomy between spirit and matter and the consequent duality between spirit and body which does not originate from the biblical text but from greek philosophy. juridical antispeciesism in the afternoon paola sobbrio embarked on a discussion concerning the possibility of giving life to juridic antispeciesism. as she pointed out very clearly, the contemporary european legislation is far from being antispeciesist. welfarism does not take into account animals as subjects having a life but rather is only concerned with the interests of humans beings – seen as both producers and consumers. the improvement of the so called “animal welfare” is based on the erroneous belief of the value of indirect argument (also rejected by caffo): it presents animals as objects and not subjects with their own specificity and desires. sobbrio argued, therefore, the necessity for structural changes, in an abolitionist perspective. antispeciesisms 117 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ political antispeciesism in the closing session marco maurizi proposed the liberation of animals based on the analysis of the society structures. in contrast with caffo’s theory, he offered a paper on antispeciesism as a politic phenomenon in opposition to the current form of capitalist societies. human behavior, he said, is not a result of biological determinism but rather is an effect of the social model of the human environment. maurizi discussed and criticized the contemporary culture of exploitation. exploitation is, he stated, at the root of political, social, and economic systems. only by understanding these structures will reforms be possible. he proposed a reformation of the social model of the contemporary dominion. this dominion, he said, is directed not only against animals but towards human beings as well. for this reason he accepted the possibility of uniting the animal liberation movement with other reformation movements. the sessions which were presented in the form of a dialogue, where each talk was introduced and discussed by a lav representative, allowed a more profound debate into the specific topic despite the four quite different approaches presented. eventually it emerged how contemporary antispeciesism consists, primarily, of looking at the present world in a new way. it can be seen as an innovative “change of paradigm”, just as copernicus’ revolution was. in fact, it does not consist of attempting to change reality but rather of changing the way we look at it. review: fifty shades of oppression. unexamined sexualized violence against women and other animals fifty shades of oppression unexamined sexualized violence against women and other animals 1 corey lee wrenn graduate student and instructor of sociology at colorado state university corey.wrenn@gmail.com james, erika leonard. 2011. fifty shades of grey. new york: vintage books. 514 pp. $ 15.95. isbn 978-1-61213-028-6. he continues to fondle my liver with his fingertips until i can’t stand it. he gently places my quivering offal into a skillet where some softened onions are waiting for me. […] he stirs my insides with a deft wooden spoon, around and around […]. (fowler 2012, 103) this first-person narrative of an eviscerated victim in the clutches of a sexually aroused perpetrator appears to be pulled from a horror story. strangely, this is actually an excerpt from f.l. fowler’s 2 2012 culinary release: fifty shades of chicken. this cookbook is a parody on the novel, fifty shades of grey, an infamous best-seller that glamorizes submissive sexuality and violence against woman. fifty shades of chicken, a book “for chicken lovers everywhere”, manages to take this disturbing subject matter to another level of degradation. throughout the book, a chicken’s body is used to replace that of a woman. she is referred to as “chicken” or “miss hen”. the choice of “chicken” was not accidental. chickens eaten by humans are almost always female. the body parts of chicken (breast, leg, thigh) are often applied to that of human women, and human women are often called “birds”, “chicks”, “chickens”, or “hens” (dunayer 1995). the cookbook features several images of a muscled, shirtless man dominating a chicken’s corpse with knives, maillots, binding (twine), and other kitchen utensils. in one image he is shown sodomizing her with an upright roasting device. in 1 the current paper first appeared in the online blog the academic abolitionist vegan, in january, 2013 (wrenn 2013). adapted by permission of the author. 2 f.l. fowler is a pseudonym. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ corey lee wrenn 136 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ others, he is shown penetrating her with a baster and crudely shoving cream into her bottom with his fingers. most of the photographs of the finished “product” show the bird’s body splayed and ravaged. she is posed pornographically to quite convincingly mimic a defiled human woman. recipe titles continue this theme with labels like “popped-cherry pullet”, “extra-virgin chicken”, “please don’t stop chicken”, “jerked around chicken”, “mustard spanked chicken”, “cream-slicked chick”, “chile-lashed fricassee”, “skewered chicken”, “steamy white meat”, “bacon bound wings”, “dripping thighs”, “thighs spread wide”, “chicken thighs stirred up and fried hard”, “red cheeks”, “pound me tender”, and “hog-tied porked chicken”. the entanglements of oppression, violence, sexism, and speciesism are impossible to ignore. these recipes are inextricably indicative of rape culture. sexualized violence is presented as normative, the female body is objectified as a passive recipient of male desire and aggression, and the obligatory obsession with virginity and female purity is highlighted. chapter two, “chicken parts and bits”, literally reenacts the fragmentation of the female body into consumable pieces. the shredded flesh and dismembered legs and wings are wholly divorced from the person they once belonged to. this objectification erases personhood and makes exploitative consumption all the more palatable. fragmentation, as vegan feminist carol adams (2003) explains, renders the chicken (or woman) completely absent. even the recipe instructions entail graphic violence, domination, and control: much pleasure and satisfaction is to be had from tying up your bird. not only does it show your chicken who’s boss, but a tight binding ensures the chicken cooks exactly how you want it – evenly, moist, and tender. it also closes off the chicken’s cavity, so the juices swelling within can’t spill out, at least not until you’re ready for them. (fowler 2012, 34) using large, strong kitchen shears and a confident hand, forcefully cut the backbone out of the chicken; first cut along one side of the backbone, then cut along the other side until it releases, then pull it out. gently spread the bird open, pressing down on the breast to flatten it (see learning the ropes). massage the flesh with 1 1/2 teaspoon of salt. (fowler 2012, 116) position the chicken’s nether parts over the vertical roaster’s erect member and thrust the bird down. tuck her wing tips up behind her wings, behind her body. tie her legs together with a piece of butcher’s twine or cooking bands […]. (fowler 2012, 120) it reads like a manual for serial killing. several gruesome pornographic narratives are also included to preface the recipes. they serve to stir the reader into a hot bother in anticipation for the pleasurable consumption readily available to them. take this example from “backdoor beer-can chicken”: e.l. james, “fifty shades of grey” 137 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ “hush”, he says. he smile and holds up a beer can. “yes, baby, have a drink, i’m sure you need it”. “oh, no, this is not for me, chicken”. he quirks his mouth into a wicked smile. holy f *** … will it? how? i gasp as he fills me with its astonishing girth. the feeling of fullness is overpowering. he rests me on the grill and i can feel the entire world start to engorge. desire explodes in my cavity like a hand grenade. (fowler 2012, 137) or this story from “flattered breasts”: suddenly he seizes me and lays me out on the counter, claiming me hungrily. his fingers pull me taut, the palms of his hands grinding my soft white meat into the hard granite, trapping me. i feel him. his stomach growls, and my mind spins as i acknowledge his craving for me. “why must you always challenge me?” he murmurs breathlessly. “because i can”. my pulse throbs painfully. he grabs a fistful of kosher salt. “i’m going to season you now”. “yes”. my voice is low and heated. he reaches for a rolling pin, then hesitates, looking at me. “yes, please, chef”, i moan. the first blow of the rolling pin jolts me but leaves behind a delicious warm feeling. “i. will. make. you. mine”, he says between blows. (fowler 2012, 62) these narratives often present the chicken’s corpse as a willing accomplice (which is curious, given that she was beheaded and drained of blood weeks before she arrived in this man’s kitchen under saran wrap). her sexuality is strictly controlled and meant only for male entitlement. the relationship of domination that makes consent an impossibility is obscured. this oppressive relationship privileges men and leaves women and nonhuman animals in a position of subservience goes unexamined. instead the chicken is “free-range”, implying that she has a choice in the matter. these violent actions are supposedly done out of “love” and for her pleasure. it is not enough that women and nonhuman animals submit to male superiority, they must also be seen as enjoying their subjugation (adams 2003). certainly, if the consumer was made aware of the immense suffering that lies beneath the surface of pornography, prostitution, exotic dancing, dairy, “meat”, “leather”, zoos, horse racing etc., the pleasure of that consumption would be challenged. previously unexamined oppression would come to light and this would undermine the ecstasy of entitlement. this book takes the male fantasy of definitive control over a humiliated, submissive woman to its full fruition. one cannot really coerce women into corey lee wrenn 138 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ obliging sex slaves through force and fear. one cannot really fragment women into their body parts, strip them of their identity and self-efficacy, or pulverize and consume their bodies for sexual gratification (though more men than we like to admit do). but, one can have the next best thing – one can humiliate, torture, dismember, and objectify a female nonhuman animal for pleasure. one can molest her, sodomize her, rape her, bind her, break her, “pork” her, and “slick” her with cream to the point of physical arousal, salivation, the release of pleasure hormones in the brain. control over the vulnerable is sexualized – domination and power is hot stuff; and it’s completely legal with the full support of a patriarchal society. as traumatizing as this book is on its own, perhaps most problematic is the complete lack of criticism from the general public. this blatant attack on women and other animals has gone relatively unnoticed. the book racks up rave reviews by amazon users who are seemingly beside themselves with laughter, folks who can’t get over just how darn clever this book is. violence against women and nonhuman animals is often trivialized, masked by humor, downplayed, and made more or less invisible (adams 2000; joy 2010). the overwhelmingly positive reception of fifty shades of chicken is a testament to this moral disconnect. the book earned an astonishing 4.9 out of 5 stars on amazon. a top comment from a female user stated: “i gave them as christmas gifts and everyone loved it”. another woman reports: “[…] i laughed myself silly reading the cookbook last night!”. it appears that even women are unable to see through oppressive gender roles and normative misogyny. the message could not be clearer: women are meat, nonhuman animals are meat, and both are sexualized and dominated for the pleasurable consumption of the privileged. this intersection of oppression is seen as mere parody, silly and laughable. references adams, carol j. 2000. the sexual politics of meat: a feminist vegetarian critical theory. new york: the continuum international publishing group, inc. 2003. the pornography of meat. new york: the continuum international publishing group, inc. dunayer, joan. 1995. “sexist words, speciesist roots”. in women and animals: feminist theoretical explorations, edited by carol j. adams and josephine donovan, 11-31. durham, nc: duke university press. fowler, f.l. 2012. fifty shades of chicken: a parody in a cookbook. new york: clarkson potter publishers. james, erika leonard. 2011. fifty shades of grey. new york: vintage books. e.l. james, “fifty shades of grey” 139 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ joy, melanie. 2011. why we love dogs, eat pigs, and wear cows: an introduction to carnism. san francisco, ca: conari press. wrenn, corey lee. 2013. “fifty shades of chicken – intersections in violence against women and nonhuman animals”. the academic abolitionist vegan, january  6, 2013. http://academicabolitionistvegan.blogspot.it/2013/01/fiftyshades-of-chicken-intersections.html. a pig doesn't make the revolution review: leonardo caffo, il maiale non fa la rivoluzione: manifesto per un antispecismo debole (2013) a pig doesn’t make the revolution valentina sonzogni architecture and art historian, museum of contemporary art, rivoli, italy valentina_sonzogni@yahoo.it caffo, leonardo. 2013. il maiale non fa la rivoluzione: manifesto per un anti spe cismo debole. casale monferrato: sonda. 127 pp. € 12.00. isbn 978-8-87106-701-8 we are always coming up with the emphatic facts of history in our private experience, and verifying them here. all history becomes subjective; in other words, there is properly no history; only biography. every mind must know the whole lesson for itself, must go over the whole ground. what it does not see, what it does not live, it will not know. (ralph waldo emerson, essays, 1841) writing a review of leonardo caffo’s book il maiale non fa la rivoluzione (a pig doesn’t make the revolution) has a special meaning for me, as the title of the book recalls the eponymous interview that i did with caffo in 2011, focusing on what i would call “the bases” of antispeciesism. at that time, after embracing vegetarianism, i was looking for a theoretical background that would provide intellectual support to my spiritual longing for animal welfare: this is how i came across his research. i would call it a piece of good luck, as caffo’s thinking has been complementing what i consider to be not only a new political position and a major reality check but, in the first place, a personal evolution. caffo’s conceptual system, which i then carried with me in my path as an “amateur” animal rights advocate (i promote this view in a rather small community), revolves around the concepts of compassion and lucidity, civil disobedience and the capacity to talk to ordinary people as well as to finely educated people in order to transmit “the truth” that is hidden behind the clean and anonymous walls of the slaughterhouse. so this is a review of a book, but it also contains my personal opinion on caffo, who embodies – he will excuse me for using him as a guinea pig – a new genre of activism that may finally manage to get the message outside of the enclave of activists, perhaps finally conquering the attention of indifferent omnivores as well as leather and fur fashionistas. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ valentina sonzogni 144 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the book is structured in a rather simple and clear way. after a first chapter in which caffo presents the thesis of the animal liberation’s movement initiators such as peter singer and tom regan, he proceeds to delineate a genealogy of the movement by oppositions calling into cause thinkers such as matthew calarco and jacques derrida as well as martin heidegger to accompany the reader in a series of mental experiments proving the specificity of the struggle for animal rights. the crucial transition of the field of animal cognition into that of animal studies is analyzed by caffo through a review of the different definitions of speciesism, showing that the intellectual plea today is for a larger perspective that would start from pain and distress, anguish and fear and in which sensiocentrism would be the ethical guide to such (r)evolution. in the third chapter, caffo examines his main ideas and achievements, namely what he defines “antispecismo debole” or “terzo antispecismo” (“weak antispeciesism” or “third antispeciesism”). the fourth chapter is the re-publication of a dialogue between caffo and marco maurizi in which they debate in a reciprocate interview on the topic of possible scenarios for animal liberation, among which maurizi especially supports political antispeciesism, a theory and practise that pairs advocacy for human and non human animals rights. the conclusion of the book tells a lot about its own premises: caffo acknowledges and incorporates in his method the idea of “negoziato concettuale” (“intellectual negotiation”) as it was introduced by roberto casati (casati 2011). the enormous task of achieving animal liberation can progress only through the negotiation of the different souls and minds of the animal rights movement and, i would add, not only in the italian scenario, but opening up to other countries and their experiences, from austria to china, learning from their victories and defeats while developing a solid strategic action for animals, as melanie joy would put it (joy 2008). something may surprise the reader: caffo states to have tried to write his book not as an animal rights advocate but as an animal (caffo 2013, 9): writing as a pig would write can make visible to our eyes the only possible way to his own liberation. once you get familiar with his thinking, believe me, you will agree that caffo is that pig, that forgotten nameless animal dying unheard, in this very moment, in a filthy slaughterhouse, somewhere on the planet earth. his “weak antispeciesism” is born out of compassion (and, of course, out of a strong philosophical grounding); yet, if this kind of “sentimental” approach to the matter can be regarded as inappropriate or “weak” within academic circles, his theory is appealing for most audiences, reaching out for non-vegan communities, intersecting with other disciplines and slowly permeating those communities that have no familiarl. caffo, “il maiale non fa la rivoluzione: manifesto per un anti spe ci smo debole” 145 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ity with such topics. a new definition of activist, also fostered by joy in her book strategic actions for animals, seems to be another important step in the process of helping the pig with his revolution: animal rights advocates should not present themselves as “non-eaters of something” (opposing omnivores in this), but as supporters of a new conception of the world, that is, as an avant-garde movement. do you remember the cubists, or igor stravinsky, james joyce or le corbusier, the beatles and madonna? that’s it, we won’t make it as vegans (although we must all tend to this kind of diet) but we will make it as antispeciesists in that we bring further a new idea of life and philosophy. but caffo says more: antispeciesists are not only doing this, but what is more, they are speaking up for those who have no voice, so they must become that pig. having said that, caffo proceeds to take a distance from what he is known as “political antispeciesism”, generally intended as a movement that aims at liberating both human and non-human animals at the same time (and i apologize for not acknowledging the different tendencies of the movement here). caffo does not deny political antispeciesism but defines the ideological and practical limits of struggling for animals in order to define sharply the timing and the goals of this battle. caffo has been criticized for his “third antispeciesism” in that it seems to exclude human rights struggles. yet, although he sets animal suffering as a priority in the agenda, he is not devaluing the equally urgent issue of human slavery or exploitation. such urge derives from the philosophical difference between action and intention, which is killing an animal in a car accident versus allowing the livestock system with the consequent death row, from the creation of lives that should never have been born to the slaughterhouse etc. the carefully planned and organized killing of billions of non-human animals for food industry, fashion and science (among other purposes) is enough of a reason to set animal liberation at the top of the agenda. caffo’s antispeciesism is weak in this sense: that is, it suspends the judgment on broader theories and limits its goal to a more “humble” task, i.e. to act immediately for animal liberation in any possible manner. so far so good. but how to fight for animal rights? that seems to be the question here. once the conceptual frame is set, caffo seeks inspiration in the work of the philosopher henry david thoreau in indicating the path of civil disobedience as a form of individual struggle against the privileges that the human species has self-granted to its members: “a new antispeciesism must be politically aware of a systemic mistake, while being able to morally deal with individual deviant behaviours on which, if possible, we must immediately take action” (caffo 2013, 72). these guidelines are summarized in a few points that encourage to give up part of established valentina sonzogni 146 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ and socially accepted privileges, such as for instance the food obsession that is so typical of western (and especially italian) people. this different education fosters individual disobedience, for instance accepting to go to jail after freeing operations and rescues, transgressing the law and so forth, as is already done by alf and other groups worldwide. from a theoretical point of view, caffo restates the priority of the non-human animal: “[…] accepting that ours is a struggle not for people and not even also for people, but only for non-human animals, and that the face of a weeping pig alone matters more than all the dreams of mankind” (caffo 2013, 75). getting involved with animal liberation limits the field to this specific battle, which is remarkably different from a global, larger and more complex battle against exploitation – situating it non before human liberation, but just next to it, although separated. animal liberation is prioritary for caffo and it is a moral imperative based on a commonly accepted truth that is not questionable: non-human animals do suffer, feel and remember, they can think and some of them understand human language (everyone who has a dog or a cat, let alone a monkey can confirm this). they have familiar bonds and memory and a nervous system that makes them feel physical pain and psychological distress. one can have no empathy for non-human animals but these facts are as accepted nowadays as the fact that the planet earth is spherical. and, just as many people today dismiss as unacceptable any act of sex, gender and race discrimination, one day they will find unacceptable the habit of animal corpses consumption in public (once called “meat”) or shoes made with dead skin (once called “leather” or “hide”). it is again caffo who writes: unfortunately, however, it is widely believed that we should not force other to stop eating meat because, in the name of a generic pluralism, we must respect the food choices of other individuals. those who argue that eating or making clothes out of non-human animals is justifiable rarely try to provide valid arguments for their thesis. […] however, a value judgment about what is eaten is widespread: the proof can be found in the fact that, virtually, human cultures do not practice cannibalism, because eating humans is considered reprehensible. (caffo 2013, 93) even though he distances himself from the actual debate on political antispeciesism, caffo is a political antispeciesist because antispeciesism is political in the first place. what caffo states is: let’s put non-human animals back at the center of our struggle and let us not only feel their pain but be them. in any case, there is enough space in one’s mind and heart to embrace more than one cause. pigs perhaps don’t make the difference (yet), but we (still) do. l. caffo, “il maiale non fa la rivoluzione: manifesto per un anti spe ci smo debole” 147 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ references caffo, leonardo. 2013. il maiale non fa la rivoluzione: manifesto per un antispecismo de bole. casale monferrato: sonda. casati, roberto. 2011. prima lezione di filosofia. roma: laterza. joy, melanie. 2008. strategic actions for animals. new york: lantern books. the predation and procreation problems: persistent intuitions gone wild the predation and procreation problems persistent intuitions gone wild stijn bruers post-doctoral researcher, ghent university doi: 10.7358/rela-2015-001-brue stijn.bruers@gmail.com predation causes a lot of suffering in the wild. yet, a lot of people believe it is morally permissible. this article presents an ethical principle that justifies (condones) predation without referring to anthropocentric notions such as moral agency or species membership. the moral intuition that predation is permissible is coherent with other intuitions about harmful behaviors in the wild, such as the permissibility of some kinds of procreation (for example r-selection) that do not sufficiently contribute to wellbeing. these intuitions can be unified in an ethical principle that uses the three conditions of naturalness, normality and necessity. furthermore, this 3-n-principle is related to the intrinsic value of biodiversity. finally, some analogies between well-being of a sentient being and biodiversity of an ecosystem are discussed. 1. introduction: intuitions about predation, motion and procreation a lot of anti-speciesist animal rights activists and ethicists have the moral intuition that predation in the wild is permissible, in the sense that one does not have a duty to intervene and protect prey, and that we do not even have a reason to desire the prohibition of predation. it is not clear how this hands-off or laissez-faire approach of non-intervention is compatible with non-anthropocentric basic rights and the value of well-being. predators are not moral agents who can reason and understand the notions of rights and duties. predators are amoral (regan 1983). however, this cannot be a valid reason to allow predation: what if highly intelligent dolphins were a little bit more intelligent, such that their current protomorality would become a fully-fledged morality? even then my intuition says that those dolphins are allowed to kill many sentient fish for food. one http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 stijn bruers 86 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ could simply refer to the species distinction and claim that any being who is not homo sapiens is allowed to hunt and can also be eaten. but a mere reference to a species is arbitrary. we can make it even more personal with another example about bodily motion. what if scientists discover that insects are sentient beings? should we be allowed to move around and kill many sentient insects even if by accident? my intuition says that we do not have a duty to stop moving. the speciesist homo sapiens solution, regan’s “moral agents” solution as well as the related libertarian solution proposed by ebert and machan (2012), cannot explain this intuition: as moral agents (or as homo sapiens), we have a responsibility not to harm other sentient beings. furthermore, if we died because we stopped moving, it is not obvious that new ecological disasters, such as overpopulation and mass starvation of insects, would occur. hence, reference to possible ecological disasters and unforeseen side-effects (singer 1973; simmons 2009) is not sufficient either. perhaps our pro predation intuition is a moral illusion. however, this intuition is not only coherent with my pro motion intuition, but also with my pro procreation intuition: some kinds of procreation are harmful in the sense that the sentient beings who are born do not sufficiently contribute to (some measure of aggregated) well-being. the most extreme example of harmful procreation might be r-selection: an evolutionary reproductive strategy where animals have a very high reproduction rate but a very low individual survival rate (horta 2010). most of those animals have a very short life and an early death. if they develop sentience, they have very few opportunities for positive experiences. perhaps they have lives not worth living at all. 2. naturalness and the value of biodiversity i have three coherent moral intuitions: predation, motion and procreation are each allowed. this coherence implies that it becomes less likely that the predation intuition is a moral illusion. but we can make the case stronger. in search for a “reflective equilibrium” (rawls 1971), i propose an ethical principle that unifies the moral intuitions in those three different cases. this 3-n-principle is inspired by the three n’s of justification in the ideology of carnism (joy 2002): eating meat is natural, normal and necessary. this position has two problems: first, it does not recognize that meat is not necessary for humans to life a healthy life (ada 2009). second, it is not clear what “natural” means. nevertheless, perhaps those elements of a speciesist carnist perspective can be used to make an antispeciesist ethic http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 the predation and procreation problems 87 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ of animal equality coherent with our predation, motion and procreation intuitions. let us define or interpret naturalness as a property of a type of behavior (such as predation or procreation): a behavior is natural if it originates from a blind process of natural evolution instead of being for example a conscious, reflective, non-instinctive invention. such inventions are ‘artificial’ instead of “natural”. furthermore, normality simply means that the behavior occurs a lot and necessity means that the behavior is required for the survival of individuals and populations. the 3-n-principle now says that: if a behavior is both normal, natural and necessary, it is always allowed, even if it is harmful and violates rights and well-being. in other words, if (a) a sufficiently large group of sentient beings became by (b) an evolutionary process (c) dependent for their survival on harmful behavior, they are allowed to perform that behavior for survival. 1 predation, motion and procreation are all natural behaviors (they originated by a blind evolutionary process), they happen a lot, and they are necessary for the survival of individuals and populations. hence, these types of behavior are permissible. on the other hand, other harmful behaviors are not permissible, because at least one of the three n criteria are not met. consumption of animal products by humans is harmful and not necessary, hence not allowed. forced organ transplantation (sacrificing someone against his/her will and using his/her organs in order to save another patient) is harmful and not natural, hence not allowed 2. road kill (killing sentient beings by cars) is morally wrong, because cars are not natural. and if a few animals develop (by evolution) a new type of behavior that is necessary for their survival but harms others, this new behavior may be necessary and natural, but it is not (yet) normal, and therefore not permissible. the three n conditions come in degrees: one type of behavior can be more normal or more necessary than another. this implies that the more normal, necessary and natural a behavior is, the more it becomes permissible and the more it can trump the value of well-being. 1 we are also allowed to intervene and protect ourselves, our loved ones and the prey if we are inclined to do so, and we do have a duty to intervene once feasible alternatives such as healthy vegan food for the predators or selective contraception for some animals are available. 2 both predation and forced organ transplantation are cases where someone is killed, his/her bodily tissue (meat, organs) are taken and put in someone else’s body (predator, patient) in order for the latter to survive. yet, the naturalness criterion makes the distinction between these two cases. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 stijn bruers 88 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ we see that my predation, motion and procreation intuitions become even more coherent, because they fit with an ethical principle that refers to notions that many people care about: naturalness and necessity (survival). these notions even appear in a carnist ideology, but we can go one step further. consider the no-harm principle. this principle corresponds to our moral intuitions, but moreover there exists a natural property called wellbeing. if we give intrinsic value to this natural property, then the intuitions behind the no-harm principle are coherent with this value of well-being. could we do the same for the 3-n-principle? does there exist a natural property that we can value and that is coherent with the 3-n-principle? the answer is affirmative. i suggest that the 3-n-principle is connected to the moral value of biodiversity, at least if we define biodiversity as: “all variation in life forms, entities and processes that are the direct result of natural evolution, where natural evolution is generated by random genetic mutations”. this definition explicitly excludes intentional, intelligent interventions such as genetic modification. our intelligence is a direct result of evolution, but the product of this intelligence, i.e. the intentional creation of new genes or life forms, does not contribute to biodiversity because biodiversity is only defined in terms of the direct results of a blind process of evolution, excluding indirect results. the importance of this exclusion of genetic modification will be discussed in a later section. the 3-n-principle is connected to the value of biodiversity as follows (for a deeper discussion, see bruers 2014). if a behavior is natural, it contributes to biodiversity by definition. if it is natural and normal, it contributes a lot to biodiversity, and if a behavior is natural, normal and necessary, biodiversity would drastically decrease if that behavior was prohibited and so no longer existed. such a large decrease in biodiversity could be considered worse than violations of rights and well-being involved in the harmful behavior. of course, if we were to intervene in a single instance of predation, stopping an individual predator, biodiversity would not be in danger. yet, we would not have a duty to intervene in such a singular occurrence. therefore, the connection between the 3-n-principle and biodiversity only works if we specify the notion of a duty. when we say we have a duty to prevent this predator from hunting prey in this specific situation, what we imply is that we should be willing to accept a universal prevention of predation (anywhere, at all times, in all similar situations). a prohibition means a universal prohibition, not only for this single predator, but for all predators. consequently, a lot of biodiversity would be lost. that is why there is no duty to stop the single predator. predation, motion and procreation are allowed because a universal prohibition of those types of behavior would result in a severe decrease in http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 the predation and procreation problems 89 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ biodiversity, but what kind of value does biodiversity have and how valuable is it? biodiversity has instrumental value, in the sense that it can contribute to (aggregated) well-being. yet, if scientists discover that intervening in nature and decreasing biodiversity would be better for well-being, my intuition still says that predation, motion and procreation are permissible. therefore, i suggest biodiversity has an intrinsic (non-instrumental, non-empirical) value, which means that it is independent on contingent empirical scientific discoveries. biodiversity does not always trump well-being. the value of an amount of biodiversity should be weighed against the value of an amount of (aggregated) well-being. if moral agents are the source of intrinsic value, then it is up to us, as moral agents, to decide which one of those values is the strongest. it will be an intuitive judgment requiring balancing; moral agents can democratically arrive at mutual agreement on the strengths of those values 3. 3. an analogy between biodiversity and well-being we can draw some analogies between well-being and biodiversity, not to justify the intrinsic value of biodiversity, but to make it a bit more coherent and a more plausible. 1. sentient beings have a tendency to increase their well-being, because these beings have multiple needs, and they are looking for strategies to satisfy their needs as much as possible (trade-offs, resource scarcity and incompatible strategies limit their growth in well-being, though). analogously, ecosystems have a tendency to increase their biodiversity, because these ecosystems consist of procreating living beings, and they are subject to genetic variation (natural selection due to resource scarcity limits the growth of biodiversity, however). 2. consciousness underlies well-being, just as naturalness underlies biodiversity. however, only positive conscious experiences contribute to 3 as well-being is not objectively interpersonally comparable (my qualia of happiness are measured in different units to your qualia of happiness, similar to the way that seeing red may be different for different persons), and as there is no objective way to aggregate well-being (should we take the sum, the average or a weighted average?), intuitive balancing is unavoidable even in a consequentialist welfare ethic. moral agents might still come to a democratic agreement on how to measure, value and balance everyone’s well-being. the same goes for the inclusion of a new intrinsic value, such as biodiversity, that is not objectively comparable to well-being. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 stijn bruers 90 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ well-being, just as necessary natural behaviors are important for biodiversity. normal necessary natural behaviors correspond with intense positive conscious experiences. 3. both well-being and biodiversity are a collection (variation) of different things that we can value: pleasure, friendship and reading a good book all contribute to well-being, just like genes, taxonomies (species) and biotic communities contribute to biodiversity. both well-being and biodiversity are natural properties that are difficult to express in one number, but we are able to see large increases and decreases. 4. well-being is the result of preference satisfaction, just as biodiversity is the result of evolution. defining well-being as the variation of all positive feelings that are the result of preference (need) satisfaction combines mental state accounts with preference satisfaction accounts of well-being (see shaw 1999, chap. 2). analogously, biodiversity is defined as all variation in life forms that are the result of natural evolution. 5. plugging someone in a hypothetical “experience machine” (nozick 1974) that generates feelings of pleasure in a virtual reality does not necessarily increase well-being, because well-being is not only composed of positive feelings, but those feelings need to be the result of preference satisfaction. an experience machine does not satisfy the needs for e.g. authenticity and activity. similarly, one does not necessarily increase biodiversity by introducing new genes and genetically modified organisms, because those new life forms are not the result of evolution. genetically modified species are intentionally created by intelligent beings and are not the product of a blind process of genetic mutation. the only possible strategy to increase someone’s well-being, is by eliminating obstacles that prevent preference satisfaction (i.e. eliminating barriers that enforce trade-offs or eliminating scarcities). similarly, the only possible strategy to increase biodiversity is by eliminating ecosystem pressures that increase competition over scarce resources. all in all, well-being is for a sentient being what biodiversity is for a natural ecosystem. we should not lower well-being without good reason, and we also should not lower biodiversity without good reason. the only important disanalogy is that well-being is valued by the sentient being, whereas biodiversity is not valued by the ecosystem. it might be that the intuition about the permissibility of predation is a moral illusion. nevertheless, its coherence with other intuitions about other kinds of harmful behavior, its unification in a 3-n-principle, its relation with the value of biodiversity and the analogy between well-being and biodiversity are not likely to be ad hoc rationalizations to solve the predation http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 the predation and procreation problems 91 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ problem. if it was, it would be a very sophisticated rationalization. if moral agents democratically decide that a value of biodiversity is implausible, we should intervene in the wild. references ada, 2009. “position of the american dietetic association: vegetarian diets”. journal of the american dietetic association 109 (7): 1266-82. bruers, stijn. 2014. born free and equal. on the ethical consistency of animal equality. saarbrücken: lambert academic publishing. ebert, rainer, and tibor r. machan. 2012. “innocent threats and the moral problem of carnivorous animals”. journal of applied philosophy 29 (2): 146-59. horta, oscar. 2010. “debunking the idyllic view of natural processes: population dynamics and suffering in the wild”. télos 17: 73-88. joy, melanie. 2002. psychic numbing and meat consumption: the psychology of carnism, phd diss., saybrook graduate school, san francisco. nozick, robert. 1974. anarchy, state, and utopia. new york: basic books. rawls, john. 1971. a theory of justice. cambridge: harvard university press. regan, tom. 1983. the case for animal rights. berkeley los angeles: university of california press. shaw, william h. 1999. contemporary ethics: taking account of utilitarianism. oxford: blackwell. simmons, aaron. 2009. “animals, predators, the right to life and the duty to save lives”. ethics and the environment 14 (1): 15-27. singer, peter. 1973. “food for thought, reply to david rosinger”. new york review of books, june 14. accessed october 6, 2014. http://www.nybooks.com/ articles/archives/1973/jun/14/food-for-thought/. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1973/jun/14/food-for-thought/ http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1973/jun/14/food-for-thought/ animals in need: the problem of wild animal suffering and intervention in nature animals in need the problem of wild animal suffering and intervention in nature editorial catia faria 1 eze paez 2 1 phd candidate, pompeu fabra university 2 post-doctoral researcher, pompeu fabra university catiaxfaria@gmail.com joseezequiel.paez@upf.edu this special volume of relations. beyond anthropocentrism is dedicated to examining a problem which has recently attracted a great deal of interest. this is the question about the harms that nonhuman animals suffer in the wild due to natural causes and the reasons to aid them whenever it is feasible for us to do so. this problem, although tremendously important, has traditionally received less attention relatively to others, such as the moral consideration of the nonhuman animals exploited by humans. the tide is changing, however, as more and more theorists start now to study it and as new publications addressing it appear. the background assumption challenged by those who work on this topic is the widespread belief that life in the wild is idyllic for nonhuman animals. it is commonly thought that, in nature, when free from any kind of human interference, animals enjoy happy lives, and that any problem they may face in that regard is actually due to human action. the truth of the matter, however, is at odds with this common belief. unfortunately, reality is utterly unlike this idyllic picture of life in the wild. animals living in nature undergo systematic harms on a daily basis. the ways in which this occurs are manifold. animals are harmed by starvation and dehydration. they suffer from multiple diseases as well as from injuries caused by accident. they have to deal with harsh weather and climatic conditions. they suffer many intra and interspecific aggressions – including mailto:catiaxfaria@gmail.com mailto:joseezequiel.paez@upf.edu http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 catia faria eze paez 8 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ predation, parasitism and other different forms of competition. additionally, they often have to cope with great amounts of stress and other kinds of psychological suffering. this list could continue almost indefinitely. interestingly, in fact most people are to some extent aware that this is so. however, the illusion cast by the idyllic view makes it difficult for them to realize the huge negative impact that these natural harms have in the lives of animals. indeed the amount of suffering and premature death present in nature could still be glimpsed were we only to consider the tiny number of animals that successfully reach maturity in comparison to those who die shortly after coming into existence. population dynamics shows how this figure is very low because of the prevalent reproductive strategy in nature, which consists in producing very large numbers of offspring who have very little chance of survival. in light of a situation such as this it only makes sense to ask whether there is anything we ought to do to remedy it. nevertheless, it is usually claimed that we have no obligation to prevent or alleviate this harmful state of affairs. this is accepted because nature is often considered a “flat moral landscape”, that is, a place in the workings of which we must not intervene, since anything that happens there simply should be. thus, it is said that we have no reason to help nonhuman animals and that, instead, they should be left to their own devices. it must be stressed, however, that this view is held, in the first place, because the great amount of disvalue suffered by nonhuman animals remains, as we mentioned, commonly unnoticed. this phenomenon has many causes. for instance, most people are not familiar with the basic concepts of the science of ecology and, in particular, with population dynamics. in addition, wishful thinking may lead many of us to think that the world cannot be, for the majority of sentient beings, a place of utter misery. also, the fact that nonhuman animals already suffer terrible harms at our hands may drive us to conclude that, by contrast, those who are not exploited by humans must lead reasonably good lives. finally, and very importantly, most people have a misguided idea about which are the animals that live in nature. the notion of wild animals entertained in contemporary societies is restricted to big vertebrates, most notably some well-known mammals such as african elephants or lions. yet the vast majority of animals that live in nature are actually invertebrates, who die in great numbers shortly after coming into existence. indeed, when thinking about dying animals, it is adults that come to the mind of most people, rather than the young who perish a few hours after hatching out of their eggs, even though the latter is much more prevalent. all things considered, such a deeply distorted view http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 animals in need 9 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ of life in the wild cannot provide a sound basis on which to examine the issue of animal suffering and death in nature. furthermore, the claim that we should intervene in nature to improve the situation of nonhuman animals clashes against the environmentalist discourse that is so widespread today, and which defends that we should simply let nature alone. those in favor of helping animals have argued that, in fact, interventions in nature take place all the time, and not merely for anthropocentric reasons, but also to further environmentalist aims. hence the question at issue is not really whether we should intervene or not, but rather what are the aims which we should pursue by intervening. environmentalist views value entities such as ecosystems, biocenoses, species and landscapes and, so, by intervening in nature their purpose is to promote their conservation. those who oppose speciesism and are concerned for the animals living in the wild argue that, on the contrary, we should care for the interests of sentient beings. they are the only ones who can feel suffering and experience joy and, so, intervention should be aimed at helping them. in fact, it can be argued that if the interests of nonhuman animals are morally relevant at all, it follows that the interests of animals living in the wild should be taken into account in our moral deliberation just as human interests are. those who reject the discrimination of nonhuman animals have argued that the similar interests of all sentient individuals should be equally considered. this implies that the species they belong to should be regarded as morally irrelevant. defending the contrary would be an instance of speciesism, the discrimination against those who do not belong to a certain species. certainly, the disregard for the suffering and death that occurs in nature when nonhuman animals are their victims is not the attitude expressed towards humans in similar circumstances who need our help. consequently, the refusal to consider the interests of nonhuman animals living in nature can also be considered an instance of speciesism. it is true that in many cases it is beyond our current powers to aid nonhuman animals in nature. however, there are many other cases in which it is perfectly feasible to assist them. every year there is plenty of news about trapped animals, or animals who fall victim of natural disasters, who are rescued. on a more systematic level, there exist as well different initiatives which work to provide care to orphan wild animals, food to starving animals or medical assistance to injured or sick animals, among others. in addition, vaccination programs against different diseases that wild animals suffer (such as rabies or tuberculosis) have been successfully implemented for decades. thus, there is still much that is in our power which we have not yet carried out, and even much more to research regarding how to http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 catia faria eze paez 10 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ further develop these and new programs. yet, as we previously pointed out, whether this is to be done or not depends on the position we actually endorse regarding whether we should be concerned with the harms which nonhuman animals suffer in the wild. in order to address this problem, the first issue opens with an article by oscar horta, where he examines the problem of evil in nature, that is, whether, in nature, disvalue outweighs value. the author claims that due to an evolutionary process in a context of resource scarcity, disvalue is indeed largely prevalent in the wild. most animals that come into existence die shortly after birth and lead miserable lives. this situation, he concludes, gives us reasons to intervene in order to reduce such disvalue. continuing with this discussion, mikel torres sets the moral case for intervening in nature to aid animals. he claims that once we reject speciesism and assume that we have a prima facie moral obligation to alleviate preventable and unjustified suffering, we are thereby committed to aiding animals in the wild harmed by natural phenomena. this conclusion, however, has been disputed from different perspectives, in particular, from within environmentalism. in the next article, luciano cunha provides an answer to one of the main environmentalist objections to intervention on behalf of animals. that is, if non-sentient natural entities have intrinsic value, it seems that we should not intervene in nature or at least that our reasons to intervene are considerably weak. for example, it is often claimed that we should not interfere with natural processes if that threatens the value of biodiversity. or alternatively, that we should promote biodiversity, even when doing so clashes with individual well-being. in her paper, julia m. ramil rejects this conclusion. she examines the concept of diversity and assesses what kind of value diversity may have, if any. she concludes that even conceding that diversity has some value, in cases where actual harms exceed future benefits, that value is overridden by well-being. the second part of the issue starts with an interview with professor jeff mcmahan. jeff mcmahan belongs to a small group of ethicists who work with the aim of making the world a better place. this has led him throughout his academic career to address a variety of neglected topics in moral philosophy. such is the case of wild animal suffering and intervention in nature. in this interview, professor mcmahan explains how he became acquainted with the topic and briefly explains why he believes it is quite clear that if animal suffering matters, then animal suffering caused by natural events matters to the same extent and should thus be prevented, whenever possible. this is indeed the argument that he develops on his http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 animals in need 11 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ well know new york times piece the meat eaters, where he addresses the suffering caused by carnivores on their prey. in the interview, mcmahan extends his concern to other natural harms that affect animals living in the wild, such as disease or starvation. he also explains to us why he thinks environmentalist objections to benefiting animals in the wild are unsound and what can be done to increase awareness of this issue among philosophers and the general public. later, we present a debate between stjin bruers and eze paez. in his paper, bruers aims at laying out an ethical principle that accounts for allegedly widespread moral intuitions about the permissibility of some harmful natural events, most notably predation and r-selection, the reproductive strategy that prevails in nature. these events are to be allowed even though they cause great amounts of suffering to animals that live in the wild. bruers presents such principle, which he calls the 3-n principle (naturalness, normality and necessity), as related to the intrinsic value of biodiversity. it allows him to oppose intervention in the wild, even if great gains in terms of individual well-being could be achieved, whenever doing so would inflict a great loss in biodiversity. in his reply to bruers, however, eze paez challenges this conclusion. firstly he assesses the results of bruers’ account regarding the sacrifice of both human and nonhuman interests, finding them highly unacceptable. secondly, he shows that rejecting bruers’ view on biodiversity has much more plausible consequences with respect to r-selection and the accidental killing of invertebrates. this is followed by a report on animal ethics, a new organization dedicated to increasing awareness of speciesism and its impact in all animals, including those living in the wild. animal ethics shares the background motivation of this volume by focusing its activity on providing information on, as well as producing academic research about, under-addressed topics in animal ethics, such as the one we are dealing with here. the issue ends with adriano maninno’s review of zoopolis: a political theory of animal rights, by sue donaldson and will kymlicka. as maninno points out, zoopolis has relocated the animal rights debate from the classic issue of the moral considerability of animals to the political discussion about our obligations towards the so called “sovereign communities” of animals living in the wild. the author argues that even though the main normative theses in zoopolis are correct, it empirically underestimates the extent to which nature may actually work as a failed state and thus demand much more of us in terms of beneficial intervention. the second issue of the volume opens with a paper from brian tomasik about the importance of wild animal suffering. the author claims that given the huge amount of animals that exist in nature, all of those concerned with http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 catia faria eze paez 12 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ nonhuman animals should focus their efforts on reducing the harms that take place in the wild. in fact, tomasik concludes, our utmost priority should be to ensure that human intelligence, along with the sciences and technologies available in the future, will be used to prevent wild animal suffering, rather than to multiply it. the issue continues with david pearce’s article a welfare state for elephants?. he claims that future human beings will eventually have the power to change life on earth. thus, it is our moral responsibility to use that power to achieve a compassionate stewardship of nonhuman animal wild populations, whenever that becomes feasible. the article proceeds by examining such stewardship could work, taking elephants that live in the wild as a case study. it ends by disputing the rationality of the two major obstacles to this project. these are speciesism and the typical arguments from appeal to nature, employed as objections against intervening to help animals. next, eze paez challenges the widespread belief according to which the aim of preserving organisms or ecosystems can justify the infliction of suffering to nonhuman sentient beings, or the failure to prevent it. paez explains that one way how this might be true would be if the mere existence of non-sentient entities had telic value. nonetheless, he concludes, there are strong reasons to doubt that. in the last article of this section, beril sözmen offers us a relational account of our moral obligations towards animals living in the wild. the author claims that animal ethics, understood as a radical critique to anthropocentrism, can greatly benefit from the non-analytic tradition, especially in refining the debate about our relational duties towards other animals. according to the author, this is particularly true regarding the question of intervention in nature. in the second part of this issue, max carpendale interviews yewkwang ng about his work on evolutionary economics of animal consciousness and suffering. ng explains what welfare biology is and how evolutionary economics and population dynamics can help us to solve crucial problems when dealing with wild animal suffering. these include determining members of which species are sentient individuals capable of having a well-being of their own, ascertaining whether they enjoy positive or negative well-being or deciding how their well-being can be effectively increased, among many others. ng also discusses the normative implications of the prevalence of wild animal suffering regarding what we have most reason to do. subsequently, we present a debate between professor clare palmer and catia faria. drawing on her arguments in animal ethics in context, http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 animals in need 13 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ palmer claims that we do not have an obligation to intervene in order to assist animals living in the wild since we do not normally have with those animals the kind of relationships that generates such obligations. palmer believes that there are many cases, though, in which we should intervene. for example, when there has been prior human harm. palmer’s position is then that intervention is permissible, but not normally required. in her reply, catia faria claims that palmer’s account, however supportive of commonly shared intuitions does not seem capable of escaping three major problems. firstly, it has unacceptable consequences for the human case. secondly, in order to avoid the previous concern, it necessarily falls prey of speciesism. finally, it assigns too high a value to relations. the volume ends with daniel dorado’s review of the literature on wild animal suffering and intervention in nature, ranging from stuart mill’s on nature to the most relevant contemporary contributions to the topic. the purpose of this volume is to address the vastly unexplored issue of wild animal suffering and intervention in nature, by challenging the belief that life in the wild is a “flat moral landscape” (donaldson and kymlicka 2011). though it is usually assumed that we have no obligations to prevent or reduce the natural harms that animals suffer in the wild, if nonhuman interests are relevant at all, it seems that the interests of wild animals should also be taken into account. there are a number of objections that might be put forward against this conclusion, though, the most relevant of which are discussed in detail throughout the volume. we believe that these two issues provide a rigorous and comprehensive overview of the academic discussion on the topic. in addition, we hope that they will contribute to raising awareness of the situation of animals living in the wild. ultimately, we expect that it will stimulate further academic research about the moral consideration of nonhuman animals (in particular, wild animals) and the reasons to reject speciesism. references donaldson, sue, and will kymlicka. 2011. zoopolis: a political theory of animal rights. oxford: oxford university press. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 vegetarianism and veganism from a moral point of view 5 is sn 2 2 8 0 -9 9 5 3 beyond anthropocentrism 1 • january 2013 inside the emotional lives of non-human animals a minding animals international utrecht 2012 pre-conference event special issue (genoa, italy, 12-13 may, 2012) edited by m. andreozzi, r. bennison, a. massaro, s. tonutti capabilities approach and animal bioethics • michele panzera animals and our emotions. how to approach the study of an interspecific community? • sabrina tonutti advocacy and animal rights • kim stallwood the emotional lives of animals: a christian perspective • alma massaro – gianfranco nicora animalia: ontology and ethics in weak antispeciesism • leonardo caffo the contemporary debate on experimentation • susanna penco – rosagemma ciliberti non-human animals and genetic engineering • arianna ferrari the relationship between humans and other animals in european animal welfare legislation • paola sobbrio human’s best friends? • matteo andreozzi elationsre l a t io n s . b e y o n d a n t h r o p o c e n t r is m 1 • 2 0 1 3 r 10.1 june 2022 animal ethics, ethology, and food ethics edited by francesco allegri studies and research contributions korsgaard’s duties towards animals: two difficulties 9 nico müller ethology of the freed animal: concept, paradigm 27 and implementations to the moral status of non-human animals marco celentano dario martinelli il dilemma etico dei pet: tra bestie, animali e persone 47 matteo andreozzi being there: if the pairing of the birdwatchers affects the pairing 59 of the birds evangelina w. uskoković theo w. uskoković vuk uskoković comments, debates, reports and interviews vegetarianism and veganism from a moral point of view 85 francesco allegri author guidelines 93 relations – 10.1 june 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ relations – 10.1 june 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 85 vegetarianism and veganism from a moral point of view francesco allegri università degli studi di siena doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2022-01-alle allegri2@unisi.it the topic of the morality of a vegetarian or vegan diet continues to be at the center of the debate in food ethics and animal ethics. among the many recent publications, i like to point out a couple worthy of special mention for their brevity and clarity. the first, dialogues on ethical vegetarianism, comes to us from an important moral philosopher of the last generations, michael huemer, author of a re-evaluation of ethical intuitionism (huemer 2005), and who now takes on this classic theme of applied ethics (huemer 2019). the dialogic form of his volume, which has already appeared in a shortened version in the journal beetwen the species (huemer 2018), makes it easily readable and particularly effective. its contents have the approval of no less than peter singer, who publicizes huemer’s text, asserting in the foreword that “in the future, when people ask me why i don’t eat meat, i will tell them to read this book”. but singer himself, the leading thinker (or one of the leading thinkers) of contemporary animal ethics, has returned in our years to talk about vegan eating style, re-presenting in a small book, why vegan?, his theses on the subject, updating them to the events of the pandemic caused by covid-19 (singer 2020). so in the last chapter of the book, written together with paola cavalieri, we find a radical criticism of the china’s wet markets, “open-air markets where animals are bought live and then slaughtered on the spot for the customers” (singer 2020, 82). they may have been at the origin of the virus that has been plaguing the entire world for three years: scientists tell us that keeping different animals in close, prolonged proximity with one another and with people creates an unhealthy environment that is the probable source of the mutation that enabled covid-19 to infect humans. more precisely, in such an environment, a coronavirus long present in some animals underwent rapid mutation […] and ultimately relations – 10.1 june 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2022-01-alle mailto:allegri2@unisi.it https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ francesco allegri 86 gained the ability to bind to human cell receptors, thus adapting to the human host. (singer 2020, 83) for this reason and for the suffering enduring by animals in such wildlife markets, many voices are rightly calling for a permanent ban on wet market, that for animals are hell on earth: “thousands of sentient, palpitating beings endure hours of suffering and anguish before being brutally butchered” (singer 2020, 84). among these voices there is martin williams, a hong kong-based writer specializing in conservation and the environment, cited by singer and cavalieri: as long as such markets exist, the likelihood of other new diseases emerging will remain. surely, it is time for china to close down these markets. in one fell swoop, it would be making progress on animal rights and nature conservation, while reducing the risk of a “made in china” disease harming people worldwide. (singer 2020, 85) but in order to criticize wet markets, as well as intensive farming, it is not necessary to embrace the views of vegetarians or vegans. it is sufficient to accept moderate positions in defense of animals, such as that of scruton (2000, 2004), which i dealt with in relations 8 (allegri 2020). positions that care about the suffering of animals, but not their life, which in a painless way can be legitimately interrupted long before natural times. this does not appear to be the position of huemer and singer, who argue in support of a stronger defense of animals. i believe that such stronger version of advocating for animal needs is the correct position. as i have written several times (recently in allegri 2021), i think that the life of animals has value and therefore it is wrong not only to make them suffer, but also to shorten their life for non-euthanasia reasons. such a conception obviously implies that intensive farming is morally unjustifiable, and any support for a practice that precludes animals the exercise of basic needs is to be questioned. but it goes further. if the life of sentient beings also has value, then, it is wrong to kill them. this at the level of food ethics implies that, regardless of the suffering experienced in intensive farming, it is problematic to eat sentient beings, a prohibition that extends, albeit with different severity (if we move, as in my case, from a gradualist perspective 1), at least up to the cephalopods, configuring some form of vegetarianism or quasi-vegetarianism as morally obligatory. are there plausible contrasting reasons to fail to this obligation? it would seem not, because a possible argument that would identify harm to our health from 1 i examined this point in allegri 2021. relations – 10.1 june 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ vegetarianism and veganism from a moral point of view 87 abstaining from these foods does not appear to be cogent. in fact, it is now a well-established fact that a vegetarian diet is far from deleterious for the well-being of our body; indeed it is deeply healthy. the question of eggs and milk (and its derivatives: butter, cheeses etc.) is more complex. vegans emphasize how their production, and consequently their consumption, is inextricably linked not only to exploitation and suffering, but also to the death of animals. when we eat the parmesan cheese or an omelette, we are not eating animals that have been killed, but something whose processing necessarily involves the killing of animals. with eggs and milk (and dairy products), on the contrary that with the production of meat, the animals from which we derive these foods do not die, but other animals connected to them lose their lives: male children. the separation of the male calf from the mother and his killing appear inseparably linked to the production of milk. in fact, for a cow to have milk, as with all mammals, it is necessary that she gives birth. calves are born specifically so that the cow can have milk. but in case a male calf is born, not being able to become a cow, he is completely unproductive and it is not possible to maintain him for the 20-30 years of his natural life. from an economic point of view, if we want the production of milk – at least at current costs – we cannot but accept these killings. as even scruton admits, “calves are an unavoidable by-product of the milk industry. male calves are useless to the industry and represent, in existing conditions, an unsustainable cost if they are not sold for slaughter” (scruton 2000, 103). we are so placed in front of a dilemma: if we want milk production, we must accept these killings; if, on the other hand, we refuse the killing of calves, we must give up the production of milk. egg production presents a similar problem. since breeders are interested in who lays eggs, and therefore to female hens, when male chicks are born from incubator factories (roughly in 50% of cases), they are completely useless for that purpose and, not being of the suitable variety to become broilers, they are killed (by gas) or thrown alive into sacks where they die from suffocation. calves and male chicks must die in order for milk and egg production to be economically convenient. we might think that it is not the production of eggs and milk as such that creates the exploitation, suffering and death of animals, but the methods of industrial farming. so returning to traditional family farms we would put an end to these negative outcomes. but vegans assert that, albeit in smaller proportions, even non-intensive farms present the same problems. it is not easy to respond convincingly to the arguments of vegans. nor is it easy to find compromise solutions. the preceding considerations, relations – 10.1 june 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ francesco allegri 88 which recognize many ethical reasons for the vegetarian-vegan eating style, must however deal with an objection that could put the theses of proponents of a diet based on animal products back into play. this objection to the vegetarian-vegan framework outlined above is very insidious for strong versions of animal advocacy, those that, in addition to the suffering inflicted to animals, also condemn their killing. it consists in noting that the vast majority of animals raised by humans would never have come into the world without the latter’s food interest in them. now, if compared with life in factory farms, not coming into the world appears to be a better option, in case the comparison is with traditional farms, where animals live a good life before they die, the outcome is more doubtful. indeed, the situation seems to be reversed. the view advanced with this argument acknowledges that animals raised by humans for food reasons suffer harm from being killed (i.e. from dying early). but it points out that under certain conditions such harm is convenient for those who suffer it. these conditions clearly cannot be those of intensive farming, where the life of animals is so painful that it is preferable never to have come into the world. but if the conditions are those of family farms – perhaps further improving them and ensuring that animals are killed without suffering – things change. animals still (equally) suffer harm in dying ahead of their natural time, but without such harm they would never have been born and thus would not have lived the good life of which instead they could enjoy. without human breeding, therefore, animals would not be born at all (at least the vast majority). is it better to be born, live well and then be killed (painlessly) well in advance of natural times, or not be born at all 2? if not being born at all is better than living a life of hardship like that of intensive farming, it is doubtful that not being born is better than living a good life, albeit a short one, and being killed painlessly. degrazia sets out very well the conditions that must be met to make this way of reasoning ethically plausible: the claim is that it is permissible to bring an animal into existence with the plain of killing her for meat, even though death will harm her, provided (1) the animal’s life is likely to be worthwhile and (2) she never would have had that life except within a practice of raising and killing animals for meat. (degrazia 2009, 163) 2 this argument, already available in the late nineteenth-century dispute between l. stephen and h. salt, can be found in recent years – i do not know how consistently with the picture he outlines elsewhere in his texts – also in scruton (e.g. scruton 2000, 103-104). relations – 10.1 june 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ vegetarianism and veganism from a moral point of view 89 we could hence think of farms where animals live a good life and are then killed painlessly, suffering the harm of early death, yes, but a harm that is the conditio sine qua non for being able to come into the world and therefore preferable to not being born. i have the impression that if we move from a consequentialist perspective such an argument is difficult to overcome. but although i am convinced that being born and living a good life, albeit with (largely) anticipated (but painless) death is preferable to not being born at all – and therefore i recognize that this argument of the moderate defenders of animals is not easily refuted – i have strong doubts about his cogency. bringing individuals into the world with the aim of killing them well in advance and eating them seems to inevitably lead to a purely instrumental conception of them. animals turn out to be mere means at our service without any value in themselves. this is incompatible at least with a kantian deontological conception that wants to extend inherent dignity beyond the human sphere. a model of this kind, as well as in regan’s animal rights ethics, in recent times can be found, for example, in the texts of c.m. korsgaard, who writes: “i do not think that is consistent with regarding animals as end in themselves” killing them to eat them, “if only we kept them humanely while they were alive and then killed them painlessly” (korsgaard 2011, 110). one can further reply – and perhaps decisively – to this objection to the vegetarian-vegan framework by re-proposing, with some variations, the scenario presented by desmond stewart in his story about the troogs (stewart 1976). suppose that, in the distant future, the troogs, extraterrestrials who are more intelligent and scientifically more advanced than we are, subdue the earth and, finding the taste of our tissues very palatable, decide to eat us, developing herds of human beings that disproportionately increase the number of specimens of our species coming into the world. without their great food interest in human flesh, far fewer humans would see the light of day. the troogs, however, have their own ethics and, like today’s moderate defenders of animals, they believe it is wrong to make sentient beings suffer unjustifiably. so, as long as they keep us alive, we are treated very well, with all possible regards and, in order not to make us suffer, they even keep us in the dark about the moment of our killing, a practice which, obviously, is carried out in a completely painless manner. moving in the logic of sthepen, scruton etc., we would have nothing to respond to a practice of this type. we certainly could not say to them: “we suffer harm from being killed, i.e. from dying in advance!”. because they would reply: “yes, but it is precisely thanks to the fact that we eat you, that you came into the world; so you cannot relations – 10.1 june 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ francesco allegri 90 complain about the treatment we subject you to”. would we accept such an answer? it seems difficult. some might argue that there is a fundamental difference in the case of humans subjected to aliens compared to animals raised by humans. it would not be possible for us to live well, being aware of having to die in the short term. our life would be full of anguish and therefore the parallel with animals does not work (the latter do not know what awaits them). nor is it conceivable that we could be kept in the dark about our fate, because sooner or later it would reach our ears. we can then introduce a modification in the thought-experiment that makes it fully congruent with the animals’ situation. we could adjust it by assuming that the troog ethics, in addition to prohibiting the unjustifiable suffering of all sentient beings, also prohibits the killing of self-conscious and rational beings, so they decide not to eat paradigmatic humans. they opt to purposely create non-paradigmatic humans who raise and grow to the right point and then feed on them, killing them without making them suffer and after having kept them well for the whole course of their existence. using techniques of genetic manipulation and artificial fertilization, they give birth to enormous quantities of beings of our species with no sense of the future and the past, who are however able to experience sensations of pleasure, which they experience throughout their short life. well, faced with such a scenario what would be our reaction? we would not say – i think – “after all it is better that they are born and live, albeit for a short time, rather than not to be born at all”. we would not accept this instrumental use of marginal humans. but then, what we do not allow to be done to members of our species, we cannot allow, unless one falls into specism, to be done to members of different species. references allegri, francesco. 2020. “on midgley and scruton: some limits of a too moderate animal ethics”. relations. beyond anthropocentrism 8: 137-143. allegri, francesco. 2021. “unitarianism or hierarchical approach for moral status? a very subtle difference”. relations. beyond anthropocentrism 9: 91-107. degrazia, david. 2009. “moral vegetarianism from a very broad basis”. journal of moral philosophy 6: 143-165. huemer, michael. 2005. ethical intuitionism. basingstoke new york: palgrave macmillan. huemer, michael. 2018. “dialogues on ethical vegetarianism”. between the species 22: 20-135. relations – 10.1 june 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ vegetarianism and veganism from a moral point of view 91 huemer, michael. 2019. dialogues on ethical vegetarianism. new york: routledge. korsgaard, christine m. 2011. “interacting with animals: a kantian account”. in the oxford handbook of animal ethics, edited by tom l. beauchamp and raymond g. frey, 91-118. oxford: oxford university press. scruton, roger. 2000. animal rights and wrongs. london: metro books demos. scruton, roger. 2004. “the conscientious carnivore”. in food for thought: the debate over eating meat, edited by steve f. sapontzis, 81-91. amherst (ny): prometheus. singer, peter. 2020. why vegan? london: penguin. stewart, desmond. 1976. “the limits of trooghaft”. in animal rights and human obligations, edited by tom regan and peter singer, 238-245. englewood cliffs (nj): prentice-hall. relations – 10.1 june 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ editorial. minding animals minding animals editorial rod bennison 1 alma massaro 2 jessica ullrich 3 1 independent scholar, founder and ceo of minding animals international 2 phd, university of genoa 3 phd, university of lueneburg mindinganimals@gmail.com almamassaro@gmail.com jesmarullrich@t-online.de in this and subsequent issue of relations you will find twelve papers first presented at the second minding animals conference held in july, 2012, in utrecht, the netherlands. universiteit utrecht was selected to host the conference which was subtitled building bridges between science, the humanities and ethics. the conference was convened by dr. ta tjana višak who was ably supported both logistically and financially by her peers in the ethics institute (faculty of humanities) and faculty of veterinary sciences. the conference was indeed fortunate in that it was also supported financially by several organisations (other than by the university). of note, the world society for the protection of animals, the netherlands ministry of agriculture and the european commission provided support, amongst others. 690 delegates from 42 countries attended the conference, and over 450 papers were selected for presentation. held over three long days, delegates were set a cracking pace and were delighted with a depth of academic insight rarely to be experienced at any one event. subsequently, over 100 of these papers were presented for consideration for publication in this and the next special issue of volume 2 of relations. beyond anthropocentrism, with just 12 papers finally chosen. the editorial team, ably supported by several others who painstakingly assessed which authors would be successful for publication, have been able to assemble what could be labelled a most representative snapshot of what was presented at the conference. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ rod bennison alma massaro jessica ullrich 8 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the six papers presented in this first issue takes us from learning about the emotional lives of animals, to donkeys in the landscape, to a clinical perspective of a theory of mind, to electrocution of an elephant, to the interaction of music and birdsong, and to zoos, circuses and cinema marketing. the second issue will examine urban wildlife, the cow and agriculture in finland, hybrid creatures inspired by experimentation, animal transport regulations, impacts of the poetry of lucretius, and the art of a chimpanzee named alpha. in this issue, we are firstly presented with a paper by barbara creed who considers the cinematic representation of animal death in relation to questions of ethics. among the films she discusses are early documentaries like thomas edison’s electrocuting an elephant and georges franju’s le sang des bêtes as well as robert bresson’s classic au hasard balthazar and werner herzog’s more recent grizzly man. informed by the theories of andré bazin, akira lippit and anat pick, creed contributes fruitfully to an underrepresented topic in writings on cinema arguing that spectators often displace their own fear of death and dying onto the animals represented in films. she reads the space between spectator and the cinematic image of actual animal death as an ethical space that makes possible a creaturely gaze that may break down boundaries between the human and the non-human animal. in their paper, learning about the emotional lives of kangaroos, cognitive justice and environmental sustainability, steve garlick and rosemary austen propose an alternative approach to sustainability, based not only to the ethic of care but also to encounters with real animals. in this sense, the kangaroos that live in the rehabilitation centre near canberra, australia, offer important hints for the study of environmental integrity. looking at the scientific research on wildlife emotions and to encounters, the authors offer a way to transcend the often impersonal and remote scientific knowledge. tanja schwalm reads yann martel’s bestselling book life of pi with a critical animal studies approach to uncover that the novel’s commercial success relies on the same strategies that zoos use to promote themselves. rather than analysing the plot, the indian boy, pi patel, whose family owns a zoo gets stuck on a lifeboat with a tiger and other animals and struggles for his survival, schwalm looks closely at the exotic book’s cover, at interviews with the author and at reader’s comments on the book in order to point to the novel’s arguments in favour of zoos as an important and necessary institution. schwalm’s convincingly critical appraisal that the reinforcement of the obsolete mythology of a “good zoo” reassures readers that visiting a zoo serves animal welfare, conservation and education but fails in relation to animal ethics. minding animals 9 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the deep bond connecting animal care to human care is well presented by stephen blakeway. in his research, the multi-dimensional donkey in landscapes of donkey-human interaction, it emerges how the work of the donkey sanctuary, especially in developing countries, has not only a strong impact on the wellbeing of animals, but also of people. by eliciting case studies, the author also makes the point for the need of knowledge among people who handle a donkey: very often, in fact, poor animal conditions are due to poverty and ignorance, more than to mere cruelty. susanne heiter looks at the work of two contemporary musicians who both propose a participation of birds in music making. her first example is a recording by wolfgang müller in which the composer suggests that particular starlings are imitating kurt schwitters’ ursonate. the other example is david rothenberg’s musical encounter with the lyrebird george where the performance is interpreted as the jam session of two musical agents. müller and rothenberg both support and legitimate their suggestions of musical capacities in birds by referring to scientific knowledge in order to convince their audience of the possibility of interspecies music. heiter reveals the hypothetical, playful and provocative character of their claims as very fruitful when it comes to unsolved questions in human non-human animal relations. the closeness of mental processes in both human and non-human animals is well questioned in jean michel le bot’s work, a clinical perspective on “theory of mind”, empathy and altruism. here the author, by means of a number of experiments performed with chimpanzees, shows that they are able to understand what other perceives. by means of a human case study, the author shows that this ability suggests they also have the ability of somasia – a condition that makes it possible to understand another’s mental state. in volume 2, issue 2 of relations, you will read the second set of six challenging essays. they commence with a paper by taija kaarlenkaski who examines the close interconnection of the female human and animal gender. in her work, of cows and women: gendered human animal relationships in finnish agriculture, she discusses the gendered representation of animal husbandry. as she points out, cattle tending in finland has been regarded as a feminine work because of a social separation of labour. by selecting some of the writings that have been collected in a public writing competition, she finds the deep reason of this separation both in the bodily relationship with cows and, especially, because of gender and embodiment. in her article, juliet macdonald challenges the notion of drawing as an exclusively human activity. her text – which can also partly be seen as the biography of a historical non-human person – focuses on the chimpanzee rod bennison alma massaro jessica ullrich 10 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ “alpha” who was born in 1930 as part of a breeding program established by robert yerkes. she was raised by humans in their home and then moved to a laboratory environment where she was the subject of several scientific behavioural and physiological studies. in her empathetic account of alpha’s tragic life and her ongoing desire to draw in different umwelten, macdonald considers alpha’s “scribbles” as meaningful performances of subjectivity and agency. they could maybe even be read as acts of resistance to the experiments she was subjected to, as well as to her caged environment. in her analysis of the poem de rerum natura by lucretius, alma massaro reveals the pluralistic, non-anthropocentric perspective of the latin poet. focussing on two passages – one about a human and one about an animal sacrifice – she shows how the simplicity of animals who just follow nature and who understand themselves as part of the universal force of nature, reach serenity and become a model for moral behaviour. in the cited passage, a cow is presented as morally superior to humans because she stays faithful to her pact with her offspring as well as with humans whereas, in an analogously structured passage, humans violate the laws of nature and are compromised by impious religion. with her insightful rereading of lucretius, massaro also calls for new understanding of ancient wisdom as solid ground for modern animal ethics. the different treatment humans often deserve to similar animal species is the object of siobhan o’sullivan, barbara creed, and jenny gray essay, low down dirty rat. here the authors analyse the different conceptualisation of rats and possums inside australian legislation and offer insights from science and popular culture in order to find a justification of this difference. their point is that “human cruelty to animals is contradictory and irrational and that when another species potentially threatens human lives and human self-interest we react brutally and without due consideration”. in her essay, animal perceptions in animal transport regulations in the eu and in finland, outi ratamäki investigates the issue of the long distance transportation of horses to slaughter inside the eu. the author offers an interpretation of the regulatory texts used in the eu and in finland on the base of both the market driven and animal centric point of view. in trying to answer the question “what kind of animal perceptions are predominant in the legislation concerning animal transportation and what is their institutional basis?”, ratamäki offers a deconstruction of the current conceptualisation of animals inside. finally, evelyn tsitas investigates the relationships between scientific experiments on the human animal chimera, the representation of those experiments in science fiction, and the literary trope of the mad scientist. minding animals 11 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ she points to the speciesism in biotechnology that aims at augmenting and altering the animal body as well as in the fictional responses to recent scientific developments. the depicted human animal hybrids in books like frankenstein, the island of dr. moreau or dog’s heart where animals are considered disposable, clarify the human hubris in the biotechnological age. tsitas understands the depicted liminal creatures as cyborgs in donna haraway’s sense and shows how there are used to speculate on long held assumptions about the difference between human and non-human species, and to display the anxiety about a fragmented modern identity in the 21st century. we hope you enjoy this minding animals special edition of relations. we are sure that the papers selected will challenge you, inspire you and give you hope for a more compassionate and respectful interrelationship with our non-human animal kin. we also hope that this and the next issue will entice you to join us at the next minding animals conference which will be held between 13 and 20 january, 2015, in new delhi in india. for further information on the next conference, please visit www.mindinganimals.com. introduction: finding agency in nonhumans 5 is sn 2 2 8 0 -9 9 5 3 beyond anthropocentrism 1 • january 2013 inside the emotional lives of non-human animals a minding animals international utrecht 2012 pre-conference event special issue (genoa, italy, 12-13 may, 2012) edited by m. andreozzi, r. bennison, a. massaro, s. tonutti capabilities approach and animal bioethics • michele panzera animals and our emotions. how to approach the study of an interspecific community? • sabrina tonutti advocacy and animal rights • kim stallwood the emotional lives of animals: a christian perspective • alma massaro – gianfranco nicora animalia: ontology and ethics in weak antispeciesism • leonardo caffo the contemporary debate on experimentation • susanna penco – rosagemma ciliberti non-human animals and genetic engineering • arianna ferrari the relationship between humans and other animals in european animal welfare legislation • paola sobbrio human’s best friends? • matteo andreozzi elationsre l a t io n s . b e y o n d a n t h r o p o c e n t r is m 1 • 2 0 1 3 r 8.1-2 november 2020 finding agency in nonhumans special issue edited by anne aronsson, fynn holm, melissa kaul introduction finding agency in nonhumans 7 anne aronsson fynn holm melissa kaul studies and research contributions conceptualizing robotic agency: social robots in elder care 17 in contemporary japan anne aronsson fynn holm “its hand around my throat”: the social rendering of borrelia 37 ritti soncco distributed skills in camel herding: cooperation 57 in a human-animal relationship in somaliland raphael schwere a sea cow goes to court: extinction and animal agency 77 in a struggle against militarism marius palz is skrei a historical norwegian figure? the nomadic symbiosis 97 of fish and humans in the lofoten islands nafsika papacharalampous relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ relations. beyond anthropocentrism 6 “agents of description”: animals, affect, and care 115 in thalia field’s experimental animals: a reality fiction (2016) shannon lambert comments, debates, reports and interviews on midgley and scruton: some limits of a too moderate 137 animal ethics francesco allegri author guidelines 145 relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 7 finding agency in nonhumans introduction anne aronsson fynn holm melissa kaul universität zürich doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2020-0102-intr anne.aronsson@aoi.uzh.ch fynn.holm@uzh.ch melissaann.kaul@aoi.uzh.ch in november 2020, after a year of protests against social and racial injustices, a controversial election that left the nation, and a rampaging pandemic causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands, us presidentelect joe biden addressed the nation prior to thanksgiving in a speech in delaware: “i know the country has grown wary of the fight, but we need to remember, we’re at war with the virus, not with one another”, he declared. uniting a nation by declaring war against an outside enemy is an old (and often effective) political strategy. however, we have to wonder: is it possible to wage a war against a virus? normally, we would expect that a “war” is fought between groups of humans, in modern times often represented by nation-states. even the more abstract “war on drugs” or “war on terror” are ultimately against human enemies (drug cartels and terrorists respectively). the use of nonhumans as weapons of war, for example in germ warfare, is not unheard of, but becoming a party in a war does imply that one can intentionally act and counteract against the enemy in a way that will decide the war in favor of one of the sides. in other words, one has to have agency in order to be considered an active participant in a war. but does a virus, which most natural scientists do not even consider to be a living organism, and whose only means of “reacting” to outside pressure is the random mutation of its genome, have agency 1? 1 for more on the topic, see dupré and guttinger 2016; crawford 2018. relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2020-0102-intr mailto:anne.aronsson@aoi.uzh.ch mailto:fynn.holm@uzh.ch mailto:melissaann.kaul@aoi.uzh.ch https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ anne aronsson fynn holm melissa kaul 8 as the above example illustrates, we humans are always close at hand to attribute agency to nonhumans, but as soon as we dig deeper, the notion of nonhuman agency becomes much messier. the essays collected in this special issue showcase new methodological approaches for addressing nonhuman agency in academic writing, theoretical reflections on nonhuman agency, and specific case studies of nonhuman agency. our interdisciplinary journey through the fields of history, anthropology, and literature studies will take us to many new and unfamiliar places. we will travel with camels and herders into the deserts of somaliland to find out who is leading whom. we will stand witness in a court of law, where the plaintiffs, the dugongs of okinawa, are not only not present but may not even exist. our journey takes us also to the lofoten islands, where the landscape itself is transformed by the presence of the “skrei” fish (norwegian codfish), despite our researcher not seeing a single living fish on her fieldwork. we will listen to a conversation between eriko and pepper in a japanese nursing home to find that the boundaries between humans and robots are breaking down. the cruelty of animal experiments is explored not in a physical space but in the realm of literature, and finally, we will learn why it might be important to give agency even to bacteria in our case study about lyme disease in scotland, bringing us full circle with our opening question of whether we can wage a war against infectious agents. how can agency be defined within a framework of multispecies ethnographies? multispecies ethnography is often regarded as a more-thanhuman approach to sociocultural anthropology as it is believed that the human condition cannot be fully understood in isolation from nonhuman species. as such, the approach is primarily focused on overcoming the limitations of anthropocentric thinking and understanding the important role played by the agency of nonhuman species. multispecies ethnography was popularized by eben kirksey and stefan helmreich (2010), who developed an epistemologicaland ecologically-focused approach to investigating the relationships between human and nonhuman species. furthermore, several other scholars have created and advocated for more-than-human anthropological approaches to capture nonhuman agency (kohn 2007, 2013; helmreich 2011; tsing 2012; das 2013; haraway 2014; govindrajan 2018). for example, eduardo kohn (2007) proposed “an anthropology of life” based on understanding the semiotic processes that living organisms go through within their environments, as these processes are relevant to both human and nonhuman species. within the journal relations. beyond anthropocentrism, two types of agency are discussed, namely human agency in human-animal relations relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ finding agency in nonhumans 9 and nonhuman animal agency. the former type of agency is discussed in depth by lorenzo bertolesi (2017), who argues that animal injustice is caused by a denial of their agency and the exploitation of their vulnerability. likewise, stijn bruer (2015) also condones predation without involving anthropocentric concepts like species membership or moral agency. moreover, the famous philosopher martha nussbaum asserts that agency violation and physical vulnerabilities play a significant role in determining nonhuman animal injustice. agency may thus be regarded as an ethical starting point when considering potential positive responsibilities and obligation. this promotes the protection of different species and encourages people to act. nonetheless, the repression of the agency is also a key element in protection and encouragement from a legal perspective. as to nonhuman animal agency, sabrina tonutti (2013) argues that nonhumans are often unseen, unheard, and are not considered to be “individuals”. animals typically play two key roles in daily practices and the narratives that define them. these roles are pure physicality (animals are often considered as working entities and sources of organs for dissection) and mere symbolic objects in human semiotic processes. in both roles, the individual animal is stripped of its agency. in a similar way, serpil oppermann (2016) point out the commonalities between posthumanism and ecocriticism. moreover, he highlights several changes in how agency, materiality, and nature are perceived. oppermann puts forward the notion of “posthuman ecocriticism”, which aims to reconceptualize different life forms in a techno-scientific manner, ultimately blurring the boundaries between humans, nonhumans, and machines. in posthumanist approaches, the nonhuman agency is not merely considered to be a biological category, but the importance of nonhuman life and artificial intelligence is carefully considered, thus largely diminishing human exceptionalism. adding to this academic dialogue within the journal relations, each paper published in this special issue makes a significant contribution to the exploration of agency in multispecies ethnographies, demonstrating a desire to reposition humans in such a way that nonhuman life is no longer defined merely in terms of the subordinate objectification of its cultural significance or socio-economic use. multispecies ethnography considers all types of nonhuman lives to have their own agency, instead of blatantly ignoring or symbolically appropriating animal life. thus, the approach is based on an understanding that all forms of nonhuman life play significant roles in the activities and worlds of humans, which means that human relationships with fauna, microbial, and synthetic life are relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ anne aronsson fynn holm melissa kaul 10 included in order to explore humans and other species in scientifically novel ways. anne aronsson and fynn holm open the special issue with theoretical reflections on how far we can push the notion of nonhuman agency by applying it to social robots. this question is examined in the example of the interaction between eriko, an elderly woman in a japanese nursing home in tokyo and the social robot named pepper. aronsson and holm argue that robots, as their machine-learning routines grow more sophisticated, will eventually interact in such an insightful way with humans that the dichotomy between attributed and inherent nonhuman agency will become meaningless. however, in the end, the question remains: does pepper have agency only insofar as eriko attributes agency to it, or should we look for a deeper form of agency, one that transcends mere outside attributions? how would an academic definition of inherent agency differ from that of our research subject, or is every rationalization of inherent agency at best not just a more sophisticated form of attributed agency? the paper concludes with the observation that rapid technological advances in the twenty-first century will see robots achieve some level of agency by contributing to human society through carving out unique roles for themselves and bonding with humans. in the second essay, medical anthropologist ritti soncco has worked with borrelia burgdorferi, which are microbes responsible for lyme disease, and has investigated the potential for a microbial agency, thus providing a crucial opportunity for anthropology, medicine, and politics to assess the linguistic messmates that are made of microbes. soncco highlights the contradiction of clinicians and researchers claiming that the bacteria have no inherent agency, but then treating them as if they do. even more, soncco shows that for victims of the disease, the agency of the bacteria is a given and a way to deal with the long-term implications of the situation. therefore, microbial agency can be regarded as a powerful tool concerning the sociopolitical epidemic of lyme disease signification that may impact patients as well as clinicians. human-animal agency is the topic of exploration in the next three essays by anthropologists raphael schwere, marius palz, and nafsika papacharalampous. raphael schwere takes us to circular and roofless camel enclosures in somaliland, called xero, where he examines embodied and socially embedded knowledge distributed between humans and animals, in cooperative human-camel relationships. schwere demonstrates that human and non-human animals, along with their inanimate environment, are part of and result from their mutual interference, with such changes generated by them transforming skilled practices. schwere relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ finding agency in nonhumans 11 shows that human-camel cooperative tasks include nonhuman agency. to ensure cooperation, there must be human-camel sociality and intersubjectivity, with the two being able to understand and respond to one another. cooperation is also based on empathetically acknowledging the will, as well as facilitating or not preventing the counterpart’s powers or agency. to lead and drive camels and be a human herder, the cooperating partner must be able to respond, enable, and be committed. thus, it involves distributed skills in which humans’ and nonhumans’ skills become merged in this practice by complementing one another. in a similar direction, but with a more absent protagonist, strides marius palz, where he describes an ongoing conflict between the american military presence in okinawa in southern japan and the anti-military protest movement. palz explores the risk of the regional extinction of dugongs that has significantly impacted social action. palz examines whether agency can be identified in such processes of loss in addition to how they affect humans and nonhuman life forms, as well as whether agency is only in the hands of humans and how humans perceive extinction events or whether nonhuman beings including the last of a type of species might also be responsible. taking kohn’s semiotics as a theoretical departure point, palz states that all human beings are selves and are “waypoints in a semiotic process” (kohn 2013), thus applying agency through how we interpret the world. therefore, following kohn, symbolic representation is only human. the existence of dugongs is evident in the recorded dugong calls that can be heard when there is no construction in the oura and henoko bays. although the effect of such new signs on the conflict is not yet clear, the dugongs’ agency in life’s semiotic process and their effect on human forms of cultural expression are undeniable. palz emphasizes that further research must be conducted in various fields such as cultural anthropology, classical biology, and multispecies ethnography for better understanding of nonhuman agency in terms of multispecies entanglements, how they affect legal struggles, as well as local identities of resistance. papacharalampous examines islanders’ relationship with “skrei” (norwegian codfish) to gain an in-depth comprehension of its agency, significance, and function in the lofoten islands in terms of feelings of identity-making and belonging. for this, papacharalampous emphasizes histories, cultural imaginaries, and the revival of traditions of skrei fishing, processing, and cooking. this enables her to answer the question of the implications of such meaningful entanglements in terms of the nature of nonhumans’ agency by focusing her theoretical and methodological framework on multispecies ethnography, rather than classic ethnogrelations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ anne aronsson fynn holm melissa kaul 12 raphies and interpretations. thus, she does not regard skrei as a mere food item to be consumed by humans but as something with cultural and symbolic value ingrained in history as well as the islanders’ lives. examining skrei and its resultant feeling of belonging to understand skrei’s agency, papacharalampous compares it with kohn’s notion of agency being intentional and a force using past learnings for establishing futures, questioning whether humans assign agency to “skrei” through linguistic agency in terms of how humans refer to the fish. assessing skrei, and determining its symbolic, economic, and political life and agency, shows that the islanders can interact meaningfully with the fish, thus decentering human agency and making the idea of identity-making and cuisine a multispecies complexity. in the final paper, animal agency is evaluated with a focus on literary animals through thalia field’s experimental animals: a reality fiction (2016) by shannon lambert in an examination of the allocation of agency in terms of literature. field wrote this book partially as a witness testimony that presents a collective statement through a trans-historical trial, transporting readers decades into the past. the book highlights experimentation on animals and critically examines how contemporary biomedicine has been developed. as a result of focusing on field’s text, lambert seeks to explore how literature and its narrative structure might offer a way of encouraging readers to bear witness to and care about nonhuman suffering. the author achieves this by bringing the animal body back into the focus of the reader, thereby creating a state of “seeing feelingly”, where points of connection and moments of reciprocity appear, henceforth conceiving animals no longer as objects of human gaze, but, instead, agents of the description. field’s book combines literature with science and uses both perspectives to examine the concept of nonhuman animal agency. a comprehensive elucidation of the deliberate and moral structuring devices that authors have used to promote “transspecies alliances” can help improve understanding of the contextualization of nonhuman animal agency in specific social sets including cultural, social, disciplinary, and historical structures and practices. thus, the animal remains a mere shell for human consciousness to pass through, as lambert shows how ethically problematic scientific experimentation tends to take away from animals the agency to respond. in conclusion, a new genre of writing and a new mode of research have come to the fore in the social sciences and humanities. multispecies ethnography is a platform for such interdisciplinary dialogue, as it encourages scholars to ask what happens when humans and their interspecies, multispecies, and quasi-species – for example, nonhuman animals, bacterelations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ finding agency in nonhumans 13 ria, and social robots – become increasingly and intricately entangled in our daily lives, as our mode of being is dependent on complex entanglements with animals, ecosystems, and technology. in other words, where the classical ethnographer reduces “others to their own concepts, the philosophical approach of thought – and the human – in motion seeks to find out if, today, other possibilities of thinking the human exist or are coming into existence, possibilities that in their conceptual specificity escape the conceptual grid of our already established ways of thinking and knowing things human, that undermine their self-evidence and thereby open up new spaces of being” (rees 2018, chapter 1, para. 36). termed as “emergent” by anthropologist eduardo kohn, this is the level at which humans and nonhumans form a cognizance about one another and create methods of relating before the typical categorization and communication processes that are ingrained in linguistically and historically contingent frameworks (descola 2014). human and nonhuman instances, or entanglements of both, transcend the categories that have grounded anthropology, history, and literary studies thus far and with this special issue we aim to contribute to the discourse that examines the emergence of new concepts to push beyond anthropocentrism – in our case, our goal is to examine through nonhuman agency the ways in which their emergence has reconfigured the real is mutating over time. in line with this, through our approach of conceptualizing different forms of nonhuman agency, we aim to contribute to the discussion that asks what it would take to learn to think about humans from the perspective of the borrelia burgdorferi bacteria. what concepts would one have to devise to achieve this? what understandings of humans would an anthropology of social robots allow for? or an anthropology of dugongs, of camels, or of experimental animals? as we grapple with these topics, the papers in this special issue aim to contribute to the discourse of nonhuman agency. acknowledgements this special issue is based on two international workshops held at the university of zurich (uzh) in june and december of 2020. we received generous funding from the uzh graduate campus and from the scientific exchange programme of the swiss national science foundation. we would like to express our gratitude to our experts aike p. rots, claudia paganini, and radhika govindrajan. moreover, we would like to thank marco motta, maike reidinger, marcela hernández, and heeral chhabra. relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ anne aronsson fynn holm melissa kaul 14 references bertolesi, lorenzo. 2017. “victims and responsibility. restorative justice: a new path for justice towards non-human animals?”. relations. beyond anthropocentrism 5 (2): 111-124. bruers, stijn. 2015. “the predation and procreation problems: persistent intuitions gone wild”. relations. beyond anthropocentrism 3 (1): 85-91. das, veena. 2013. “being together with animals: death, violence and noncruelty in hindu imagination”. in living beings: perspectives on interspecies engagements, edited by penelope dransart, 1-16. london: bloomsbury. descola, philippe. 2014. “all too human (still): a common on eduardo kohn’s how forests think”. journal of ethnographic theory 4 (2): 267-273. field, thalia. 2016. experimental animals (a reality fiction). new york: solid objects. govindrajan, radhika. 2018. animal intimacies: interspecies relatedness in india’s central himalayas. chicago: university of chicago press. haraway, donna. 2014. “speculative fabulations for technoculture’s generations: taking care of unexpected country”. in the multispecies salon, edited by eben kirksey, 242-262. london: duke university press. helmreich, stefan. 2011. “what was life: answers from three limit biologies”. critical inquiry 37 (4): 671-696. kirksey, eben, and stefan helmreich. 2010. “the emergence of multispecies ethnography”. cultural anthropology 25 (4): 545-576. kohn, eduardo. 2007. “how dogs dream: amazonian natures and the politics of transspecies engagement”. american ethnologist 34 (1): 3-24. kohn, eduardo. 2013. how forests think: toward an anthropology beyond the human. berkeley: university of california press. oppermann, serpil. 2016. “from posthumanism to posthuman ecocriticim”. relations. beyond anthropocentrism 4 (1): 23-37. rees, tobias. 2018. after ethnos. durham: duke university press. tonutti, sabrina. 2013. “on others’ emotions, and ours: a reflection on narratives, categories, and heuristic devices”. relations. beyond anthropocentrism 1 (2): 9-22. tsing, anna lowenhaupt. 2012. “unruly edges: mushrooms as companion species”. environmental humanities 1 (1): 141-154. relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ mind the gap! musicians challenging limits of birdsong knowledge mind the gap! musicians challenging limits of birdsong knowledge susanne heiter berlin university of the arts, department of musicology doi: 10.7358/rela-2014-001-heit susanneheiter@hotmail.com abstract when contemporary musicians work with animal sounds, they are often not only interested in the sound qualities but moreover in the animals’ musical capacities. in the works by wolfgang müller and david rothenberg discussed in this text, distinct abilities of singing birds are demonstrated. beyond the established knowledge about birdsong, the musicians propose a hitherto unthinkable participation of birds in cultural activities. these propositions become possible by a reflection of current scientific knowledge and its limitations. the artists explore a room of speculation set between references to scientific facts on the one hand and gaps in this knowledge on the other hand. this setup is constructed by individual arrangements that include not only genuinely musical parts, like sound or scores, but also paratextual elements like a booklet text or chapters of books which they published separately. in a first part these settings are described, to show how by interdependence of the various parts hypotheses emerge on specific musical capacities of the respective birds. the second part shows how these hypotheses are legitimated at paratextual levels by references to scientific and common knowledge. thus a more general mechanism is elaborated concerning the fruitful utilisation of areas of uncertainty by artists in opposition to the interests of science. keywords: wolfgang müller, david rothenberg, kurt schwitters, birdsong, starlings, albert’s lyrebird, interspecies music, musical capacities, art and science, scientific knowledge. 1. from composition to hypothesis 1.1. wolfgang müller hausmusik. stare aus hjertøya singen kurt schwitters was published by wolfgang müller as a catalogue for an exhibition in berlin in septemhttp://www.ledonline.it/relations/ susanne heiter 80 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ber of 2000 (müller 2000) 1. it consists of two parts, a cd with birdsong recordings (which simply sound like any twitter to the untrained ear) and secondly, a din a5 booklet containing photos of details of a tiny derelict wooden hut and a letter describing the origin of the recording. dated june  11th, 1997, müller reports from a visit on the norwegian island of hjertøya, where kurt schwitters had spent his summer holidays from 1932 onwards. the remainders of the hut schwitters and his wife lived in were still there, though in poor condition. in what follows, müller refers to kurt schwitters’ extensive sound poem, the “ursonate”, that he worked on over a period of 10 years and published in 1932 (schwitters 1922-32). it consists of nonsense syllables arranged according to the basic musical principles of repetition and variation and is composed in a large form similar to a classical sonata. to continue with the letter, müller reports that he had spotted a starling on the hut’s rain gutter and recognized in its song parts of schwitters’ “ursonate”: da hörte ich auf einmal einen star sonderbare laute von sich geben. […] irgendwie kam mir das bekannt vor, was er da von sich gab. ja, mit einem mal erkannte ich, dass der vogel passagen der ursonate rezitierte, die ein unbekannter und entfernter vorfahr vor vielen jahren schwitters abgelauscht hatte und die über generationen weiter vermittelt wurden. stare sind ja bekanntlich meister der imitation […]. sie lernen den gesang von ihren eltern (oder teile des gesangs). hier also waren passagen der originalen ursonate unbemerkt vom kunstbetrieb überliefert worden. (müller 2000) 2 by framing the birdsong recording both with this report and with the photos of the hut, müller states hypothetically that the starlings were singing the “ursonate”. this hypothesis implies in particular that starlings can imitate human sounds, incorporate these phrases into their song repertoire and propagate these over generations without major changes. 1.2. david rothenberg david rothenberg’s œuvre both as an author and musician revolves to a large extend around animals and animal sounds. he has published several 1 for a detailed analysis see heiter 2012. 2 “all of a sudden i heard a starling uttering strange sounds. […] somehow these sounds had a familiar ring. suddenly i realized that the bird was reciting parts of the ursonate which some unknown ancestor had picked up from schwitters long ago and transmitted over generations. starlings are known to be masters of imitation […]. they learn the song from their parents (or parts of the song). here, parts of the original ursonate had been transmitted without notice by the world of art”. mind the gap! 81 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ cds and books, and he regularly performs in concerts and gives talks and interviews in public media and at academic conferences. i will focus here on one special encounter he had with a particular australian bird of the species albert’s lyrebird, named george. the recording of this encounter is published on the cd why birds sing as track 6, “sheer frustration, really” (rothenberg 2005a). the track starts with a kind of “rainforest” soundscape. an insect humming is to be heard and several bird vocalisations of differing qualities are recognisable though it is not clear whether this is one bird or several. after eleven seconds, the clarinet joins in with a motif consisting of a downwards octave leap in a syncopated rhythm which is then repeated and extended with the notes of a diminished triad; sometimes trills are interspersed, and sometimes passing and neighboring notes are added. the clarinet motifs follow in a loose succession with some longer pauses indicating a phase of listening to the bird sounds by the clarinet player. sometimes the clarinet takes up notes from the bird, though the bird sounds are often more noiselike than melody-like, whereas the clarinet is clearly melodic. often the clarinet motifs are surrounded by bird sounds. thus, a compound soundscape emerges, but explicit correlations between the bird sounds and the human part are hardly discernible. the booklet designates as performers: “george, a wild albert’s lyrebird”, “dr, clarinet” and “a few green catbirds in the background (not to be confused with george imitating the catbird, which you will also hear)”, “recorded live in the lamington national park, australia, june 2004”. two australian lyrebird species are described in the short booklet text, and the encounter is commented on as follows: michael pestl and i went to australia to jam with these impressive birds in the height of lyrebird mating season. the experts thought the birds would just fly away, but they were wrong. you see, once a male lyrebird starts to sing for a mate, he just cannot stop. confronted with clarinet and flute, he is bound to join in. (rothenberg 2005a) through the juxtaposition of a combined human and bird recording and the booklet description, rothenberg implies that george, the albert’s lyrebird, participates in a musical performance and changes his song in response to the clarinet. by interpreting the recording as a product of a jam session (“jam with these birds”), rothenberg ascribes a genuinely human activity to george, and thus he implicitly ascribes to him the musical capacities that are necessary to exert this activity: “jamming” would include an active participation of the bird, listening to the other’s music, reacting musically and being capable of consciously controlling his sound production under susanne heiter 82 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ aesthetic considerations. rothenberg does not expound on these capacities, and it is left to the recipient to ponder how far one could go in terms of inferring “consciousness” or “aesthetic considerations”. 2. legitimations both müller and rothenberg try to support their hypotheses through commentaries on several levels both in the works described and in later texts that refer to scientific and common knowledge concerning birdsong. thus, a discourse on the interpretation of their own works is initiated. 2.1. wolfgang müller the first layer of müller’s commentaries is contained in the catalogue itself. in the letter addressed to “úlfur”, a pseudonym created by müller in 1995 (müller 2013), he justifies his proposition that “starlings are singing parts of the ‘ursonate’” by references to general knowledge about starlings: “stare sind ja bekanntlich meister der imitation […]. sie lernen den gesang von ihren eltern” (müller 2000) 3. furthermore, müller reports in a later source that he had invited an ornithologist, prof. dr. jörg böhner from the freie universität berlin, to talk at the exhibition opening about the scientific possibility of his hypothesis: anlässlich der eröffnung meiner ausstellung […] hielt er [böhner] eine vielbeachtete rede, in der er als wissenschaftler bestätigen konnte, dass es tatsächlich möglich sei, dass die stare von hjertøya teile und elemente der schwitterschen dichtung aufgenommen und in ihr gesangsrepertoire eingearbeitet hätten. (müller 2007, 65) 4 müller then cites from ongoing communication with jörg böhner, who is quoted both to describe areas of uncertainty and to confirm the possibility of long-term propagation of song elements in a population of starlings: es gebe seines [böhners] wissens leider keine langfristigen untersuchungen darüber, wie sich einzelne gesangsteile über eine lange folge von genera 3 “starlings are known to be masters of imitation […]. they learn the song from their parents”. 4 “on the occasion of the exhibition opening […] he [böhner] gave a well-noted speech, confirming as a scientist that it may really be possible that hjertøya’s starlings had incorporated parts of schwitters’ poem into their song repertoire”. mind the gap! 83 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ tionen entwickelten. […] doch fühlte ich mich letztlich bestätigt, als er mit dem satz schloß: „potentiell möglich ist es aber sicher, dass bestimmte lautäußerungen auch über eine längere generationenfolge nahezu unverändert bzw. für uns wiedererkennbar beibehalten werden“. (2007, 67) 5 another passage cites an anecdote according to which kurt schwitters trained his poems outdoors, supporting the proposition with the argument that hjertøya’s starlings could really have had the possibility to listen to kurt schwitters: berichte über schwitters’ begeisterung für das rezitieren im freien verstärkten meine vermutung. eine solche situation beschreibt etwa der eng mit ihm befreundete dadaist hans arp: „in der krone einer alten kiefer am strande von wyk auf föhr hörte ich schwitters jeden morgen seine lautsonate üben. er zischte, sauste, zirpte, flötete, gurrte, buchstabierte“. (müller 2007, 63) 6 schwitters himself wrote that a notation of the “ursonate” could only be fragmentary. he preferred listening to the sonata rather than reading it, and that is why he willingly performed the sonata in public (lach [1973] 1998, 313). finally, the photos of schwitters’ hut on hjertøya, which constitute large parts of the catalogue, can be read as a commentary in their own right. in opposing the lore of the “ursonate” – depicted on the cd – with that of schwitters’ hut on hjertøya – illustrated by the photos – müller sets two systems of transmission side by side: on the one hand there is the oral, continuously self-renewing transmission within the birds’ population – regardless of the subject; and on the other hand there is the human transmission of acknowledged works of art, and it has failed concerning the hut, which has not yet been recognised as a merzbau and was left to decay instead of a thorough preservation 7. furthermore, the “ursonate”, which 5 “as far as he [böhner] knew, there were no long-term investigations concerning the propagation of song elements over many generations. […] in the end i felt reassured when he closed with the words: ‘it may certainly be possible that certain song elements may be propagated over generations with only minor changes and be recognizable to us’”. 6 “reports concerning schwitters’ enthusiasm for outdoor recitations reassured me. such a situation is described for instance by his close friend, dadaist hans arp: ‘in the crown of an old pine at the shore of wyk on föhr i heard schwitters practice his lautsonate every morning. he fizzled, whizzed, chirped, piped, cooed and spelled’”. the original arp-citation could not be verified. 7 schwitters transformed his flat in hanover as a whole into a work of art where he still lived in and which has come to be known as “merzbau”. he later referred to it as his “lebenswerk” (“life work”). after his emigration he built a second and third one in norway and england, respectively (webster 2007). since the publication of müller’s catalogue the hut on hjertøya has attracted some attention. it has been referred to susanne heiter 84 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ has been transmitted continuously by the birds, was long forgotten, and a recording by kurt schwitters himself was rediscovered only in the 1990s (summarised in heiter 2012, 149). by this juxtaposition, müller raises the question which system of transmission should be preferred both in terms of accuracy and in terms of reliability. again müller puts an expert into place, art historian thomas groetz: in his essay, which is included in the catalogue, he highlights the more reliable form of tradition ensured by the starlings (müller 2000). 2.2. david rothenberg in the booklet of rothenberg’s cd, why birds sing, there is a hint to his corresponding book: “read the companion book why birds sing […] to learn what all those song titles mean” (rothenberg 2005a). the story of the encounter with george, the albert’s lyrebird, is told in the final chapter of this book, entitled “becoming a bird” (rothenberg 2005b, 209-29). rothenberg reports on his visit to australia with flutist michael pestl, where they met ornithologist sydney curtis, who would guide them to george, the only member of his wary, elusive species who can stomach the sight and sound of human beings. […] george […] has been studied in the wild by two men […] for twenty-five years and has learned to tolerate all sorts of strange recording and filming equipment. (rothenberg 2005b, 209) those two men, as the reader learns elsewhere (rothenberg 2005b, 211, 226), are sydney curtis and photographer glen threlfo, who also accompanies the group. the complex song of the albert’s lyrebird is described in an earlier chapter as being composed of “imitations of many of the other birds that share his home”. it takes “an albert’s lyrebird at least six years to successfully learn this song” (rothenberg 2005b, 31-2). in lamington national park in queensland, the group finally reached george’s territory and george appeared: “then, just as syd predicted, after about fifteen minutes george descends from the trees. he finds one of his branch platforms to begin his albert cycle of mimicked songs” (rothenberg 2005b, 212). the song is described in onomatopoetic syllables: “first, as “merzbau” in schwitters’ catalogue raisonné (orchard and schulz 2003, 391-3) and there are plans for a preservation of the remainings of the hut in the romsdal museum in molde, norway, as announced on the homepage, http://www.hok.no/kurtschwitters.4819348-30477.html. accessed march 21, 2013. mind the gap! 85 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ a sneep of the crimson rosella parrot, then the plink chee chee chee chee of the tiny yellow robin […]” (rothenberg 2005b, 212). after listening for a while, “it is time for the humans to come in” (rothenberg 2005b, 220). in the following narration, rothenberg tries to convince the reader of the authenticity of his musical interaction in three steps. first, he describes the exciting moment when he thinks he experiences a real musical encounter blended with a reflection upon the (supposed) feelings of the players: boo. toot. pe-bum, brealummph! our music does not proceed in such strange words but with melodies that are birdlike only by association. george at first is puzzled with the strange sounds. he pauses his concert for just a half second, but not much longer. “what are these strange foreign sounds getting in my way?” he might be thinking. […] i concentrate on the power of a single tone, high b. ping. ping. some tiny forest bird above matches it. george cannot stop, but he can change his song – in the smallest, subtle ways in response to what he hears. this is far more than we expected. […] i cannot resist playing along. my single notes soon extrapolate to phrases, jumps up and down. imitations of imitations, mimicry of the mimic. i know, as usual, i’m playing too much to earn a place in this forest. i try to learn from the proportions of george’s music – to quiet down, to hone my style. (rothenberg 2005b, 220-1) secondly, he is accompanied by “experts”, whose expertise is explicitly founded, to confirm the bird’s deviant behavior: in australia it is sydney curtis, “the greatest living expert on lyrebird song” (rothenberg 2005b, 198), who had already guided olivier messiaen to listen to a lyrebird (rothenberg 2005b, 198-200; see also curtis and taylor 2010). curtis knows this special bird very well and rothenberg cites him: “i do believe you’re getting to him”, muses syd, listening closely to our proceedings, […] “i’ve been recording george for twenty years and his song is different today. […] he begins his cycle over and over, but seems unable to finish it. never done that before. either he’s changing the elements of his routine or you two strange foreign birds are doing something to his demeanor”. (rothenberg 2005b, 225-6) 8 8 in an e-mail message to hollis taylor on september 22, 2009, kindly submitted to the author by hollis taylor on july 20, 2012, sydney curtis recalled his view on the encounter: “i find no evidence of george producing any notes that are not part of his normal repertoire. on balance i incline to the view that the intrusion of the totally new clarinet sounds may have confused george enough to sometimes upset his stereotyped mimicry order, but that there is no evidence of his deliberately responding to them” (curtis 2009). susanne heiter 86 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ finally, in a seemingly more scientific approach, he analyses his “birdhuman duets” supported by sonograms to depict the assumed interaction. the climax of the narration, “i am trying to play in and around george, the one albert’s lyrebird willing to face human music on his own ground” is illustrated by a sonogram analysis of george and rothenberg playing together, entitled “interspecies music at last” (rothenberg 2005b, 225). the sonogram shows the last part of an episode of approximately 20  seconds, corresponding to the section at 03.44-04.08 of track 6 of the cd. the clarinet starts with the already familiar figure of a filled minor third and extensions of this motif and then passes into a descending chromatic scale – which rothenberg describes in the book as “[m]y own chromatic slightly speeding-up version of his descending territorial song ending in an octave leap” (rothenberg 2005b, 225). immediately following is the section depicted in the sonogram, where the bird starts with two notes which the clarinet takes over with close pitch approximation. the clarinet repeats the notes several times and is surrounded by rapidly gliding sounds of the bird. however, the sonogram, which only shows the bird and the clarinet singing and playing simultaneously without any distinct structural relation, is not explained in detail. moreover, the analytical parts (axis descriptions, context of the song, etc.) are omitted, leaving only the picturesque, aesthetic part. thus, the figure points towards the possibility of scientific objectivity in (bird)song analysis without executing it itself. rothenberg himself emphasises the aesthetic value of sonograms elsewhere in the book: “there are many sonograms in the pages that follow, not because i expect you to decipher them, but mostly because i find them to be quite beautiful” (rothenberg 2005b, 214). still, in the context of the encounter with george the sonogram is part of the argument trying to convince the reader of “interspecies music at last”. consequentially, the sonogram is placed directly beneath the above citation of syd curtis (“i do believe you’re getting to him”). but the evidence is not achieved by analytical argument, but by aesthetic inference: the beauty of the figure – and not its scientific correctness – establishes the supposed truthfulness of the encounter. this resembles the well-known argument formulated amongst others by john keats: “beauty is truth, truth beauty” ([1819, 1939] 1958, 262). an additional level of commentary can be identified within the book’s aim to summarise research results concerning bird song from scientific publications as well as personal communication with various researchers. rothenberg depicts many studies about birdsong in detail, illustrating the richness and variety of birdsong and the capabilities of birds, for example, mind the gap! 87 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ in terms of song learning and imitation. finally, inserted into the narration of the encounter with george he recalls the studies of several experts that have been described earlier in the book (rothenberg 2005b, 214), among them for example peter marler, who has been introduced as “probably the greatest bird song scientist alive today”, “at the university of california at davis” (rothenberg 2005b, 60). however, rothenberg often also points to the limits of scientific research, especially concerning the question of the functions of birdsong. his main case is that birdsong is sometimes more beautiful than necessary, thus provoking the argument that its function encompasses more than the biological necessities of mating and territorial defense. such limitations are acknowledged even by academically legitimated experts, like donald kroodsma, who is introduced as “recently retired from the university of massachusetts at amherst, […] one of the world experts on the complexity of bird song” (rothenberg 2005b, 105): “kroodsma admits that after forty years of serious work on birdsongs, we know very little about why some of them are so enigmatic and complex. ‘we still don’t know why the mocking bird mocks’” (rothenberg 2005b, 105). likewise, the question of “joy” cannot be satisfactorily answered, as “peter marler muses, ‘birds are driven […]. is that drive something like an emotion […]? we tend to assume a bird is being joyful. this may or may not be true’” (rothenberg 2005b, 97). 3. conclusion – a general model? at first glance, wolfgang müller’s and david rothenberg’s works are considerably different in texture and intention. while the provoking and hypothetical character of müller’s hausmusik is obvious and the special meaning of the bird recording only emerges in the context of the catalogue, rothenberg’s music may stand on its own as a piece composed of human and bird sound, whereas the paratexts of both his booklet and book evoke an additional level of interpretation. furthermore, rothenberg’s “interspecies music” seems more convincing, as the task demanded from the birds is less challenging; rothenberg’s birds “just” have to sing along; they don’t even have to do it consciously or really react to his music. on a basic level, it is sufficient if they inspire rothenberg to play a new, different kind of music himself (“our songs will never be the same again” is the concluding remark in the booklet). müller’s birds, on the other hand, have to articulate a highly evolved human composition, which is much less likely. susanne heiter 88 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ however, both works share the provocative character suggesting a hypothesis that ascribes capacities to animals that at the moment are not generally accepted and not scientifically proven. closer analysis has shown that both artists employ a similar mechanism – they investigate the current field of knowledge about birdsong and find both established facts and unsolved questions. these are two mandatory conditions to open up a room for speculation which can be filled by the artists’ hypotheses. these are legitimated by citing experts, who are themselves legitimated by academic affiliation or special experience, to confirm both the established facts and the grey areas of uncertainty. the mechanism identified in these two examples may serve as a more general model how artists and scientists deal differently with the limits of knowledge in the current debate on aesthetic capacities of animals. a complementary interest can be found. whereas scientists aim at closing the gaps of knowledge thoroughly, artists depend on unsolved questions, as these offer space that can be playfully filled with new, provoking propositions. if wolfgang müller for example suggests that starlings are singing kurt schwitters’ “ursonate”, he questions the superiority of man in the performance of composed music, and if david rothenberg lets the birds participate in a creative act, a jam session, he is actually suggesting the possibility of communication with birds by music. references curtis, sydney. 2009. e-mail to hollis taylor, september 22, 2009. curtis, syndey, and hollis taylor. 2010. “olivier messiaen and the albert’s lyrebird: from tambourine mountain to ‘éclairs sur l’au-delà’”. in olivier messiaen: the centenary papers, edited by judith crispin, 52-79. newcastle upon tyne: cambridge scholars publishing. heiter, susanne. 2012. “hjertøyas stare, schwitters’ erben. ein rezeptionsdilemma”. in tierstudien 01: animalität und ästhetik, edited by jessica ullrich, 139-51. berlin: neofelis. keats, john. (1819, 1939) 1958. “ode on a grecian urn”. in the poetical works of john keats, edited by heathcote william garrod, 260-2. oxford: oxford university press. lach, friedhelm, ed. (1973) 1998. kurt schwitters. die literarischen werke, 1. köln: dumont. müller, wolfgang. 2000. hausmusik. stare aus hjertøya singen kurt schwitters. berlin: wolfgang müller and galerie katze 5 röske & schumacher gbr. 2007. “wie schwitters ‘ursonate’ nach island kam”. in id., neues von der elfenfront. die wahrheit über island, 58-68. frankfurt/m: suhrkamp. mind the gap! 89 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 2013. “biography”. wolfgang müller website. last modified february, 2011. accessed may 2, 2013. http://www.wolfgangmueller.net. orchard, karin, and isabel schulz, eds., with the sprengel-museum hanover. 2003. kurt schwitters: catalogue raisonné. ostfildern ruit: hatje cantz. rothenberg, david. 2005a. why birds sing. terra nova music tn 0501. cd, booklet. 2005b. why birds sing. a journey into the mystery of bird song. new york: basic books. schwitters, kurt. 1922-32. “ursonate”. in kurt schwitters. die literarischen werke, 1, edited by friedhelm lach, 214-42. köln: dumont, (1973) 1998. originally published as merz 24. hannover, 1932. webster, gwendolen. 2007. “the reception of the merzbau”. paper presented at the symposium kurt schwitters and the avant-garde, sprengel museum hannover, june 29 july 1, 2007. last modified july, 2007. accessed may 2, 2013. http:// www.sprengel-museum.com/the_kurt_schwitters_archive/symposium_2007/ index.htm. a welfare state for elephants? a case study of compassionate stewardship a welfare state for elephants? a case study of compassionate stewardship david pearce independent researcher doi: 10.7358/rela-2015-002-pear dave@knightsbridge.net abstract technological advances over the next few decades will mean that every cubic meter of the planet will be computationally accessible to surveillance, micromanagement and control. such unprecedented power places an immense burden of responsibility on the planet’s cognitively dominant species – homo sapiens. status quo bias equates the natural with the morally good; yet the immense burden of suffering in nature calls this intuition into question. human and non-human animals typically flourish best when free-living rather than incarcerated or wild. this paper presents a costed case study of compassionate stewardship of an entire species of free-living non-human animals. the successful construction of an elephant welfare state would be a key historical milestone on the road to a compassionately run global ecosystem. keywords: elephants, natural harms, compassionate stewardship, intervention in nature, neonatal care, healthcare, nutritional support, speciesism, suffering, wild animals. 1. introduction 1.1. high-tech jainism? within the next few decades, the exponential growth of computer power will ensure every cubic metre of the planet is computationally accessible to remote monitoring, micro-management and control. harnessed to biotechnology and nanorobotics, this growth in surveillance and control capabilities presents huge risks and huge opportunities. in a dystopian vein, such technologies lend themselves to advanced war-fighting, or they could be used to sustain an orwellian dictatorship. alternatively, such technologies could deliver compassionate stewardship of the entire living world. mailto:dave@knightsbridge.net http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 david pearce 154 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ high-tech jainism 1 of the kind needed to safeguard the interests of smaller mammals, let alone the well-being of marine vertebrates and (ultimately) members of other phyla, is still decades away. the crispr revolution in genome editing, for example, is only a few years old (esvelt, church, and lunshof 2014). nanotechnology, and in particular nanorobotics, is still in its infancy. nevertheless, the obstacles to a cruelty-free world are not merely technical. even as the technologies of intervention become cheaper and readily available, human status quo bias (bostrom and ord 2006) may postpone implementation of a compassionate biology indefinitely. the ideology of conservation biology is deeply entrenched. so ambitious germline interventions to “reprogram” traditional predator species (pearce 2009), orchestrate pan-species fertility regulation, and guarantee the well-being of all sentience in our forward light-cone are probably not on the horizon for a century or more. yet this sort of timescale does not mean discussions on ethical intervention or stewardship are just idle philosophising. on the contrary, some forms of compassionate stewardship are technically feasible right now. many of the worst and most morally urgent cases of wild animal suffering are the most accessible to intervention, and also the least expensive to remedy. 1.2. why elephants? launching our compassionate stewardship of the living world with free-living elephants might seem an arbitrary choice of species. however, there are good reasons to choose elephants for a feasibility study. from a moral point of view, elephants are a prime candidate. with a brain weighing just over five kilograms, the african elephant has the largest brain of any terrestrial vertebrate. on some fairly modest assumptions, elephants are among the most sentient nonhuman animals. moreover, all the technologies necessary for a comprehensive elephant healthcare program are available, in principle if not yet in practice. nothing speculative or even especially futuristic in the way of high technology need be invoked to lay out the foundations of an elephant welfare state, although software tools for efficient remote monitoring and tele-diagnostics need further development. admittedly, free-living elephants offer a comparatively easy example of compassionate 1 jains aim never to harm another sentient being by word or deed. they are famous for sweeping the ground before them so that they do not inadvertently tread on insects. the term “high-tech jainism” is intended to convey an analogous (secular) ethic practised towards all sentient beings through the use of modern technology. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 a welfare state for elephants? 155 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ species care. elephants are large, long-lived, charismatic and herbivorous. no seemingly irreconcilable interests are involved (e.g. lions versus zebras) in safeguarding their interests because mature elephants typically have no natural predators besides homo sapiens. indeed, the limiting factor on elephant population size in the absence of human predation or artificial fertility regulation is inadequate nutrition. nevertheless, lions and hyenas will sometimes attack and eat alive juvenile, sick and injured elephants – the kind of horror that compassionate stewardship of nature could prevent. 2. are cared-for elephants really free-living? some critics of any blueprint for elephant welfare safety-net will contend that elephants who receive healthcare, food aid and emergency relief would no longer be “free-living”. this is not the place to explore the metaphysics of freedom, nor to enter human left-right political debate. elephants are not economic actors – even if the expression “welfare state” gives libertarians cause for alarm. in this context “welfare state” is politically neutral. moreover, if intelligently run, crisis-interventions in time of drought need not give rise to an elephant “dependency culture” – this is not, after all, feeding time at the zoo. other critics will undoubtedly allege that elephants whom humans have assisted or saved from harm are no longer truly “wild” or “natural”. nevertheless, humans who wear clothes or who take medicine are not thereby less human or somehow diminished compared to their “wild” conspecifics. likewise elephants. some animal advocates may claim that the use of immunocontraception in over-populated wildlife parks violates the presumed right of nonhuman animals to procreative freedom. it may also be claimed that intimate or remote monitoring as canvassed here violates the supposed right of nonhuman animals to privacy. yet worries about privacy breaches, in particular, are an unwarranted anthropomorphic projection on our part. the alternative to fertility control is witnessing one’s calf slowly starve to death in a degraded habitat, or the brutal practice of “culling” (i.e. massacring whole elephant families) to prevent ecological devastation (aarde, whyte, and pimm 1999). nevertheless, even if it were the case that elephants did experience some loss of freedom due to human intervention, the suffering they would otherwise endure is far worse. the loss of a calf or a child, or of a matriarch or a mother, is traumatic for elephants and humans alike (bradshaw 2004). http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 david pearce 156 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 3. the costs of intervention what would be the financial cost at contemporary prices of cradle-to-thegrave healthcare and welfare provision for the entire population of freeliving african elephants? the elephant population of the african continent currently stands at around 500,000 (wwf 2015). elephant taxonomy is currently in flux, but the half-million figure includes what is commonly known as the savannah (or bush) elephant, loxodonta africana, and the forest species of elephant, loxodonta cyclotis. an annual cost of somewhere between two and three billion dollars seems plausible. similarly, most of the same challenges and opportunities arise for securing the well-being of the asian elephant, elephas maximus – an estimated of whom 40,000 are left in the wild (wwf 2015). so the type of program sketched out below could also be implemented in south-east asia, at a fraction of the price. most human healthcare expenses are incurred in the last six months, and often the last six weeks, of life (alemayehu and warner 2004). in the case of elephants, we simply do not know the upper bounds to life-expectancy, given adequate late-life dentition. assuming effective orthodontic care, this particular challenge – i.e. managing the age-related infirmities of free-living geriatric elephants – will (presumably) be decades away from the launch of an orthodontic healthcare service. after being gps chipped, vaccinated and (where necessary) provided with immunocontraception, most free-living elephants could be remotely monitored, but otherwise largely left in peace – apart from during years of severe drought and famine, when costly crisis-interventions will be necessary. to flourish, free-living elephants need a habitat that offers fresh water, some available shade, plentiful vegetation for grazing and browsing. a mature african bush elephant typically ingests over 200 kilograms of vegetable matter daily (tchamba and seme 1993). therefore, the elephant emergency equivalent of humanitarian daily rations will be quite bulky. when needed, the cost of providing additional vaccinations, vitamin and mineral supplements, painkillers, anti-inflammatories, parasiticides, sedatives and anaesthetics, antibiotics, antifungals and antivirals, disinfectants and cleaning agents will not be negligible; but the relevant agents are almost all off-patent. training and labour costs of ancillary support staff in sub-saharan africa are comparatively low and likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. close, politically sensitive collaboration with the local human populations will be vital to the long-term success of the project. elephant healthcare work could provide valuable employment, though some forms of expertise could be delivered only by specialist veterinarians. finally, an air-ambulance service would incur significant transport costs. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 a welfare state for elephants? 157 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 3.1. immunocontraception ivory poaching and habitat destruction have dramatically reduced unprotected elephant populations over the course of the past 200 years (red list 2014). however, in favourable conditions elephant populations may increase at four to five percent per year (ibid.). inevitably, such growth is ecologically unsustainable. in the long run, humans will have to choose the overall level and demographic profile of elephant populations in our wildlife parks, or otherwise let nature (i.e. famine and malnutrition-related deaths) take its course. the victims of “natural” disasters will mainly be the young, the sick and the old. as with tomorrow’s humans, advances in behavioural genetics and reproductive technologies will shortly allow use of preimplantation genetic screening to choose everything from pain thresholds – cf. variant pain-modulating alleles of the scn9a gene (reimann et al. 2010) – to susceptibility to depression – cf. the role of the comt  gene and serotonin transporter 5-httlpr gene (wichers et al. 2008) – to personality variables. or alternatively, policy makers may opt to perpetuate the traditional genetic roulette of sexual reproduction. once again, political and moral choices will be unavoidable. 3.2. neonatal care provision of prenatal elephant care is potentially expensive. elephants typically give birth to one calf, less than one percent of births involving twins. however, one and often both calves usually die within weeks or months of birth (mumby et al. 2013a). intervention here will be needed to ensure a favourable outcome. an elephant calf’s first year of life is their most hazardous. immediately after birth, the young calf is most vulnerable to predation by lions, hunting dogs and hyenas. in the face of potential predators, the calf’s mother will vigorously defend her new-born. unfortunately, the calf may not always be able to keep in the secure position under her mother’s abdomen. moreover, the calf will still be vulnerable to predators for some years to come. after six months or so, the youngster starts to move further from their mother. if potential predators are near, she is at risk of being left behind if the herd is disturbed or stampeded (loveridge 2006). causes of juvenile death, though, include not just predation, but also disease, accidents, drought, starvation, nutritional deficiencies, stress, heat stress, drowning, becoming trapped in mud holes, snake bite and congenital malformation. all things considered, mortality rates during the first three years range from below http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 david pearce 158 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 10% to more than 50%, and is liable to increase when ranges are restricted and habitats change, as opportunities for browsing and midday shade become less available (lee and moss 1986). a calf normally continues suckling at least until two years old. after weaning, annual elephant mortality rates decrease to perhaps 5% or 6% until about the age of 50 years only to rise sharply in the sixth decade (carey and gruenfelder 1997). nevertheless, orphaned elephants will need special protection. unaided, orphaned young elephants below the age of two or three years rarely survive in the wild. in a few countries, the basic infrastructure of elephant orphanages is already in place (see, for example, the david sheldrick wildlife trust). such rescue and rehabilitation services just need extension, systematisation and adequate funding. 3.3. injuries, disease prevention and treatment elephants are normally robust and peaceable. however, fights do occur, particularly between bull elephants disputing access to a female in oestrus (de waal and tyack 2009). occasionally, one or both parties may be badly injured in such aggressive encounters. bone fractures will need to be treated by elephant orthopaedic specialists. regarding diseases, some ailments are specific to elephants, notably trunk paralysis and elephant pox, but other afflictions are common to humans and elephants alike, ranging from intestinal colic and constipation to pneumonia. like humans, elephants are susceptible to infection by tuberculosis, mosquito-borne diseases and anthrax, which may be contracted via contaminated water or soil (wildpro 2015). additionally, elephants may even catch the common cold, though this condition is self-limiting. ill elephants often attempt to self-medicate, treating digestive diseases through fasting or consumption of bark, bitter herbs or alkaline earth (wildpro 2015). such limited self-treatment can be complemented by human expertise in scientific medicine. 3.4. elephant orthodontics human depredations aside, the greatest source of mature elephant morbidity and mortality is inadequate nutrition. elephants replace their teeth multiple times. the fifth set of chewing teeth (molars) lasts until the elephant is in his or her early forties. the sixth – and usually final – set must last the elephant the rest of his or her life. as the final set of molars wears away http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 a welfare state for elephants? 159 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ during the late fifties, the elephant is no longer able adequately to chew food. this will cause them to die from the effects of malnutrition or starvation (the scotsman 2004). free-living elephants do not usually live much past sixty years. elderly elephant deaths generally occur during the dry season (dudley et al. 2001). this is because dry food cannot be effectively sheared by the residual smooth grinding surface of the worn-down sixth molar. the weakened and emaciated elephant will eventually collapse. helpless, she may then be eaten alive by scavengers and predators. late-life orthodontics to prevent this fate will be more cost-effective than routine gps tracking or immunocontraception, because the material used for false teeth could last decades without need for replacement. 3.5. drought during drought, deaths normally occur due to starvation, malnutrition, and heat stress, rather than thirst. this is because elephants are reluctant to leave known water-sources to find food. constructing and maintaining artificial waterholes during severe drought will be necessary to prevent such deaths. however, the congregation of herds of undernourished and malnourished elephants at remaining water-holes will make provision of crisis nutritional support easier and cheaper. 3.6. elephant psychiatric care like people, elephants may suffer low mood, anxiety disorders and depression (bradshaw et al. 2005). elephants grieve when they lose a calf or another close family member. psychosis also occurs, but rarely for elephants in their natural habitat, and primarily as consequence of captivity. similarly to humans, incidence of endogenous depression is lower when elephants are living in their natural habitat in small family groups, rather than suffering solitary confinement in captivity. post-traumatic stress disorder in the aftermath of being hunted or natural trauma could potentially be treated with inexpensive anxiolytics, such as beta-blockers. determining the appropriate drug dosage in different treatment regimens still depends on metabolic scaling formulas. such crude procedures are used because comparatively few pharmacokinetic studies have been conducted to provide elephant-specific information. if an ethical discipline of compassionate biology replaces a doctrinaire conservation biology, this relative lack of studies can be remedied. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 david pearce 160 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 3.7. uncertainties for now, financial projections of comprehensive free-living elephant care can depend only on rough and imprecise calculations, rather than on a rigorous methodology. but an estimated annual expense of $2.5 billion for full healthcare and welfare provision for the entire population of free-living african elephants may turn out to be pessimistic. in practice, the great majority of africa’s 500,000 elephant population would need far less than the annual $5,000 per head that this figure allows. neuro-chipping, individual genome sequencing, vaccinations, gps-tracking and (when appropriate) immunocontraception would cost, at most, a few hundred dollars per head. moreover, the first three of these would typically be a one-off expense rather than a regular part of the annual budget. given that chipping is feasible and inexpensive for domesticated dogs in the uk (bbc 2013), it should be no less feasible for free-living elephants. here, chipping could range from simple tagging to more complex remote-monitoring of health status. nevertheless, financial planners will need to bear in mind the potential for cost overruns and unexpected expenses that plague any new enterprise. these may include (unfortunately) the costs of corruption, maladministration and the growth of a welfare bureaucracy – the expense of which are hard to quantify. finally, there is the issue of timescale for complete coverage of africa’s elephant population. perhaps one or two years – but only if an international consensus existed. 4. the speciesist objection 4.1. the objection from the priority of human interests suppose that one accepts that this system of compassionate stewardship is feasible. even then, the seemingly compelling objection can be raised that establishing a system to care for free-living elephants is not a moral priority. millions of humans do not yet enjoy an adequate welfare safety net. also that the cost of an elephant welfare program could be more fruitfully spent promoting human welfare instead. what africa needs is a welfare program for its human population, rather than its elephants. whatever our response to this objection, our answer should not be clouded by arbitrary anthropocentric bias, i.e. speciesism (horta 2010). it http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 a welfare state for elephants? 161 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ is worth stressing that anti-speciesism is not the claim that “all animals are equal”, or that all species are of equivalent value, or that the well-being of a human – or an elephant – is as important as the well-being of a mosquito. rather it is the claim that, other things being equal, all animals, human and nonhuman, of equivalent sentience are of equal value and deserve equal consideration. the anti-speciesist argues that morally what matters in resource allocation is not ethnic group or species membership but sentience. the widely held idea that distinctively human cognitive capacities correlate with a higher degree of sentience lacks scientific support. microelectrode studies of the human brain using awake subjects confirm that the most intense forms of sentience, notably our core limbic emotions, are also the most phylogenetically primitive, whereas the phenomenology associated with such distinctively human cognitive capacities as higher mathematics or generative syntax is also the most subtle and rarefied. indeed, the phenomenology of language-generation is barely accessible to introspection. in addition, abundant evidence suggests that elephants are at least as sentient as human toddlers. elephants can pass the “mirror test”, thereby demonstrating a capacity for reflective self-awareness. the elephant hippocampus is comparatively larger than human hippocampus, presumably a function of an elephant’s prodigious memory. elephants are endowed with an immense, highly convoluted neocortex subserving their complex tactile, visual, acoustic and olfactory communication systems and capacity for empathetic understanding (byrne et al. 2008). they also display sophisticated social cognition (ibid.). more controversially, their comparatively larger limbic systems suggest that elephants may be at least as sentient as adult humans, albeit lacking the logico-mathematical and linguistic prowess of homo sapiens (shoshani et al. 2006). either way, even if, cautiously and conservatively, we judge that elephants are no more sentient than prelinguistic human toddlers, we still have a duty to protect their interests – in the same way that affluent countries have an ethical duty to help vulnerable children in developing nations. 4.2. the objection from the priority of human-inflicted harm a more compelling objection to implementing an elephant care program is that our overriding ethical priority should be ending the suffering for which humans are directly responsible. in this regard, factory-farming is the greatest source of severe and readily avoidable suffering in the world today. most humans are complicit or financially implicated in the nonhuhttp://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 david pearce 162 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ man animal holocaust. even though a pig, for example, is of comparable sentience to a prelinguistic toddler (angier 2009) humans routinely do things to factory-farmed pigs that would earn a life-sentence in prison if our victims were human. certainly, the development and commercialisation of in vitro meat holds the promise of global veganism or invitrotarianism, perhaps later this century 2. in the meantime, though, billions of sentient beings will have been abused and slaughtered to satisfy our taste for their flesh. 5. conclusion for better or worse, humans and their descendants will be responsible for life on earth for the indefinite future. despite the initially daunting technical challenges, the biggest obstacle to compassionate stewardship of the world’s free-living nonhuman animal population is not technical or even financial, but rather, ideological. most people are prone to status quo bias. such innate bias is normally rationalised by some version of the “appeal to nature”: what is natural is good. the irrationality of the “appeal to nature” is illustrated by a simple thought-experiment. imagine, fancifully, if starvation, disease, parasitism, disembowelling, asphyxiation and being eaten alive were not endemic to the living world – or that such miseries had already been abolished. certainty, no one would propose there is an ethical case for (re)introducing them. even proposing such a thought-experiment can sound faintly ridiculous. however, our bioconservativism is not wholly consistent. if presented with a specific case of terrible suffering – for example an elephant mother and her calf trapped in a mud hole – most people argue we should intervene rather than permit the horror to unfold “naturally”. human benevolence is typically weak, erratic, often negligible, and sentimental rather than rulebound – but still real. by focusing initially on grisly concrete examples, a broad consensus on the principle of compassionate intervention can potentially be established, though not of course whether intervention should be piecemeal or systematic – or how it should be funded. eliciting support for 2 see for example, the in vitro meat consortium (http://www.invitromeat.org/); future food (http://www.futurefood.org/in-vitro-meat/index_en.php); new harvest (http:// www.new-harvest.org/cultured-meat/faq/). http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 http://www.invitromeat.org/ http://www.futurefood.org/in-vitro-meat/index_en.php http://www.new-harvest.org/cultured-meat/faq/ http://www.new-harvest.org/cultured-meat/faq/ a welfare state for elephants? 163 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ad hoc animal “rescues” is the critical wedge that advocates of compassionate stewardship of nature need to press their case further. once we accept that intervention to prevent suffering in free-living nonhuman animals is sometimes morally permitted, and sometimes even morally required, a straightforward question then arises: why should freeliving animal suffering matter only when humans happen to notice it? we should think seriously, as a species, about what principle(s) should govern our interventions. if we can underwrite the well-being of elephants, we should aim, ultimately, to extend our compassionate stewardship to the rest of the living world. references aarde, rudi van, ian whyte, and stuart pimm. 1999. “culling and the dynamics of the kruger national park african elephant population”. animal conservation 2 (4): 287-94. alemayehu, berhanu, and kenneth e. warner. 2004. “the lifetime distribution of health care costs”. health services research 39 (3): 627-42. doi: 10.1111/j.1475-6773.2004.00248.x. angier, natalie. 2009. “pigs prove to be smart, if not vain”. the new york times, november 9. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/10/science/10angier.html?_ r=0. bates, lucy a., phyllis c. lee, norah njiraini, joyce h. poole, katito sayialel, soila sayialel, cynthia j. moss, and richard w. byrne. 2008. “do elephants show empathy?”. journal of consciousness studies 15 (10-1): 204-25. bbc. 2013. “dogs in england must be microchipped from 2016”. bbc, february 6. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21345730. bostrom, nick, and toby ord. 2006. “the reversal test: eliminating status quo bias in applied ethics”. ethics 116: 656-79. bradshaw, isabel g.a. 2004. “not by bread alone: symbolic loss, trauma, and recovery in elephant communities”. society and animals 12 (2): 143-58. bradshaw, isabel g.a., allan n. schore, janine l. brown, joyce h. poole, and cynthia j. moss. 2005. “elephant breakdown”. nature 433 (7028): 807. carey, james r., and catherine gruenfelder. 1997. “population biology of the elderly”. in between zeus and the salmon: the biodemography of longevity, edited by kenneth w. wachter and caleb e. finch, 127-60. washington, dc: national academy press. de waal, frans b.m., and peter l. tyack, eds. 2009. animal social complexity: intelligence, culture, and individualized societies. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. dudley, joseph paine, g. colin craig, deborah st. c. gibson, gary haynes, and joseph klimowicz. 2001. “drought mortality of bush elephants in hwange national park, zimbabwe”. african journal of ecology 39 (2): 187-94. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 david pearce 164 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ esvelt, kevin, george church, and jeantine lunshof. 2014. “‘gene drives’ and crispr could revolutionize ecosystem management”. scientific american, july 17. http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/gene-drives-and-crisprcould-revolutionize-ecosystem-management/. horta, oscar. 2010. “what is speciesism?”. journal of agricultural and environmental ethics 23 (3): 243-66. lee, phyllis c., and cynthia j. moss. 1986. “early maternal investment in male and female african elephant calves”. behavioral ecology and sociobiology 18 (5): 353-61. loveridge, andrew j., jane e. hunt, felix murindagomo, and david w. macdonald. 2006. “influence of drought on predation of elephant (loxodonta africana) calves by lions (panthera leo) in an african wooded savannah”. journal of zoology 270: 523-30. doi: 10.1111/j.1469-7998.2006.00181.x. mar, khyne u., mirkka lahdenperä, and virpi lummaa. 2012. “causes and correlates of calf mortality in captive asian elephants (elephas maximus)”. plos one 7 (3): e32335. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0032335. mumby, hannah s., alexandre courtiol, khyne u. mar, and virpi lummaa. 2013a. “birth seasonality and calf mortality in a large population of asian elephants”. ecology and evolution 3 (11): 3794-803. doi: 10.1002/ece3.746. 2013b. “climatic variation and age-specific survival in asian elephants from myanmar”. ecology 94 (5): 1131-41. pearce, david. (2009) 2015. “reprogramming predators”. the hedonistic imperative: the abolitionist project. http://www.hedweb.com/abolitionist-project/ reprogramming-predators.html. red list. 2014. “loxodonta africana”. the iucn red list of threatened species. http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/12392/0. reimanna, frank, james j. coxb, inna belferc, luda diatchenkod, et al. 2010. “pain perception is altered by a nucleotide polymorphism in scn9a”. proceedings of the national academy of sciences 107 (11): 5148-53. shoshani, jeheskel, william j. kupsky, and gary h. marchant. 2006. “elephant brain. part i: gross morphology, functions, comparative anatomy, and evolution”. brain research bulletin 70 (2): 124-57. tchamba, martin n., and prosper m. seme. 1993. “diet and feeding behaviour of the forest elephant in the santchou reserve, cameroon”. african journal of ecology 31: 165-71. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2028.1993.tb00529.x. the scotsman. 2004. “denturesfor toothless 80 year old elephant”. rense.com, july 1. http://www.rense.com/general47/ele.htm. wichers, m., m. aguilera, g. kenis, et al. 2008. “the catechol-o-methyl transferase val158met polymorphism and experience of reward in the flow of daily life”. neuropsychopharmacology 33: 3030-6. wildpro. 2015. “elephants: diseases and treatment”. wildpro. http://wildpro. twycrosszoo.org/list_vols/elephants/list_elephant_dis.htm#important. wwf. 2015. “african elephants”. wwf. http://wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/ endangered_species/elephants/african_elephants/. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/12392/0 animal: narrator but never main charachter animal narrator but never main character danilo zagaria biologist and writer, indipendent researcher danilo.zagaria@gmail.com mouawad, wajdi. 2015. anima, translated by antonella conti. roma: fazi. 550 pp. € 18.50. isbn 978-88-7625-611-0 then he proceeded to furnish each of them with its proper food, some with pasture of the earth, others with fruits of trees, and others again with roots; and to a certain number for food he gave other creatures to devour: to some he attached a paucity in breeding, and to others, which were being consumed by these, a plenteous brood, and so procured survival of their kind. now epimetheus, being not so wise as he might be, heedlessly squandered his stock of properties on the brutes; he still had left unequipped the race of men, and was at a loss what to do with it. plato, protagoras, 321b-c in plato’s protagoras the guilty was the titan epimetheus, the careless brother of one of the most important heroes of greek mythology who helped the human race: prometheus. the assignment was simple: to furnish each form of life on the earth, in a time when “there were gods, but no mortal creatures” (plato 1967, 320c), its proper faculty. epimetheus persuaded his brother to let him take care of it. after spending a long time assigning features to all animals except one, prometheus verified his brother’s distributions. there was a big problem: all animals were equipped but epimetheus had forgotten the human race: the men were naked, without any chances to survive in a world full of higly specialized beasts and predators; “[…] man was naked, unshod, unbedded, unarmed” (plato 1967, 321c). after that terrible mistake made by his brother, prometheus, guardian of mankind, decided to steal fire and technical abilities from the gods and to equip the human race with them. prometheus paid an high price for his action, but from that mythological time men and women could mailto:danilo.zagaria@gmail.com http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 danilo zagaria 250 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ “emerge from earth to light” (plato 1967, 321c) and conquer the planet; from another prospective, we can read the same human will to emerge in the words said by god in the book of genesis: “god blessed them and said to them, ‘be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground’” (gen. 1:28). in his books, the italian philosopher roberto marchesini argues that from the forgetfulness of epimetheus and the whole myth narrated in plato’s protagoras was born the “sense of lack” that humans feel observing other animals, which are, as the myth said, highly specialized, complete and perfect. the animal world is a kaleidoscopic of shapes, faculties and specializations; on the other side, men and women are naked and unfitted. for this reason they have only one way to walk along: using technical tools and their imaginative minds to cross the hiatus that separated the human world from the natural and animal ones in order to dominate the other forms of life thanks to prometheus’ gifts (marchesini 2014). from this starting point, emerged the myth of the unrooted man, the man that can do anything he wants because he is unspecialized and unshaped, which means that he is free to mould and transform the world even without touching it or mixing with it. this anthropocentrical view has been revisited, especially during the nineteenth century, and today posthuman studies are trying to relocate mankind, focusing on the relations between man and alterity and filling the gap that divided us from the rest of the world for a very long time. wajdi mouawad is a lebanese-canadian writer, actor and director. anima is his second novel, published in canada in 2012. the plot moves from canada to the united states and, finally, to lebanon, where the secret of the main character, wahhch debch, is hidden. anima is a bloodstained book, where brutal assassins are powerful and everywhere, both in the past and in the present. in the first chapter we find out that narrators of the story are not humans, but animals; the title of the each chapter indicates which animal will narrate that part (some of them are recurrent narrators): passer domesticus, columba livia, boa constrictor, rattus norvegicus, pan troglodytes, felis sylvestris catus and so on. mouawad chooses a long series of beasts to tell us a story of another kind of beast: man. “dice spesso che preferisce gli animali agli umani. dice anche che gli umani sono più bestie delle bestie, e le bestie più umane degli umani” (mouawad 2015, 128) (“he often says he prefers animals to humans. he also says that humans are beasts more than beasts themselves, and beasts are more human than humans themselves”). the focus of the story are the terrible actions that men sometimes do to other men, especially during wars, like the sabra and http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 wajdi mouawad, “anima” 251 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ shatila massacre – the killing of thousands of civilians, mostly palestinians and lebanese shiites, during the lebanese civil war in 1982 – an historical event which plays an important part in the book’s plot. if anima is a story about the bestiality of men, why mouawad chooses animals as narrators? and which is the effect of that choice on the reader? the author produces a double and opposite effect with this narrative solution. first of all, assigning the role of observers and narrators to animals, mouawad represents animals like organisms that are often unable to survive or live in the absence of men; animals are not the owners of their destinies, which are decided and shaped by men and men only. secondly, in this book animals are good observers, therefore the readers can see humans with different eyes. with this change of the point of view, animals donate a new perspective on mankind: this is a fundamental movement that we have to make if we want to know us better. like marchesini said, the non-human alterities represent the best interface – open, a-balanced and in evolution – that men have to understand themselves (marchesini 2009). on the other hand, there is a problem in anima: the role played by animals. they are narrators, but they aren’t main characters or co-protagonists of the story. using animals to tell a story about men in which animals rarely act is a choice that underlines, again, the hiatus that divides us from them: they become the voice over in story about mankind, they are an element of the scene that men transform and in which they live, kill and act. animals are regrouped, despite their kaleidoscopic set of shapes and peculiarities, in a single category. men are on the other side of the crevasse. from this point of view, beats are prisoners in their monad-worlds, trapped in their instincts, caged in their behaviors. men instead emerge from this static landscape, moving free in a world bleeding for their actions. there is an important aspect which is just mentioned in the book by wajdi mouawad: the deep interaction between animals (humans included), here described in some episodes involving men and dogs. the author puts in relation this dialogue to ancient cultures, like the indigenous peoples of north america, suggesting that we should look to our past to find new ways to approach nonhuman alterities. anima is a book that suggests a comparison and a metaphor: men and beasts, men are beasts. we are animals for sure, but we have to find new ways of telling stories about us and them. the ages of george orwell and moral fables is far away in the past, they merely used animals like metaphors or caricatures of human acts and conditions in a narrative form that didn’t look at the future. authors should avoid the use of animals to tell stories about men, they should add some distance between their new way of seeing things and the old methods, like the ending lines of animal farm: “the creatures outside looked from http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 danilo zagaria 252 relations – 4.2 november 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to men again; but already it was impossible to say which was which” (orwell 1945, 118). animals are our main alterities, we have to tell stories of interactions, of changes, of connections; and we have to let them occupy some space that we have reserved for us during a very long time: first of all the role of main characters or co-protagonists of the stories we tell about the world. references marchesini, roberto. 2009. il tramonto dell’uomo. milano: mimesis. 2014. epifania animale. l’oltreuomo come rivelazione. milano: mimesis. mouawad, wajdi. 2015. anima. roma: fazi. orwell, george. 1945. animal farm. harlow: pearson education limited. plato. 1967. “protagoras”. in plato in twelve volumes, vol. 3. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/73 il dilemma etico dei pet: tra bestie, animali e persone 5 is sn 2 2 8 0 -9 9 5 3 beyond anthropocentrism 1 • january 2013 inside the emotional lives of non-human animals a minding animals international utrecht 2012 pre-conference event special issue (genoa, italy, 12-13 may, 2012) edited by m. andreozzi, r. bennison, a. massaro, s. tonutti capabilities approach and animal bioethics • michele panzera animals and our emotions. how to approach the study of an interspecific community? • sabrina tonutti advocacy and animal rights • kim stallwood the emotional lives of animals: a christian perspective • alma massaro – gianfranco nicora animalia: ontology and ethics in weak antispeciesism • leonardo caffo the contemporary debate on experimentation • susanna penco – rosagemma ciliberti non-human animals and genetic engineering • arianna ferrari the relationship between humans and other animals in european animal welfare legislation • paola sobbrio human’s best friends? • matteo andreozzi elationsre l a t io n s . b e y o n d a n t h r o p o c e n t r is m 1 • 2 0 1 3 r 10.1 june 2022 animal ethics, ethology, and food ethics edited by francesco allegri studies and research contributions korsgaard’s duties towards animals: two difficulties 9 nico müller ethology of the freed animal: concept, paradigm 27 and implementations to the moral status of non-human animals marco celentano dario martinelli il dilemma etico dei pet: tra bestie, animali e persone 47 matteo andreozzi being there: if the pairing of the birdwatchers affects the pairing 59 of the birds evangelina w. uskoković theo w. uskoković vuk uskoković comments, debates, reports and interviews vegetarianism and veganism from a moral point of view 85 francesco allegri author guidelines 93 relations – 10.1 june 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ relations – 10.1 june 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 47 il dilemma etico dei pet tra bestie, animali e persone matteo andreozzi independent scholar doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2022-01-andr matteo.andreozzi@gmail.com abstract the main aim of this paper is to demonstrate the need to discuss the moral status of pets, showing how this can even offer an opportunity to rethink the entire set of relationships between humans and non-human nature. i start by asking “who” or “what” pets are and why they should be treated morally different from other “beasts”. i also show how both anthropocentric and animal ethics are unable to solve the dilemma. in conclusion, i explore two possible coordinates to use in order to solve the dilemma: “interest” and “appropriate relational partiality”. i claim that these two key concepts could also be useful to show the need to find a mutual theoretical and conceptual framework toward which both anthropocentric and non-anthropocentric environmental ethics could refer. keywords: animal rights; animal welfare; companion animals; contextual ethics; impartialism; intrinsic value; partialism; pets; relational ethics; special duties. 1. le coordinate di un dilemma latente sebbene il dibattito etico sulle responsabilità umane verso gli animali non umani (d’ora in poi “animali”) sia in continuo fermento, la discussione di settore contiene un’evidente omissione. il quantitativo di testi filosofici dedicati allo studio dello status morale degli animali ha iniziato a crescere esponenzialmente a partire dagli anni ’70. da allora a oggi, tuttavia, solo pochissimi filosofi si sono soffermati su quel particolare rapporto che intercorre tra gli esseri umani e i pet, nonostante l’evidente importanza che questi animali ricoprono all’interno della vita di moltissime persone e famiglie. relations – 10.1 june 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2022-01-andr mailto:matteo.andreozzi@gmail.com https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ matteo andreozzi 48 l’antropologo edmund leach parla dei pet come di “uomini-animali” (man-animals): una categoria ontologico-concettuale situata in un luogo intermedio tra ciò che è umano e ciò che, poiché “animale”, umano non è (leach 1996, 45). quest’ambigua e fuorviante dualità tra umano e animale ricalca molto bene il confine che separa il paradigma etico della tradizionale filosofia antropocentrica da quello delle più diffuse filosofie animaliste contemporanee: se per queste ultime tutti gli animali (esseri umani compresi) sono dotati di un medesimo valore non strumentale, per la prima soltanto gli umani – o per meglio dire le persone – sono soggetti morali dotati di valore intrinseco. da tale dicotomia non dovrebbero, a rigore di logica, sfuggire nemmeno i pet. “chi” o “cosa” sono, dunque, questi animali? “bestie”, come tutti gli altri animali, o “animali”, proprio come noi esseri umani? il loro indefinito status morale rappresenta ancora oggi un dilemma etico tutt’altro che risolto. scopo di questo articolo è esplorare il dilemma e le sue più importanti implicazioni, mostrando come un suo approfondimento offra persino l’occasione di ripensare l’intero insieme di relazioni che intercorrono tra gli esseri umani e la natura non umana. prima di procedere con la trattazione è importante precisare che il termine pet verrà qui inteso come una categoria ontologico-concettuale rappresentante un vasto insieme di animali: un insieme che, sebbene includa i cosiddetti “animali da compagnia”, non è a mio avviso riducibile a essi. in quasi totale accordo con le proposte teoriche di deborah barnbaum (1998) e gary varner (2002), suggerisco di associare alla definizione di pet cinque condizioni, complessivamente necessarie e sufficienti. un pet è un animale (prima condizione) il quale, per costrizione esterna o per sua apparente volontà, vive in un’area che è significativamente sotto il controllo o l’influenza umana (seconda condizione). questo animale appartiene a una specie diversa da quella umana (terza condizione) ed è dotato di interessi il cui totale o parziale soddisfacimento dipende dalle attenzioni di quegli individui (quarta condizione) che, decidendo di farsi carico della sua vita, vengono definiti “proprietari” di questo animale. ciò che più di ogni altra cosa contraddistingue un pet, distanziandolo da altri tipi di animali, è tuttavia primariamente l’esistenza di un legame affettivo tra il proprietario e il suo animale (quinta condizione), ed è proprio in merito a questo legame che credo sia necessario compiere un’importante precisazione, prima di proseguire nella trattazione. sebbene lo status di pet implichi che il proprietario dell’animale provi affetto verso di esso, non è infatti per nulla scontato che il pet provi o debba provare affetto verso il suo proprietario. in perfetto accordo con la transitività espressa dai verbi “accarezzare” e “coccolare”, cui fa riferelations – 10.1 june 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ il dilemma etico dei pet: tra bestie 49 rimento il vocabolo pet (dal verbo inglese to pet), i sentimenti dei proprietari di pet si dirigono verso l’animale, ma non necessitano di essere ricambiati. il legame affettivo tra un proprietario e il proprio pet può dunque essere squisitamente unidirezionale: ecco perché ritengo siano considerabili pet svariati tipi di animali. pet possono infatti essere: animali da compagnia, che hanno significative interazioni con i loro proprietari e che restano all’interno del rapporto con essi instaurato, apparentemente proprio per il giovamento tratto dalla stessa relazione (es. cani e gatti, ma anche altri animali, a seconda delle culture); animali domestici che, seppure ospitati in casa, non sono addomesticati (es. animali tenuti in gabbia o in stato di semilibertà, come certi roditori, uccelli, rettili, insetti o pesci); ma anche animali che, pur essendo addomesticati, non sono tuttavia ospitati in casa (es. cani da guardia, cavalli da tiro o da corsa, certi animali da reddito e, più in generale, tutti gli “animali da lavoro” a cui i proprietari sono particolarmente affezionati). nonostante sia opportuno tenere a mente che, in virtù delle precisazioni appena compiute, le argomentazioni che presenterò in questo articolo sono formalmente estensibili a tutti i pet, per esigenza di concisione e per svariate altre ragioni cui sto per fare cenno, concentrerò d’ora in avanti le mie riflessioni facendo riferimento soprattutto agli animali da compagnia e, più precisamente, ai cani e ai gatti. cani e gatti sono infatti indubbiamente gli animali da compagnia (e più in generale i pet) più diffusi sul piano sociale, più trattati sul piano letterario, più considerati sul piano statistico e, ciò che più conta, meno sfiorati dagli argomenti della filosofia animalista. l’etica animalista (da quella welfarista a quella liberazionista, da quella antispecista a quella dei diritti degli animali) condanna infatti ormai sempre più spesso il possesso di animali domestici e l’utilizzo di animali addomesticati. anche se in alcuni casi il fenomeno sembra almeno in parte recare giovamento alla qualità della vita degli animali stessi, viene giudicato immorale non solo il nostro utilizzare questi animali per fini umani (come accade per gli animali da lavoro), ma anche il nostro sottrarli dal loro habitat e il nostro limitarne le libertà (come accade per gli animali tenuti in gabbia o in stato di semilibertà). ciononostante, questi stessi argomenti non vengono praticamente mai utilizzati anche in riferimento agli animali da compagnia, soprattutto se gli animali in questione sono cani e gatti. siamo tuttavia così sicuri che le modalità con cui siamo soliti instaurare relazioni con gli animali da compagnia rechino giovamento agli animali stessi? e siamo poi certi che cani e gatti non vengano costantemente utilizzati per fini umani e/o privati di un loro mondo e di alcune loro libertà? solo cercando, senza preconcetti, risposte a queste domande è possibile difendere lo status morale di tutti i pet. relations – 10.1 june 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ matteo andreozzi 50 2. le contraddizioni dell’etica antropocentrica e di quella animalista riconoscendo valore intrinseco soltanto alle “persone” e reputando “persone” soltanto gli esseri umani (paradigmatici e non paradigmatici, presenti o futuri), l’etica antropocentrica non può in alcun modo fornire argomenti per rispettare i pet in qualità di pazienti morali (né come singoli esemplari, né come specie). gli unici argomenti che può offrire fanno perno su doveri indiretti relativi ai pet, che sono però in realtà doveri diretti verso altri esseri umani e i loro interessi. in sostanza, l’unico modo in cui l’etica antropocentrica può difendere sia la pratica del possesso dei pet, sia i nostri particolari doveri nei loro confronti è chiedere una speciale considerazione morale per quei mezzi che certe persone adottano per perseguire i propri fini (se il mezzo y ha valore strumentale per x, e x ha valore intrinseco, allora esiste il dovere morale prima facie di non privare x di y). in quest’ottica, tuttavia, il valore dei pet dipende soltanto dal loro essere strumenti utili a perseguire le esigenze (affettive, psicologiche e identitarie) degli esseri umani. sebbene la richiesta di rispettare questi animali come figli, amici o membri della propria famiglia sia dunque, dal punto di vista antropocentrico, inconsistente, l’argomentazione offerta non è di per sé incoerente. essa tuttavia, non riconoscendo un vero e proprio status morale a questi animali, è incapace di tutelare le specie animali e gli esemplari che non sono riconosciuti essere mezzi utili per i fini di culture differenti. non ci si può dunque scandalizzare per il fatto che in alcune culture ci si nutra tutt’oggi di cani e gatti o li si uccida per divertimento: altrove, queste stesse pratiche, coinvolgono altri animali (es. mucche e tori) che per altre culture, invece, sono sacri. l’unico modo possibile di argomentare contro simili pratiche è condannarle nel loro complesso, riconoscendo il valore intrinseco di ogni forma di vita animale, proprio come suggerito dall’etica animalista. in sostanza, dunque, per potere dire di amare davvero i propri pet in un modo che è incomparabile a quello in cui si potrebbe dire di “amare” un oggetto come la propria automobile o il proprio smartphone, è necessario adottare un paradigma etico in base al quale è doveroso rispettare tutti gli animali. accogliere gli argomenti dell’etica animalista, tuttavia, non aiuta realmente a risolvere il dilemma dello status morale dei pet, anzi. la quasi totalità dei testi prodotti dai più strenui difensori dell’etica animalista non tratta infatti nel dettaglio il fenomeno del possesso e utilizzo dei pet (d’ora in poi “fenomeno dei pet”). secondo keith burgess-jackson il principale motivo per cui i filosofi animalisti hanno “paura” di discutere relations – 10.1 june 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ il dilemma etico dei pet: tra bestie 51 la questione è che essi sono generalmente imparzialisti (burgess-jackson 1998, 171-173). fondando i propri argomenti su criteri di demarcazione morale quali la “sensibilità” o la “coscienza”, i filosofi animalisti affermano solitamente che le stesse ragioni per cui è dovuto rispetto agli esseri umani implicano la necessità di riservare lo stesso rispetto a tutti gli animali (o quantomeno ai mammiferi). poiché i pet, tuttavia, non sono più coscienti, intelligenti, complessi o sensibili rispetto ad altri mammiferi, l’imparzialismo dell’etica animalista resta incapace di argomentare in favore delle speciali responsabilità che gli esseri umani dovrebbero avere verso questi animali. quei pochi “coraggiosi” autori che difendono sia il valore intrinseco dei mammiferi, sia i nostri speciali doveri verso gli animali da compagnia si discostano dunque dall’etica animalista più tradizionale, adottando una prospettiva parzialista. essi, in sostanza, affermano che, nonostante il generale obbligo di non danneggiare gli animali si rivolga a tutti gli animali (per ragioni sensiocentriche o psicocentriche del tutto analoghe a quelle dell’animalismo imparzialista), esso è perfettamente compatibile con il dovere di promuovere gli interessi solo di alcuni di loro: lo stesso tipo di argomento, infatti, è valido anche all’interno dell’etica umana, dove il generale obbligo di non danneggiare uno sconosciuto è del tutto compatibile con quello di promuovere gli interessi dei propri figli, familiari o amici più stretti. in riferimento agli animali, quest’ultimo genere di doveri positivi si fonda su tre differenti speciali tipologie di responsabilità relazionali: quella che le comunità umane hanno nei confronti degli animali con cui si sono co-evolute, all’interno di un’unica grande “comunità mista” (midgley 1983); quella che le società umane hanno nei confronti degli animali che, a causa della stessa attività umana, vivono in particolari condizioni “non naturali” di vulnerabilità e dipendenza (palmer 2010); e quella che i possessori di animali hanno nei confronti degli “animali che accolgono volontariamente nelle proprie vite – precisamente perché essi decidono di accoglierli nelle proprie vite” (burgess-jackson 1998, 161). nonostante l’indubbia persuasività di queste ultime argomentazioni e la loro capacità di fare fronte ai problemi in grado di mettere in scacco gli altri approcci presi in esame, anche l’animalismo parzialista lascia aperta una difficoltà per nulla irrilevante. esso, infatti, offrendo argomenti potenzialmente in grado solo di giustificare il perché sia per gli esseri umani lecito privilegiare certi animali rispetto ad altri, non pone mai realmente in discussione la liceità morale del possedere e utilizzare, in senso generale, i pet. questa incapacità di interrogarsi a pieno spettro sullo status morale di tutti i pet deriva a sua volta da un assunto potenzialmente in grado di invalidare l’intero discorso: quello secondo cui non vi sarebbe nulla relations – 10.1 june 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ matteo andreozzi 52 di illecito nel possesso di animali da compagnia come cani e gatti, anche perché esso non implica in alcuno modo il loro utilizzo. gli autori parzialisti, infatti, per legittimare il possesso di cani e gatti accolgono spesso implicitamente e acriticamente gli argomenti addotti dalle altre correnti qui discusse. argomenti fondati su ragioni che io sostengo essere fuorvianti, antropocentriche e incapaci di rendere evidente che, mentre è indubbio che gli esseri umani possano trarre innumerevoli forme di giovamento dal relazionarsi con gli animali da compagnia, la relazione tra i proprietari di questo genere di animali e gli animali stessi è di per sé incompatibile con l’intento di rispettare gli animali in generale. sono almeno tre le ragioni che meritano di essere confutate. in base alla prima, si sostiene che la pratica della domesticazione di cani e gatti esiste da così tanto tempo che questi animali non hanno più comportamenti “naturali”. in realtà non c’è alcuna connessione rigida tra la premessa di questo argomento e la sua conclusione. studi, ricerche, ma anche esperienze comuni dimostrano che, quando rilasciati nel mondo naturale, gli esemplari di molte delle specie addomesticate (cani e gatti compresi) ritornano rapidamente ad adottare i propri comportamenti “naturali” (spesso modificando anche i propri tratti fenotipici nel giro di poche generazioni, avvicinandosi ai propri ‘parenti’ selvatici) (jensen 2005). da ciò consegue che né questi animali necessitano di essere addomesticati per sopravvivere, né gli esseri umani sono tenuti a farsi carico delle vite di cani e gatti per la tutela dei loro stessi interessi. un secondo ordine di motivazioni sostiene che, poiché cani e gatti dimostrano di apprezzare la nostra compagnia, essi gradiscono il loro status. se è tuttavia lecito sostenere che gli animali da compagnia sembrano gradire il rapporto con i loro proprietari, in nessun modo possiamo oggettivamente affermare che è, di fatto, così. sebbene sembri che cani e gatti accettino e gradiscano il loro status, è infatti possibile sia che gli umani interpretino questi animali antropomorfizzando erroneamente i loro comportamenti, sia che gli animali esprimano sentimenti strategici (come quelli che potrebbe provare un carcerato nei confronti del suo carceriere) o frustrati: sentimenti che essi stessi preferirebbero rivolgere a membri della loro famiglia, del loro gruppo o del loro branco (nel caso dei cani). non abbiamo abbastanza elementi per stabilire quale di queste eventualità sia la più reale o probabile. il terzo e ultimo motivo su cui intendo soffermarmi si fonda sulla convinzione che sia i proprietari degli animali da compagnia che gli animali stessi traggano un genuino beneficio dalla loro relazione (quando rispettosa). in realtà, nonostante i certamente numerosi e lodevoli tentativi di provvedere ai bisogni dei propri animali da compagnia, i proprietari relations – 10.1 june 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ il dilemma etico dei pet: tra bestie 53 di questi animali violano, con il solo possederli, molti dei loro bisogni. tra i principali interessi degli animali da compagnia vi sono infatti, ad esempio, il bisogno di stare in contatto con la propria famiglia, il proprio gruppo o il proprio branco (nel caso dei cani); quello di accoppiarsi liberamente; o quello di fare i propri bisogni e di correre sempre liberamente (jensen 2005; aperta et al. 2006). tutte esigenze che, nonostante le eccezioni esistenti, sono indubbiamente incompatibili con le più tradizionali forme di possesso di questi animali. anche ammettendo la possibilità che agli animali da compagnia sia concessa la massima libertà possibile, esiste tuttavia almeno un altro interesse di questi animali che non dovrebbe essere filosoficamente sottostimato: quello di mangiare altri animali, possibilmente predandoli. secondo john baird callicott (1985) e steve sapontzis (1998), tuttavia, i proprietari che lasciano ai propri animali la libertà di cacciare (almeno ogni tanto) le proprie prede sono filosoficamente reputabili responsabili dei danni causati agli altri animali: anche se cani e gatti non sono agenti morali, sono infatti sotto la responsabilità degli agenti morali che si fanno carico della loro esistenza. sebbene sembri che cani e gatti possano vivere bene seguendo una dieta esclusivamente veg(etari)ana, da un lato la questione è dibattuta e controversa (soprattutto in riferimento ai gatti), mentre dall’altro sia cani che gatti preferiscono largamente nutrirsi di cibi di origine animale (hawn 2011; knight and leitsberger 2016). ma se, come è solitamente loro consigliato, i proprietari di questi animali servono loro della carne (proveniente dall’uccisione, spesso industriale, di altri animali) essi contribuiscono nuovamente all’uccisione di altri animali. la scelta è sempre dunque tra il non rispettare un interesse legato al benessere degli animali da compagnia e il non rispettare altri animali. dal punto di vista animalista si tratta di un vero e proprio vicolo cieco. riassumendo: gli animali da compagnia non necessitano di essere posseduti dagli esseri umani; non possiamo mai dire con certezza se questi animali gradiscono il loro rapporto con noi o il loro status; è tutt’altro che facile venire incontro agli interessi di questi animali; e quand’anche fosse possibile, ciò implicherebbe necessariamente non solo discriminare altri animali, ma anche acconsentire alla loro uccisione. in sostanza, dunque, anche dalla prospettiva animalista il dilemma rimane irrisolto. 3. il coraggio di rispettare gli animali ciò che si è cercato finora di mostrare è che approfondire il dilemma dei pet significa non soltanto esplorare un insieme di problemi interconnessi relations – 10.1 june 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ matteo andreozzi 54 tra loro, ma anche comprendere che i motivi che legittimano il possesso dei pet e la pratica stessa del possedere questi animali (siano essi animali addomesticati, domestici o di compagnia) sono moralmente incompatibili tanto con l’etica antropocentrica quanto con quella animalista. pochissimi autori hanno trattato questa contraddizione, ma sono tutti giunti a questa conclusione. autori quali gary francione (2012) e stuart spencer (spencer et al. 2006) sostengono addirittura che, poiché non può di certo essere il possesso degli animali da compagnia a giustificare la permanenza della pratica della domesticazione (una pratica che, essendo incompatibile con il promuovere il benessere degli animali, è da giudicarsi immorale), il fenomeno dei pet deve essere, nel suo complesso, portato all’estinzione. in sostanza, dunque, per questi e altri autori, poiché non si possono cambiare i metri di giudizio così come ci si cambia di abito, argomentare contro il possesso e l’utilizzo di animali conduce ad argomentare anche contro il possesso e l’utilizzo dei pet, e l’argomentare contro il possesso e l’utilizzo dei pet implica l’argomentare anche contro il possesso e l’utilizzo degli animali da compagnia. per quanto l’estinzione del “fenomeno dei pet” possa essere ritenuta un obiettivo etico da perseguire nel lungo termine, manca una guida in grado di iniziare a creare gradualmente, ma fin da subito, un mondo di equità e giustizia interspecifica che ancora non c’è. secondo erica fudge, mentre molti altri animali offrono cibo per i piatti degli esseri umani e per le ciotole degli animali domestici, “i pet offrono ai filosofi cibo per il loro pensiero”: la potenzialità teorica di questi animali può anche essere diversa da quella degli altri animali, “ma è una potenzialità filosofica che non dovrebbe assolutamente essere sottostimata” (fudge 2008, 8-9). si tratta, a mio avviso, persino di una duplice potenzialità. la prima concerne il rapporto tra gli esseri umani e questi animali. poiché gli umani hanno costruito una stretta relazione con i pet (e in particolar modo con gli animali da compagnia), questi stessi animali possono giocare un ruolo decisivo nel modificare il modo in cui le persone sono solite pensare ed empatizzare con gli animali in generale. non a caso, tanto i filosofi quanto gli attivisti animalisti spesso si avvalgono della domanda “se ami gli animali che chiami ‘pet’, perché ti nutri di quegli animali che chiami ‘cena’?” proprio per avviare un profondo processo di rivalutazione dell’alterità animale. molto probabilmente, dunque, è proprio la relazione tra gli individui e i loro pet il più comune punto da cui si avvia quello stravolgimento paradigmatico del pensiero che sta alla base del non antropocentrismo animalista – in cina, ad esempio, è stata proprio la crescita del “fenomeno dei pet” a determinare la parallela crescita dei movimenti per il benessere e i diritti animali (littlefair 2006). la seconda relations – 10.1 june 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ il dilemma etico dei pet: tra bestie 55 e filosoficamente più rilevante potenzialità è data dalla capacità, propria forse solo del dilemma sullo status morale dei pet, di riportare su un medesimo terreno di discussione l’etica antropocentrica, quella animalista e persino quella ambientalista, spingendo queste a trovare un unico paradigma concettuale e teorico di riferimento. se approfondito, infatti, il dilemma rivela l’incoerenza interna tanto dell’etica antropocentrica, quanto dell’animalismo imparzialista. esso rivela inoltre l’inadeguatezza del parzialismo animalista e i suoi pregiudizi antropocentrici. filosoficamente parlando, però, il dilemma dimostra a soprattutto l’importanza di fissare una prima coordinata essenziale a partire dalla quale avviare il dibattito: il concetto di interesse. conferire significato morale all’entità che è “interessata in qualcosa”, come sono solite fare le etiche antropocentriche e quelle animaliste, è infatti profondamente diverso dall’attribuirlo a quel qualcosa che “è nell’interesse dell’entità”, come fanno invece alcune etiche ambientali (attfield 1986; sterba 1995; sterba 1998; varner 1998). se nel primo caso non si può andare oltre la tutela antropomorfizzante di ciò verso cui sembra che gli animali dimostrino interesse (es. uscire a fare due passi tre volte al giorno o avere la lettiera pulita), solo nel secondo si può comprendere che per rispettare davvero queste alterità si deve anzitutto cercare di capire, senza preconcetti, ciò che sarebbe nel loro interesse (es. essere sempre liberi dai guinzagli, dai tempi e dalla disponibilità dei loro padroni). penso che, in questo senso, l’appropriata parzialità relazionale di una certa forma di riflessione morale (diffusa all’interno della tradizione antropocentrica, animalista e ambientalista) indichi una seconda importante coordinata da non sottovalutare all’interno della discussione. contesti relazionali come quelli di cui parlano gli animalisti parzialisti conferiscono però a mio avviso validità alle speciali forme di dovere teorizzate dagli autori solo se si concepiscono questi stessi doveri come forme di riparazione o compensazione che assumono esplicitamente la presenza di un’ingiustizia cui è necessario porre rimedio: in questo caso, l’esistenza stessa del “fenomeno dei pet”. simili doveri potrebbero dunque essere intesi come doveri positivi che cercano di ristabilire quell’ideale bilancio di giustizia che esisteva tra umani e animali considerati pet prima che il generale dovere negativo di non danneggiare questi animali fosse trasgredito storicamente, socialmente o individualmente dalle relazioni che gli umani stessi hanno costruito con loro. riconoscere che il possesso e l’utilizzo degli animali sono, nel loro complesso, vere e proprie forme di ingiustizia interspecifica sarebbe dunque, con ogni probabilità, l’unica possibilità di affrontare a viso aperto il dilemma dello status morale dei pet; ma a che esiti condurrebbe tale riconoscimento? relations – 10.1 june 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ matteo andreozzi 56 personalmente credo che il dilemma qui discusso non sia né fattualmente risolvibile solo seguendo le ipotesi abolizioniste proposte da quei (pochi) autori che hanno trattato l’argomento (tra l’altro venendo criticati in quanto considerati troppo estremi e provocatori), né teoricamente insormontabile. sul fronte pratico, il fatto che i doveri che abbiamo nei confronti dei pet non si possano fondare su e non possano tutelare il loro vivere con noi esseri umani, non implica infatti che questi animali non possano assolutamente vivere tra noi. il problema, dal punto di vista etico, non è radicato nella nostra convivenza con questi animali, ma nella loro dipendenza da noi. alcune importanti strade da seguire per risolvere il dilemma senza accogliere necessariamente soluzioni radicali sono già state tracciate. dal punto di vista pratico, invece, il dilemma dello status morale dei pet potrebbe davvero rivelarsi decisivo per conciliare gli svariati punti di vista non antropocentrici che si affacciano sul problema della relazione tra umanità e natura. nell’affrontare questo dilemma è certamente essenziale non dimenticare che questi animali sono tra le forme di vita non umane a noi più (e in più sensi) “vicine”. è a mio avviso importante comprendere anche quanto siano promettenti le due coordinate teorico-concettuali che ho in questo articolo implicitamente utilizzato, ma solo in conclusione esplicitamente identificato: gli interessi e l’appropriata parzialità relazionale. occorre forse tuttavia trovare anche il coraggio di allontanare davvero e una volta per tutte quella raffinata forma di zoofilia spesso celata all’interno dall’etica animalista, in favore di una riflessione seriamente capace di rispettare l’alterità non umana. si tratta, in sostanza, di comprendere anzitutto che prima di potere dire di amare queste “adorabili bestie” come figli, amici o membri della propria famiglia, bisognerebbe anzitutto sapere come rispettarle, avendo il coraggio di accettare che, spesso, per portare davvero rispetto verso le alterità non umane (e non solo) bisogna semplicemente lasciarle libere di vivere la loro vita. un buon inizio sarebbe, in tal senso, non avere paura di discutere di questi (e altri possibili) aspetti a viso aperto, avviando un tutt’oggi ancora assente dibattito. riferimenti bibliografici aerts, stefan, et al. 2006. “a new framework for the assessment of animal welfare: integrating existing knowledge from a practical ethics perspective”. journal for agricultural and environmental ethics 19 (1): 67-76. doi: 10.1007/s10806-005-4376-y attfield, robin. 1983. the ethics of environmental concern. oxford: basil blackwell. relations – 10.1 june 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ il dilemma etico dei pet: tra bestie 57 barnbaum, deborah. 1998. “why tamagatchis are not pets”. thinking: the journal of philosophy for children 13 (4): 41-43. burgess-jackson, keith. 1998. “doing right by our animal companions”. the journal of ethics 2 (2): 159-185. doi: 10.1023/a:1009756409422 callicott, john baird. 1985. “review of tom regan, ‘the case for animal rights’”. environmental ethics 7 (4): 365-372. francione, gary l. 2012. “‘pets’: the inherent problems of domestication”. animal rights: the abolitionist approach. last modified july 31, 2012. http://www.abolitionistapproach.com/pets-the-inherent-problems-ofdomestication/#.umc1dyotza4 fudge, erica. 2008. pets: art of living. stocksfield: acument publishing limited. hawn, roxanne. 2011. “should your pet go on a vegetarian diet? the risks of feeding vegan or vegetarian diets to your pet”. webmd. last modified may 19, 2011. http://pets.webmd.com/features/vegetarian-diet-dogscats?page=1 jensen, per. 2005. the ethology of domestic animals. wallingford: cabi publishing. knight, andrew, and madelaine leitsberger. 2016. “vegetarian versus meat-based diets for companion animals”. animals 6 (9): 57. https://doi.org/10.3390/ ani6090057 leach, edmund. 1996. “anthropological aspects of language: animal categories and verbal use”. in new directions in the study of language, edited by eric h. lenneberg, 23-63. cambridge (ma): mit press. littlefair, paul. 2006. “why china is waking up to animal welfare”. in animals, ethics and trade: the challenge of animal sentience, edited by jacky turner and joyce d’silva, 225-237. london: earthscan. midgley, mary. 1983. animals and why they matter. athens: the university of georgia press. palmer, clare. 2010. animal ethics in context: a relational approach. new york: columbia university press. sapontzis, steve. 1998. “predation”. in encyclopedia of animal rights and animal welfare, edited by marc bekoff, 275-277. london chicago: fitzroy dearborn. spencer, stuart, et al. 2006. “history and ethics of keeping pets: comparison with farm animals”. journal of agricultural and environmental ethics 19 (1): 17-25. doi: 10.1007/s10806-005-4379-8 sterba, james p. 1995. “from biocentric individualism to biocentric pluralism”. environmental ethics 17 (2): 191-207. sterba, james p. 1998. “a biocentrist strikes back”. environmental ethics 20 (4): 361-376. taylor, paul w. 1986. respect for nature: a theory of environmental ethics. princeton: princeton university press. tuan, yi-fu. 1984. dominance and affection: the making of pets. new haven (ct): yale university press. relations – 10.1 june 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ matteo andreozzi 58 varner, gary e. 1998. in nature’s interests? interests, animal rights, and environmental ethics. new york: oxford university press. varner, gary e. 2002. “pets, companion animals, and domesticated partners”. in ethics for everyday, edited by david benatar, 450-475. new york: mcgraw-hill. relations – 10.1 june 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the harm they inflict when values conflict: why diversity does not matter the harm they inflict when values conflict why diversity does not matter julia mosquera phd candidate, university of reading doi: 10.7358/rela-2015-001-mosq j.mosquera@pgr.reading.ac.uk abstract some policies that manage natural processes have the purpose of conserving and/or promoting the diversity that exists in an ecosystem. on many occasions, these policies conflict with values such as individual wellbeing. this paper looks at this issue. it focuses first on clarifying the concept of diversity. second, it looks at whether diversity has value, and what kind of value it may have. finally, it argues that although diversity is valuable, it may be overridden in cases in which actual harms exceed future benefits. therefore, policies that promote diversity should, in some cases, be abandoned. keywords: diversity, value, natural processes, ecosystems, non-human animals, wellbeing, prevention, harm; intervention, ecosystem collapse. 1. introduction: the harm they inflict there are a great number of policies that manage natural processes. an example would be planning to conserve a natural area for the next ten years. in most cases, these policies require intervention in nature in one way or another, although in a few cases they do not. the reasons/ends that motivate the policies that manage natural processes vary. a great number of these policies have environmental aims. this means that their final aim is the conservation of ecosystems in an optimal functioning state, but they can also aim to conserve an ecosystem according to its original state. when defining strategic management goals, one of the common aims that drive many interventions in nature is the promotion of diversity. promoting diversity can involve a recommendation either to intervene in nature, or not to intervene. the management of invasive species is an mailto:j.mosquera@pgr.reading.ac.uk http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 julia mosquera 66 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ example of when promoting diversity requires intervening in nature. invasive species occupy a territory that did not previously belong to them, and they become the new possessors of it. if the invasive species is a plant, this plant will be the new occupant of the natural territory, displacing the old occupants until they become extinct in the area. if the invasion is made by an animal species that happens to feed on a particular plants, the extinction of the plant will occur as a consequence of the feeding habits of the new inhabitants. the policy normally adopted here would be to restore the previous distribution of species, either by replacing the invasive plants with the original ones, or by eliminating the presence of the new animals. however, while restoring a plant species over other species of plants does not seem to involve any direct harm on the individuals who inhabit the ecosystem, restoring a plant species at cost to other species of animals, or restoring a species of animals over other species of animals, does. in other cases, what promoting diversity will require us to do is to refrain from intervening in nature because the consequences of a possible intervention would reduce diversity. there are processes in nature that involve suffering at least, and harm, death and misery, at most. the natural processes that affect animals in the wild are often of the latter kind. most animals that live in the wild die of thirst and starvation. natural disasters lead to their suffering from diseases or physical injury. a significant number suffer and die from parasitism, and others die as the victims of a predator, suffering a great amount of distress during their – normally short  – lives. as consequence, the disvalue to which their lives amount seems to outweigh the positive value. should not we intervene in such cases to alleviate the suffering of animals? recent discussions in the field of intervention in nature give compelling reasons to support such interventions under the premise that animals are not “there in the wild” as other parts of natural systems are, like for example trees or rivers. animals, as other sentient beings, have moral status and therefore their interests need to be considered when designing the management of natural processes. however, one of the difficult questions that arises after deciding that intervention is required is how we ought to intervene in such cases. what is the best policy of intervention to adopt in view of the bad consequences for nonhuman animals that these natural processes involve? feeding and treating animals with diseases are easy policies to implement. some authors have also suggested patterns of intervention that would alleviate the suffering of prey, for example. for this, they have proposed the controlled extinction of some predators (pearce 2009). a common objection to this would be to say that a policy like this would diminish the number of species in our ecosystem and therefore also the amount of diversity in the world. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 the harm they inflict when values conflict 67 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ far from the case of animals that suffer in nature, other cases can be found in which promoting diversity requires refraining from intervening in order to alleviate a certain sort of suffering. the natural endowment an individual is born with is the consequence of a natural process. the genetic material from which a fetus is formed depends mostly on the genetics of the biological progenitors, and even when mutations in genes happen, there is a huge component of heritability in them. genetically inherited disabilities and illnesses are the result of these natural processes of genetic combinations that end up bringing new individuals into the world with conditions that to some extent will compromise their wellbeing 1. some have argued that we should oppose intervention in these genetic processes on the grounds that it would in the end reduce the diversity of people existing in the world, affirming that it would be bad if people with down syndrome, for example, no longer existed. nevertheless, rejecting intervention to prevent these cases presumably brings into the world a state of affairs that involves the existence of unnecessary extra suffering. the previous two cases have various things in common. the killing of massive numbers of individuals – normally members of an invasive species – is justified by referring to the modification of the previous state of natural diversity that they have disturbed. extinguishing some predators – by stopping them from reproducing and without causing any extra harm to individuals – is commonly rejected due to the loss of species diversity it would imply. the rejection of intervention to ensure that people are born without disabilities is also frequently grounded in pro-diversity claims, i.e. the variety of people in the world would diminish if all were born with the same capabilities. the purpose of this paper is not to defend the claim that the diversity of types of plants, non-human animals or humans has no value whatsoever. instead, i will accept that diversity has value, but will try to show that the value of diversity can never outweigh the disvalue of promoting or protecting diversity when these cases involve harm, suffering and pain for individuals that could be avoided at a not very high cost. in the following sections i will focus on what diversity is and what its value in nature may be. then, i will look at whether we should intervene in nature in favor of diversity. finally, i will offer some conclusions for the future improvement of our policies of intervention regarding both nature and non-human sentient individuals. 1 i will leave aside here the question of whether this example really constitutes a case of harm, and the identity problems that harming individuals who do not exist and who might, if intervened with, never come into being, convey (see parfit [1984] 1986). http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 julia mosquera 68 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 2. what is diversity and what is its value? diversity is a relational property. this is because a single object does not offer any feature that differs from this object’s own features (if we accept the identity principle, an object is always equal to itself insofar as the properties of an object can never differ from themselves). in other words, for an individual, x, there cannot exist two descriptions of the same property that are compatible. for example “sarah lopez is 1.2 meters tall and sarah lopez is 1.5 meters tall” is an incoherent statement as it is metaphysically impossible that sarah lopez has two different heights at a single point in time. diversity, therefore, can only exist in sets, or groups, of objects. if the set in question contains at least two objects among which the relation of “not being equal to the rest of the objects of the set” holds – a priori, every time that we have a set with more than one element – then we can say that the set has the property of being diverse. yet even though diversity is a property that can be predicated from a huge variety of sets, for the purpose of this article the evaluation of the role of diversity will be restricted to sets composed of sentient individuals. strictly speaking, diversity needs to be differentiated from numerical plurality or multiplicity. plurality as a property that also applies to sets would mean “a plural number of things”. numerical plurality just means a number greater than one. multiplicity or plurality are logically prior to diversity and therefore a necessary condition for it, but never sufficient, unless the things that are multiple in number are property-types. thus, diversity is a property that expresses whether the members of a set differ or not – and how much they do so – in a particular way. for example, we could have a plural number of wolves, without that implying diversity in any relevant sense, such as, for example, species diversity. however, what do we mean when we utter propositions such as “society x is diverse”? such a proposition is not very informative on the value of diversity. thus, the relevant question would be: what should be meant by sentences of this type? following common use of the word “diversity”, this word seems to be a thick evaluative concept already loaded with positive moral connotations. one of the reasons why we tend to apply positive connotations to diversity might be its frequent appearance in many relevant official documents, or in support of the human rights discourse. the 2001 unesco universal declaration on cultural diversity states in its first article that “as a source of exchange, innovation and creativity, cultural diversity is as necessary for humankind as biodiversity is for nature. in this sense, it is the common heritage of humanity and should be recognized and affirmed for the benefit of present and future generations” (2002, 4). http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 the harm they inflict when values conflict 69 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ diversity seems typically a good value to promote, but there is nothing necessarily good about diversity along some dimensions. the justification of the relevance of diversity that this document implies does not seem to commit to the defense of the intrinsic value of diversity. on the contrary, it recognizes its extrinsic value. the relevance of the good consequences is clearly manifested next in the text. finally, article 3 clearly states that cultural diversity is a crucial factor for development, as it widens the range of options to everyone, not only in economic terms, but also intellectual, affective, moral and spiritual. so even when the declaration does not use the term as a thick evaluative concept at all, but just as a value that is good, the relevance of the documents in which “diversity” is used, and the frequency with which it appears, seem to put the world in a morally privileged state. a paradigmatic case of the concept of diversity being loaded with evaluative meaning is the use of the concept “functional diversity”. within the disability literature, the expression “functional diversity” has commenced to substitute “disability” to describe the state that characterizes a person with a disability. by substituting “disabled body” by “body with diverse functioning” they make sure that disabled people become just part of the majority. actually they become part of the total set of individuals, because everyone has, by default, bodily functioning that is different from that of their fellows; either everybody is a person with a “diversely-functioning body”, or nobody is. thus, this inclusive term loses in explanatory power. it is difficult to disagree with the fact that there are many paradigmatic cases in which diversity seems to be a prima facie good value to promote. diversity of cultures in the world would be one of them. cultural diversity is of instrumental value as it is a launch pad for obtaining other good vales such as peace, tolerance or wider knowledge, as stated in the universal declaration on cultural diversity. however, the property “diversity” seems to be only an extensional way of referring to the set of individuals under consideration. it refers to the grade of variability in the typology or characteristics of the elements under consideration that we can find in a concrete set. the previous description does not provide any further information about the morally relevant characteristics of the individuals under consideration that count when it comes to deciding the properties that living individuals should have, because it focuses on a relational description. equality is also a relational concept and, as is the case with diversity, only the equality of certain things matters. thus, not all differences are good, and in some cases such as “diversity of health” or “diversity of income” there seems not to be any good aspect in such a distribution. thus, as a potential value, not all the ways in which a set can be diverse are morally relevant. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 julia mosquera 70 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ a particular population – a set of sentient individuals – might have a huge variety in types of haircuts without that being any relevant characteristic of the moral value of that population, or of the people’s lives within it. the same could be said about a population with considerable ideological diversity. let us see why. when we see many differences in a society we may have reasons to suspect it is particularly tolerant, but that might not be necessarily the case. diversyland is a society in which most of its citizens have different opinions. some would argue that this feature gives the society a great amount of value, due to the fact that every opinion or belief contains value in itself and therefore they are incommensurables. still, most of the opinions of the inhabitants of diversyland are stupid, morally bad and wrong. in this society everybody seems to make very innovative claims. there is considerable difference among these people’s opinions, which provides a huge range of available views about the world. nevertheless, among this tremendous diversity of opinion and this rich culture, the citizens of diversyland also seem to be quite ludicrous and often fail in terms of rightness. every person seems to give original hypotheses about the functioning of things: morality, the world, the universe, etc., but the fact that almost all the opinions of this society differ from all the others does not guarantee the quality of any of them, and therefore other important values such as rightness or wellbeing might end up being affected by this diversity which, in the end, seems rather more like disparity. the same reasoning might follow for many other examples. the reason why schools apply a diversity policy might be different from a commitment to integration and equality. hopefully this will not be common, but it might be the case that these policies represent an interest in capturing a larger number of students. nevertheless, even if this were the case, the fact that there were students from different countries, with different religions and different abilities, would be something to value for its presumably good consequences. hence, what is the nature of the value of diversity? ultimately, it seems that there is nothing particularly good about diversity of many things. wellbeing is a good example of this. a diverse distribution of wellbeing – i.e. wellbeing distributed in different quantities among the individuals of a group – seems not to be something to value at all. i have not denied that diversity could have extrinsic value and that its value could give us reasons to act in favor of it. what reasons are there for the case of intervention in nature? http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 the harm they inflict when values conflict 71 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 3. should we intervene in favor of diversity? a normative assessment of diversity going back to the policies that intervene in nature with the aim of promoting natural diversity, what these policies imply by their interventions is that the value of diversity is either (i) intrinsic, because they value diversity in itself, or (ii) dependent on other values. from what we have seen, it seems that diversity does have some value. if the value of diversity is dependent on the promotion of other values, these policies would seem to be addressing one of the following value judgements: to lose environmental diversity is bad because the diversity of the world […]. i. […] represents the traditional or historical natural order. this view represents a sort of general conservatism – namely natural conservatism – that may be motivated by different moral or theological reasons. under this view, traditional or historical orders are valuable and need to be conserved. ii. […] is a natural order. this view, though similar to (i), is motivated by the assumption that what has intrinsic value is natural environments. environmentalism would be an example of this view. iii. […] has aesthetic value. under this view, environmental diversity has aesthetic value. like a famous picture which is kept in a museum for its conservation, environmental diversity needs to be preserved as well. iv. […] helps to maintain ecosystems in good functioning. under this view, an ecosystem that functions optimally is what possesses value. some environmental policies assume this justification. now, for (iii) to be a coherent position of value-adscription it would seem reasonable that its advocates would aim not only to preserve diversity, but also to promote diversity whenever this was an available option that did not conflict with stronger values. why is it better that the already existing diversity be preserved rather than a greater amount of diversity being artificially created? the latter would not seem to be a popular policy. however, if intervening to prevent the existence of disabilities to avoid future suffering is bad due to the loss of human diversity that it implies, why not promote research to create lab-made new types of individuals? if we are prepared to kill thousands of individuals be cause they would make a particular type of plant in the area, why are not laboratories full of scientists designing new types of trees or flowers? http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 julia mosquera 72 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ however, there is a case in which the justification for the loss of diversity being bad seems reasonable. option (iv) seems to deserve some credibility as a justification of the interventions that promote diversity in nature. diversity is good for individuals as it helps to maintain systems and ecosystems in their correct functioning 2. a way of talking about the perils that the disappearance of diversity implies is by referring to the systemic risk of an ecosystem or ecosystem collapse (macdougall et al. 2013). this common term issued in biology refers to the fragmentation of habitats due to the lost of equilibrium among different species’ vital functions. if scientists are right about their predictions, the collapse of an ecosystem would imply the future progressive suffering of sentient beings by the pauperization of the living conditions that would hold in it. i have shown how intervention in nature must be guided by the protection of all individuals’ basic interests and how the promotion of diversity most commonly frustrates the interests of the vast majority of them, such as for example the interest in having a flourishing life or staying alive. nevertheless, biodiversity seems to be a clear case in which the promotion of diversity is valuable because it in turn promotes the wellbeing of all the sentient members of an ecosystem. if the previous biological prediction is true, the morally relevant consequences here of environmental change and loss of diversity would include, among others, the future suffering of sentient individuals. hence, the pertinent question that we should ask is: can future wellbeing ever justify present suffering? if the answer is yes, the policies we have been criticizing might in some cases have a possible justification. the conflict between the aims of ecology and the interests of nonhuman animals that live in the wild has been extensively highlighted (horta 2010; faria 2013). the problems caused to some animals by the implementation of the environmental policy of reintroducing wolves in a particular area in which they had previously disappeared (horta 2010) is just an example. intervening in nature to promote diversity by introducing new predators, or by killing thousands of members of a species, conflicts with the basic interests of many animals, such as the interest in staying alive, or the interest in having a flourishing live. moreover, this violates a sort of equality that matters, namely the equal consideration for all sentient beings. having said that, allowing harm to be inflicted on individuals is not 2 the mere maintenance of ecosystems in functioning does not seem to be valuable. the existence of ecosystems that function badly would probably allow a significant degree of harm for the individuals who inhabit it. moreover, it is not completely clear whether the painless disappearance of ecosystems would constitute a loss of value. believing so would imply the assumption that entities as ecosystems possess intrinsic value. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 the harm they inflict when values conflict 73 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ always wrong. we concede a certain amount of suffering to be justifiable in some cases, namely those in which this implies a benefit that exceeds the harmful consequences of the intervention. it might be the case that the policies of intervention in nature that promote diversity can save animals from a greater disvalue in the future, and therefore be morally compelling. a “keystone species” is the one identified by biologists as a species whose removal is expected to result in the disappearance of at least half of the assemblage considered (mills et al. 1993, 222). these species have a huge impact in the environment they live in. applied to the cases of nonhuman animals, it would seem that some animals are more relevant for ecosystems than others. a common case that illustrates this is bees. bees perform a crucial role as pollinators and thus their disappearance poses a real threat for the environment, as it would also imply the disappearance of many species of plants and trees whose only means of reproduction is pollination. as the number of pollinators is decreasing nowadays, some countries have decided to import them from other places. this is itself potentially problematic as it might cause a territorial conflict between old and new colonies, if the imported animals are bees, for example. one of the main moral problems derived from the use of the concept of “keystone species” is that very often keystone species are identified with predators. the reduction in numbers of some species of predators provokes an increase in other predators, or in consumers and competitors that, subsequently, extirpate several prey or competitor species. thus, it seems that the good functioning of an ecosystem already assumes predation – and therefore suffering – as a necessary part of itself, which, translated into moral terms, means the suffering, agony and the early death of thousands of non-human animals. ultimately, the problem has to do with what we consider that ecosystems should be and what their correct functioning should be. caring about the conservation of ecosystems at any cost should not be the aim of any policy of intervention in nature. intervention should consider a new variable for making calculations, namely that of the suffering of non-human animals, to decide when a policy is worth being undertaken. 4. when values conflict: the supremacy of individuals’ present wellbeing i have shown so far how diversity quite often has an important instrumental value and how there is not necessarily anything good about diversity as an end. i have mentioned some examples. it does not seem plausible to http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 julia mosquera 74 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ affirm that the value of diversity comes from its intrinsic properties. on the contrary, there are some contexts in which a diverse distribution seems not to be desirable independently of its consequences. this article concedes the moderate claim that diversity seems to be normatively relevant on some occasions. diversity does provide reasons for action in some cases. nevertheless, it is also committed to the claim that some values matter more than others. hence, when the promotion of diversity conflicts with other values such as individual wellbeing, diversity policies should be more carefully considered. the reason invoked here is that the promotion of the diversity of animal species, plants diversity, biodiversity in general, or even diversity of intellectual capabilities, is not normally morally required because such promotions of diversity conflict with other values that provide stronger reasons to act. allowing and/or promoting the existence of great differences among individuals in relation to their intellectual capacities – and therefore a great diversity – would be instrumentally good. surely, the knowledge we obtain from the mere existence of people with disabilities, their minds, bodies and behavior functioning in different ways, is valuable in different areas: medicine, science, politics, philosophy of mind, personal affection, and probably many others. this is something beneficial for our society, as it makes it more knowledgeable and rich in general terms. we could even agree with the fact that the existence of people with lower intellectual abilities makes us appreciate our higher complex intellectual functioning. are these strong enough reasons to reject the practices that avoid people with disabilities being born? preventing the existence of some types of individuals might create a disvalue in the amount of knowledge that exists in the world, but it might in return benefit us with a decrease in the levels of inequality and suffering, and presumably also harm if we consider the case of predators. furthermore, if the knowledge argument is coherent, why should not we increase the variety of capabilities and endowments in a laboratory, as the more types of distribution we have the greater the amount of knowledge a society would benefit from? however, the price to pay for this knowledge is too high, and permitting great differences in the natural distribution of endowments for the sake of knowledge seems perverse. if the benefit adduced with the promotion of diversity has to do with preventing the clash of ecosystems, intervening in nature in the name of diversity seems compelling. diversity in species of plants and non-human animals would only be a means for a greater long-term benefit that is actually related to individuals’ wellbeing. the equilibrium of ecosystems is important to secure conditions of habitability in this planet, and is therefore something that needs to be preserved. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 the harm they inflict when values conflict 75 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the objection against rejecting interventions in nature in the name of diversity would not affect our first case of diversity in the distribution of natural endowments, however. following the definition of keystone species, the disappearance of some types of human beings – namely those who are born with severe disabilities – would not seem to pose a threat to the environment they live in, in biological terms. for that to be the case, more than fifty per cent of the diversity of the environment they live in would have to disappear (mills et al. 1993), and that does not seem to be the case for their ceasing to come into existence. even more importantly, individuals with disabilities are not a species as such, but a type of individual that belongs to the species of human beings. the objection to intervening in nature in the name of diversity would nevertheless affect the case of biodiversity in ecosystems. still, an argument against present policies of natural management of nature in favor of diversity can be made. the argument against present policies of intervention in nature that favor diversity can be made by noting that considerations about long-run future harms have to be weighed against the current harm being inflicted on millions of currently existing sentient individuals. the good functioning of an ecosystem through the promotion of biodiversity would prevent the possible future suffering of non-human and human animals by avoiding the consequences of an ecosystem collapse. however, the prevention of future suffering by avoiding the loss of diversity is normally performed in a way that already consists of a huge amount of suffering. individuals that disrupt the diversity of a particular ecosystem must be exterminated, which involves millions of deaths and suffering. moreover, ecosystem conservation assumes within its premises the function of predation as indispensable, which also results in the current suffering and deaths of millions of individuals as victims of predation. ultimately, more scientific research is needed in order to be able to quantify the loss and the speed at which the degeneration of an ecosystem would be produced due to the loss of diversity. future environmental and biological research might show that the harming interventions – which translate into a huge amount of suffering for sentient individuals – that this paper has been discussing, might not be worthwhile in the end. only the possibility of avoiding catastrophically bad consequences for sentient individuals in the future – greater than the ones already suffered by many non-human animals – could justify such policies. as it does not seem possible to guarantee this hypothesis at the moment, diversity policies such as the ones discussed in this paper should be abandoned. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 julia mosquera 76 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 5. conclusion i have concluded that diversity contributes to personal wellbeing. nevertheless, diversity as a value can sometimes be overridden. the reason for this is that in some cases diversity promotes a great amount of actual current suffering over an uncertain amount of future prevention of harm. this paper has shown that long-run benefits to individuals’ wellbeing need to be weighed against current suffering already being inflicted on individuals. still, more scientific research is needed in order to weigh such harms and benefits. more specifically, more moral and biological research needs to be done on the issue of interspecies comparisons of wellbeing to find the best way of prioritizing some policies of intervention over others. a sentient-based approach to ecosystem functioning is also needed. a shift in the way correct ecosystem functioning is understood is crucial for this. this new approach needs to give up considering non-human animals as mere parts of the ecosystem they live in. unlike plants, rivers or mountains, non-human animals are sentient individuals, and therefore possess moral standing. a crucial challenge for a new sentient-based understanding of ecosystem functioning is the existence of predation. predators are sentient individuals who are typically responsible for high levels of suffering that they inflict on other individuals, namely their prey. optimally perfect ecosystems are always thought to contain the function of predation within the rest of functions that typically guarantee a well operating ecosystem. some ways of avoiding predation have already been proposed. the painless extinction of predators could be one way of proceeding. genetically reprogramming the instincts of predators so that they stop being hunters, but also their metabolisms so that they can survive with a meat-free diet, would be another possible way to proceed. again, for this case, more research is needed in order to evaluate the feasibility of such policies. finally, a shift in how we generally understand intervention in nature is needed. diversity loss may lead all sentient individuals to live in an impoverished future ecosystem. however, current problems such as parasitism, natural disasters, predation or illnesses already mean that a great number of individuals that live in the wild have to live very short and poor lives. if preventing possible future suffering gives us reasons to intervene in nature, it seems obvious that a considerable amount of current suffering would mean that we are required to intervene in favor of the victims of such events. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 the harm they inflict when values conflict 77 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ references faria, catia. 2012. “muerte entre las flores: el conflicto entre el ecologismo y la defensa de los intereses de los animales no humanos”. viento sur 165: 67-76. horta, oscar. 2010. “the ethics of the ecology of fear against the nonspeciesist paradigm: a shift in the aims of intervention in nature”. between the species 10: 163-87. macdougall, andrew s., kevin s. mccann, gabriel gellner, and ron turkington. 2013. “diversity loss with persistent human disturbance increases vulnerability to ecosystem collapse”. nature 494: 86-9. doi: 10.1038/nature11869. mills, scott l., michael e. soulé, and daniel f. doak. 1993. “the keystone-species concept in ecology and conservation”. bioscience 43 (4): 219-24. parfit, derek. (1984) 1986. reasons and persons. reprint, oxford: oxford university press. pearce, david. 2009. “reprogramming predators”. the abolitionist project. http:// www.hedweb.com/abolitionist-project/reprogramming-predators.html. unesco. 2002. “unesco universal declaration on cultural diversity”. cultural diversity series 1. http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0012/001271/127162e. pdf. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 http://www.hedweb.com/abolitionist-project/reprogramming-predators.html http://www.hedweb.com/abolitionist-project/reprogramming-predators.html http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0012/001271/127162e.pdf http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0012/001271/127162e.pdf can the humanities become post-human? interview with rosi braidotti can the humanities become post-human? interview with rosi braidotti cosetta veronese marie curie research fellow, universität basel doi: 10.7358/rela-2016-001-vero c.m.veronese@googlemail.com rosi braidotti is distinguished university professor and founding director of the centre for the humanities at utrecht university. she was the founding professor of gender studies in the humanities at utrecht (1988-2005) and the first scientific director of the netherlands research school of women’s studies. she is an established scholar in the field of continental philosophy and epistemology, feminist and gender theories and post-structuralist thought. her books include patterns of dissonance (1991), nomadic subjects (1994, 2011 2nd edn.), metamorphoses (2002), transpositions (2006), nomadic theory (2011), and the posthuman (2013). together with paul gilroy she has recently edited the volume conflicting humanities (2016). cv: your latest book is called the posthuman. in consideration of your philosophical development, which is rooted in the study of foucault, in an uninterrupted dialogue with deleuze as well as in feminism and feminist activism, could you explain how your idea of posthumanism developed? in other words, what have been your transitions on the way towards posthumanism? rb: for me as a student of foucault, deleuze and irigaray, the crisis of humanism means the rejection of all forms of universalism, including the socialist variation. “man” cannot claim to represent all humanity because that “man” is a culture-specific, gender-specific, race-specific and classspecific entity: is it a european, male, white, intellectual ideal. moreover, that ideal posits itself as a norm that everyone else is supposed to imitate and aspire to; but all those who differ from the eurocentric, masculinist, white, intellectual norm are classified as “different from’ it. and being “different from” means “to be worth less than”. this hierarchical organization of difference as negative becomes a very politicized issue for feminists, post-colonial and anti-racist thinkers. mailto:c.m.veronese@googlemail.com http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 cosetta veronese 98 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ in fact, if you think about it, the structural others of the humanistic subject re-emerge with a vengeance in postmodernity (braidotti 2002). it is a historical fact that the great emancipatory movements of postmodernity are driven and fuelled by the resurgent “others”: the women’s rights movement; the anti-racism and de-colonization movements; the anti-nuclear and pro-environment movements are the voices of the structural “others” of modernity. they inevitably mark the crisis of the former humanist “centre” or dominant subject-position and are not merely anti-humanist, but move beyond it to an altogether novel project. these social and political movements are simultaneously the symptom of the crisis of the subject, and for conservatives even its “cause”, and also the expression of positive, pro-active alternatives. in the language of my nomadic theory (braidotti 2011a; 2011b), they express both the crisis of the majority and the patterns of becoming of the minorities. the challenge for critical theory consists in being able to tell the difference between these different flows of mutation. in other words, the posthumanist position i am defending builds on the anti-humanist legacy, more specifically on the epistemological and political foundations of the poststructuralist generation, and moves further. the alternative views about the human and the new formations of subjectivity that have emerged from the radical epistemologies of continental philosophy in the last thirty years do not merely oppose humanism but create other visions of the self. sexualized, racialized and naturalized differences, far from being the categorical boundary-keepers of the subject of humanism, have evolved into fully-fledged alternative models of the human subject. cv: among the tenets of posthuman theory you mention “trans-disciplinarity”. in what does it differ from the more traditional notion of “interdisciplinarity”? what are your suggestions for the new vocabulary that the humanities have to build in order to face the challenges of posthumanism? rb: posthuman critical theory needs to apply a new vision of subjectivity to both the practice and the public perception of the scientist, which is still caught in the classical and outmoded model of the humanistic “man of reason” (lloyd 1984) as the quintessential european citizen. we need to overcome this model and move towards an intensive form of interdisciplinarity, transversality, and boundary-crossings among a range of discourses. this trans-disciplinary approach affects the very structure of thought and enacts a rhizomatic embrace of conceptual diversity in scholarship. the posthuman method amounts to higher degrees of disciplinary hybridization and relies on intense de-familiarization of our habits of thought through encounters that shatter the flat repetition of the protocols of institutional reason. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 can the humanities become post-human? 99 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ cv: if posthumanism means demolishing dualism, breaking disciplinary boundaries (as well as nationalistic and political boundaries), in essence: getting rid of the humanistic western paradigm (as well as of any other auxiliary paradigm, which would only bring us back to humanism), which alternatives do we have to make us accountable for the world we live in? rb: the social theory literature on shared anxiety about the future of both our species and of our humanist legacy is also rich and varied. important liberal thinkers like habermas (2003) and influential ones like fuku ya ma (2002) are very alert on this issue, as are social critics like sloterdijk (2009) and borradori (2003). in different ways, they express deep concern for the status of the human, and seem particularly struck by moral and cognitive panic at the prospect of the posthuman turn, blaming our advanced technologies for it. i share their concern, but as a posthuman thinker with distinct anti-humanist feelings, i am less prone to panic at the prospect of a displacement of the centrality of the human and can also see the advantages of such an evolution. i define the critical posthuman subject within an eco-philosophy of multiple belongings, as a relational subject constituted in and by multiplicity, that is to say a subject that works across differences and is also internally differentiated, but still grounded and accountable. posthuman subjectivity is nomadic and it expresses an embodied and embedded and hence partial form of accountability, based on a strong sense of collectivity, relationality and hence community building. my position is in favour of complexity and promotes radical posthuman subjectivity, resting on the ethics of becoming. the focus is shifted accordingly from unitary to nomadic subjectivity, thus running against the grain of high humanism and its contemporary variations. this view rejects individualism, but also asserts an equally strong distance from relativism or nihilistic defeatism. it promotes an ethical bond of an altogether different sort from the self-interests of an individual subject, as defined along the canonical lines of classical humanism. a posthuman ethics for a nonunitary subject proposes an enlarged sense of inter-connection between self and others, including the non-human or “earth” others, by removing the obstacle of self-centred individualism. contemporary bio-genetic capitalism generates a global form of reactive mutual inter-dependence of all living organisms, including non-humans. this sort of unity tends to be of the negative kind, as a shared form of vulnerability, that is to say a global sense of inter-connection between the human and the non-human environment in the face of common threats. the posthuman recomposition of human interaction that i propose is not the same as the reactive bond of vulnerability, but it is an affirmative bond that locates the subject in the flow of relations with multiple others. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 cosetta veronese 100 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ labouring towards a non-unitary posthuman subject, “we” need to acknowledge that there may well be multiple and potentially contradictory projects at stake in the complex re-compositions of “the human” right now: many complex and contested ways of becoming-world together. cv: in the keynote speech you gave at the university of zurich on may 24, 2014, on the occasion of the annual conference of aais, you mentioned “two areas of studies that are the making of post-anthropocentric humanities: namely animal studies and ecocriticism”. how do you explain their importance in relation to what you suggest are the fundamental requirements of posthumanism, namely the necessity for it to be situated, i.e. “embodied and embedded”, “affirmative”, i.e. constructive, and for it to call for our accountability? rb: it is absolutely true however that, once the centrality of anthropos is challenged, a number of boundaries between “man” and his others go tumbling down, in a cascade effect that opens up unexpected perspectives. thus, if the crisis of humanism inaugurates the posthuman by empowering the sexualized and racialized human “others” to emancipate themselves from the dialectics of master-slave relations, the crisis of anthropos relinquishes the demonic forces of the naturalized others. animals, insects, plants and the environment, in fact the planet and the cosmos as a whole, are called into play. this places a different burden of responsibility on our species, which is the primary cause for the mess. the fact that our geological era is known as the “anthropocene” stresses both the technologically mediated power acquired by anthropos and its potentially lethal consequences for everyone else. the crisis is especially strong in the human and social sciences, because they are the most anthropocentric fields of scholarly research. how can a historian or a philosopher think of humans as being “part of nature”, considering that academic discourse continues to claim transcendental grounds for human consciousness? how to reconcile this materialist awareness with the task of critical thought? as a brand of vital materialism, posthuman theory contests the arrogance of anthropocentrism and the “exceptionalism” of the human as a transcendental category. it strikes instead an alliance with the productive and immanent force of zoe, or life in its nonhuman aspects. this requires a mutation of our shared understanding of what it means to think at all, let alone think critically. in my book i argue that the return to spinozist monism, as opposed to hegelian dialectics – which occurs back in the 1970’s with the generation of my teachers  –, is now finally becoming visible. monism gives us conceptual tools and a terminology to address humans as being part of a continuum with all living matter. it is a great advantage. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 can the humanities become post-human? 101 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the question is consequently what the humanities can become, in the posthuman era and after the decline of the primacy of “man” and of anthropos. my argument is that, far from being a terminal crisis, these challenges open up new global, eco-sophical, posthumanist and postanthropocentric dimensions for the humanities. they are expressed by a second generation of “studies” areas. thus animal studies and eco-criticism have grown into such rich and well-articulated fields, that it is impossible to even attempt to summarize them. cultural studies of science and society; religion studies; disability studies; fat studies; success studies; celebrity studies; globalization studies are further significant examples of the exuberant state of the new humanities in the twenty-first century. new media has proliferated into a whole series of sub-sections and meta-fields: software studies, internet studies, game studies and more. this vitality justifies the optimism expressed by matthew fuller about the future of the humanities, with media theory and media philosophy providing the new ontological grounds for knowledge production, while the curriculum of the traditional humanities disciplines – notably philosophy – resists any interdisciplinary contamination. references borradori, giovanna. 2003. philosophy in a time of terror. chicago: university of chicago press. braidotti, rosi. 2002. metamorphoses: towards a materialist theory of becoming. cambridge: polity press. 2011a. nomadic subjects: embodiments and sexual difference in contemporary feminist theory, 2nd edn. new york: columbia university press. 2011b. nomadic theory: the portable rosi braidotti. new york: columbia university press. fukuyama, francis. 2002. our posthuman future. consequences of the biotechnological revolution. london: profile books. habermas, jürgen. 2003. the future of human nature. cambridge: polity press. lloyd, genevieve. 1984. the man of reason: male and female in western philosophy. london: methuen. sloterdijk, peter. 2009. “rules for the human zoo: a response to the ‘letter on humanism’”. environment and planning d: society and space 27 (1): 12-28. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 deep breathing ecocriticism: stories, matter, and spiritual dimensions deep breathing ecocriticism stories, matter, and spiritual dimensions alessandro macilenti phd graduate, victoria university of wellington amaci@onenetbeyond.org iovino, serenella, and serpil oppermann, eds. 2014. material ecocriticism. bloomington: indiana university press. 376 pp. $ 40.00 isbn 978-0-253-01398-9 the relationship between stories and matter has been recently gaining relevancy in ecocritical theory. edited by serenella iovino and serpil oppermann, material ecocriticism collects a number of essays that invite the reader to take a deep look at at the borders between stories and matter and, in fact, at the narrative potential of things. material ecocriticism includes contributions from prominent ecocriticists such as simon c. estok, stacy alaimo, cheryll glotfelty, timothy morton, greta gaard, david abram, joni adamson, hubert zapf, heather sullivan, as well as from prominent scholars active, for example, in the fields of the new materialisms (jane bennett), biosemiotics (wendy wheeler, timo maran) and disability studies (eli clare). as a subfield of ecocriticism, material ecocriticism is as diverse as it is young. this collection of essays reflects the diversity of the insights that converge into it, providing an exciting array of critical ideas, including approaches informed by biosemiotics, ecology of mind, ecological postmodernism, cultural ecology, posthumanism, “thing theory” and object-oriented onthology. this diversity of views creates a mosaic of complementary approaches that enrich the field and demonstrate its vitality and originality. material ecocriticism is organised in five sections plus a closure, each investigating a different aspect of the discipline. the first, “theories and relations”, is a theorethical introduction to material ecocriticism, comprising essays connecting material ecocriticism with biosemiotics, systems theory and posthumanism. it includes contributions from serpil oppermann, hannes bergthaller, hubert zapf, wendy wheeler and heather sullivan. by showcasing a few of the theoretical approaches that define material ecocriticism, this section highlights its interpretive potential. the mailto:amaci@onenetbeyond.org http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 alessandro macilenti 126 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ second section, “narratives of matter” unfolds the meanings of matter and illustrates its interaction with human and non-human bodies. this section includes contributions from serenella iovino, lowell duckert, simon c. estok and timo maran. in “narratives of matter”, readers learn how stories can be decoded from matter, and about the relevance of storied matter. the third section is titled “politics of matter”. here, catriona sandilands, dana phillips, stacy alaimo and eli clare demonstrate how non-human species, disabled bodies, oceans and even excrement constitute political entities: not only does matter tells us stories, but these stories have a definite ethical bent that cannot be ignored. the fourth part focuses on the “poetics of matter”, where cheryll glotfelty, jane bennett, joni adamson and timothy morton discuss the creative potential of matter. just as matter considered as a political entity expresses meaning, it also creates it in a process of “mutual making” with those that come into contact with it (iovino and oppermann 2014, 15). the fifth section is a diptych on material spirituality where kate rigby and greta gaard examine the possibility of a dialogue between material ecocriticism and non-dualistic practices such as buddhism and aboriginal traditions. this section suggests that material ecocriticism is a contemporary unfolding of ancient traditions that preceded the development of dualistic thought. david abrams concludes material ecocriticism with a reflection on the roots of the philosophical disconnection between mind and matter in mainstream western thought, thus bringing together all of the themes so far encountered. as a subfield of ecocriticism, material ecocriticism attempts to investigate the narrative potential of matter. new materialisms abandon the worldview that perceives non-human beings and matter as passive receptacles of (white and male) human agency. instead, they outline human agency as just one instance of the “vast network of agency” that determines the phenomenal world (iovino and oppermann 2014, 1). according to the new materialisms, it is possible to read in animal, plant, fungal, bacterial and inanimate matter stories that are as valuable and as worth narrating as humans narratives are. narrative is, inevitably, the way the human mind perceives and organises information, so claiming to understand the narratives of matter is undeniably a form of anthropomorphism. however, new materialisms propose a non-anthropocentric anthropomorphism that recognises the diverse intelligences that saturate the world, intelligences that human intelligence can and should attempt to contact. in doing so new materialisms negate the “centrism” in anthropocentrism, and deny the dichotomy between meaning and matter. humanity certainly has much to learn from non-human narratives, and academia badly needs to relearn the lessons in observation that come from traditional societies and practices http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 serenella iovino and serpil oppermann, eds., “material ecocriticism” 127 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ that have from time immemorial taken for granted what the authors of the essays included in material ecocriticism assert. in particular, the insights of timothy morton, greta gaard and david abrams, implicitly or explicitly inspired and informed by buddhist practice, highlight the fundamental oneness of material and spiritual experience. in this way, material ecocriticism returns to the practice of prajna, that allows, through an attention unadulterated by intellectual activity, to experience no definite separation between the so-called spiritual, intellectual, emotive and material spheres 1. timothy morton’s essay, the liminal space between things invites us to explore the idea of “interbeing” (or, “the mesh” in morton’s words), that is, everything exists only insofar as it interacts with everything else 2. things in themselves are “made of nothingness” (iovino and oppermann 2014, 278). coming to terms with the fundamental emptiness of reality, overcoming the horror vacui that has plagued western philosophy since plato, morton argues, should be the ultimate goal of material ecocriticism. similarly, greta gaard eloquently explores the similarities between buddhism and new materialisms in her essay, mindful new materialisms. with the premise that a scholarly approach to buddhism is necessarily unsatisfactory because its insights cannot be grasped through intellect alone, gaard’s comparison of the philosophical framework of buddhism – and in particular the concepts of emptiness, impermanence and codependent origination – with those of the new materialisms enables an enhanced understanding of new materialist ideas. both new materialisms and the more “engaged” varieties of buddhism encourage practitioners to become involved with society in order to contribute to its compassionate development. in particular, material ecocriticism invites a scholarly discussion within the humanities and beyond about the current ecological unbalance. however, i take issue with gaard’s claim that buddhism is a spiritual practice, because doing so propagates the view that the spiritual and material dimensions are somehow separated and independent: as the zen priest brad warner argues in his book sit down and shut up, “buddhism is not spirituality […] buddha’s solution wasn’t to deny the materialistic view in favor of a spiritual one” (2007, 207). likewise, material ecocriticism illustrates that new materialistic approaches strive to 1 in buddhism, prajna is the insight into the impermanence, unsatisfactoriness and emptiness of reality. 2 the concept of “interbeing” was developed by the vietnamese zen monk thich nhat hanh to express the impossibility of finding discrete borders between objects. “interbeing” condenses the buddhist teachings of emptiness (śūnyatā) and codependent origination (prat ̄tyasamutpāda). http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 alessandro macilenti 128 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ deconstruct the perceived borders between meaning and matter, culture and nature, human and non-human, self and other, for none of these can be conceivable absent the other. like engaged buddhism, eco-materialisms conceive nature and ecology as “inclusive of everything, especially ourselves”, and therefore talking about degraded environments means talking about degraded humanity (iovino and oppermann 2014, 296). the essay that concludes material ecocriticism is david abram’s the commonwealth of breath, a title which refers to the interdependence of all things. in his contribution, abram reflects on the significance of breath, wind and air in judaism, buddhism and north american shamanic traditions: although diverse, these practices all sacralise the air that sustains life. in judaism, abram writes, god’s name is “the four-letter name that – rightly spoken – is not other than the inhale and the exhale, the living breath of awareness” (iovino and oppermann 2014, 307). likewise, the buddha promoted a-napa-nasati – mindfulness of breathing – as the main meditation technique that leads to the development of the factors of awakening (bodhi bhikku 1995, 941-8). as well as judaism and buddhism, many north american traditional societies, abram argues, also identify the air as the root of mind and wisdom, the breath-soul. but although air and breath connect all sentient beings, abram notes that western philosophy and society seem to have forgotten the power of breath and the unity of matter and spirit, a split that he traces back to the development of the phonetic alphabet, which allowed the ancient greeks to represent and, consequently, desacralise the invisible (iovino and oppermann 2014, 309). abram suggests that returning to an oral story-telling reconnects humans to breath and spoken traditions allowing a renewed “participation in the more-than-human community” (iovino and oppermann 2014, 311). in addition, abram advises that ecocritics should be particularly aware of the fact that, unlike orality, the written word excludes non-human beings from our conversations, and thus invites academics (in a somewhat socratic turn) to engage in face-toface conversations with humans, non-humans and elements and to reconnect our mind with the “broad intelligence of the biosphere” (iovino and oppermann 2014, 313). for some of us, it is indeed a radical suggestion that our quest for insight would be better served if we reconnected with our breath, closed our word processors, turned off our computers, and went out for a walk to feel the cool wind and the acid rain, smell the wet earth and the city’s smog, and cheer up to the chirrup of birds within the din of traffic. humans have now exceeded the carrying capacity of the earth, thus damaging its life support systems, a situation brought about in part by the positivist belief in a cartesian understanding of mind as an active principle http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 serenella iovino and serpil oppermann, eds., “material ecocriticism” 129 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ which dominates the passive principle of matter. in this backdrop, material ecocriticism performs a much-needed balancing act. it demonstrates a middle way between the frustrating extremes of a materialism that denies meaning and a spirituality that derogates matter. instead, through restoring our capacity to listen to the stories that matter tells us, material ecocriticism (as a book as much as as an academic movement) allows us to notice the subtle ways through which matter asserts its own agency, bringing about the realisation that we belong to a world more alive than we thought possible. references bodhi bhikku, ed. 1995. the middle length discourses of the buddha: a translation of the majjhima nikaya. somerville: wisdom publications. iovino, serenella, and serpil oppermann, eds. 2014. material ecocriticism. bloomington: indiana university press. warner, brad. 2007. sit down and shut up: punk rock commentaries on buddha, god, truth, sex, death & dogen’s treasury of the right dharma eye. novato, ca: new world library. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 the living in lucretius’ de rerum natura: animals’ ataraxia and humans' distress the living in lucretius’ de rerum natura animals’ ataraxia and humans’ distress alma massaro phd, university of genoa, italy doi: 10.7358/rela-2014-002-mass almamassaro@gmail.com abstract in trying to comprehend the human role among other living beings from an antispeciesist point of view it is possible to look back to those thinkers who, far before our times, had already considered other living beings from a non-anthropocentric perspective. in this sense, a dialogue with the ancients could be a useful way to identify a more solid ground on which to build a new relationship with the world of nature. for this reason in the following pages i suggest reading lucretius’ “de rerum natura” giving emphasis to the role of animals in order to understand the poet’s pluralistic view. in the first part of my paper i will briefly focus on the poet’s own epicureanism while, in the second part, i will address two notable passages of lucretius’ poem – those of iphigenia’s sacrifice and of the bereaved cow – where it emerges both the guilt of human beings, who are compromised by an impious religion (“religio”), and the correct devotion (the true “pietas”) of animals to the laws of nature. eventually, as i will try to outline, lucretius presents animals as models for human serenity and, as i will point out, he suggests that our opportunity to find happiness also depends upon them. keywords: lucretius, de rerum natura, ethics, animal ethics, cruel sacrifice, contractualism, epicureanism, ataraxia, nature, civilization. 1. introduction almost two millennia ago, a latin poet, lucretius, wrote his masterpiece, de rerum natura, wondering what the source of all human sorrows is and what humans should do in order to achieve the only goal of their lives, that is serenity (ii 55-61, iii 1070-5; epicurus, principal doctrines, 11 and vatican sayings, 14). interestingly, throughout the whole poem several poetical references to non-human animals occur, creating a complex scenario where humans are not set apart from the rest of living creatures. as boyancé notices, lucretius’ attentiveness for animal lives does not come only from http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ alma massaro 46 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the poet’s personal interest in living beings, but also from the doctrinal motive in his quest for human earthly serenity: “lucretius shows interest in living beings. and this is because of both a natural sympathy towards animals and his doctrinal research for serenity” (boyancé 1970, 155) 1. in fact, by means of a reading of the poem focused on the role of animals, the poet’s interest for the living emerges alongside his care in observing the non-human world, as expressed through his solicitude in front of a bereaving cow (book ii); through the several attacks against cruel sacrifice (book i, ii, iii, iv, vi); and through the condemnation of the violent use of animals in wars (book v). at the same time, his concern for non-human world is expressed through his use of domesticated animals as a model for human happiness. comparing animals, especially domesticated ones, to humans, he observes the former live a happier life than the latter, and that is because, he notes, they live a life that is more adherent to the laws of nature which represent the only norms humans should follow in order to achieve serenity (i 80-135, ii 1-61, iii 31-93, v 43-54). humans, he affirms, ignoring the laws of nature, spend a great part of their lives caring about things – ambition for richness and power, fear of death and of gods – which are extraneous to the epicurean ideal of ataraxia (i 80-135, ii 1-61, iii 31-93, v 43-54); in contrast, animals, being faithful to the laws of nature, are completely devoid of these anxieties 2. on this basis he develops a system in which domesticated animals become models for human life. moving from epicurus’ materialistic philosophy, lucretius develops a non-anthropocentric view of the universe, in which non-human living beings are inherently the owners of the same values generally attributed to humans. since humans and animals share a common origin regarding their bodies and souls – both composed by the aggregation of different kinds of atoms (book iii) – the poet concludes that the universe is a paratactic system of living organisms where there is no room for human superiority (dionigi 2007, 112). nature, that is the homogeneous nature of materialism (dionigi 2008, 33), is the common source of vegetal, animal and human life (v 795-823). and life, in all its manifestations, both on the atomical and individual level, is made possible through the stipulation of pacts. 1 translation is mine. 2 see saylor 1972, 309 where the author observes as this contrast is symbolically presented in the double passage of ii 317-32: “lucretius here is employing his usual dualism when depicting how man wrongly views (or participates in) a natural, productive process that should be free of fear, and the sheep merely supply a correction on that fearful view”. the living in lucretius’ “de rerum natura” 47 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 2. physical origins: the universe, humans, and animals when explaining the genesis of both human and non-human life on earth, lucretius says that all the life forms that have existed until now have their origin in the collision of atoms (book i, ii). atoms, the smallest particles of matter, are in motion from an infinite time moving through the infinite void (i 1021-8, ii 80-141). thanks to the clinamen (ii 216-24), that is the unforeseeable deviation from straight motion, collisions among atoms happen and aggregations among them are, therefore, possible. the whole reality of the universe, says the poet, has originated from these collisions (v 419-31). aggregation and separation among atoms are at the roots of life and death: union causes life while separation causes death (i 149-264). from this union, an indefinite variety of compounds comes to life from which the earth and what it holds emerges. these collisions, being unpredictable, draw a completely casual order of life, where no necessity exists. as we will see, each aggregate in order to exist needs an agreement, that is a pact, among the atoms from which they are compounded (foedera naturae: v 924); and when these pacts are broken, the aggregate vanishes and its atoms return to primordial chaos (ii 62-5). living organisms are just special kinds of atomic aggregates that, alongside with the agreement among atoms, need to satisfy certain characteristics in order to be saved from extinction and assure the continuity of the species. physiologically they need feeding and sexual organs (v 849-54) and, contemporarily, one of the following “virtues” (v 857-77): intelligence (ingenium), that is human ability to respond to their needs creating artificial tools; cunning (dolus), i.e. the fox’s cunning; daring (virtus), as wild beasts’ fierceness and strength; mobility (mobilitas), i.e. speed, which, for instance, lets the stag and others wild beasts escape from dangers; utility (utilitas), that is what lets the animals, lacking the above virtues, serve humans in return for protection. although lucretius never delineates it explicitly, from the above one can divide the living world into distinct parts: humans and animals. to the first class belong the intelligence and the ability to create; the second class is, in turn, divisible in two categories: those animals which are in possession of a virtue sufficient to guarantee their survival (dolus, virtus, mobilitas) and who live in isolated places (v 200-2) – that is, savage beasts and wild animals –; and those animals who have decided to stipulate a collaboration pact with human beings, giving their utility (utilitas) in return for protection (tutela) (v 860-77) – that is, domesticated animals. in this sense, the relationship between human and domestic animals is set up as a mutual exchange (shelton 1996) in which both parts benefit from mutual alma massaro 48 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ collaboration. but those animals – savage beasts and wild animals – who did not want to take part into the contract have to be avoided because they could represent a possible threat to peace and, therefore, serenity (v 39-42; epicurus, principal doctrines, 32-3). in this universe, divided into humans, wild beasts and domestic animals, lucretius reserves his harshest terms for human beings, describing them as imperfect, sad, and poorly constructed when compared with animals, to whom nature supplies everything: then too the baby, like to a sailor cast away by the cruel waves, lies naked on the ground, speechless, wanting every furtherance of life, soon as nature by the throes of birth has shed him forth from his mother’s womb into the borders of light: he fills the room with a rueful wauling, as well he may whose destiny it is to go through in life so many ills. but the different flocks, herds, and wild beasts grown up; they want no rattles; to none of them need be addressed the fond broken accents of the fostering nurse; they ask not different dresses according to the season; no nor do they want arms or lofty walls, whereby to protect their own, the earth itself and nature manifold in her works producing in plenty all things for all. (v 222-34) if humans spend their time in this life caring for things – ambition, lust for power and wealth – completely foreign to the ideal ataraxia promoted by the epicurean doctrine, on the contrary animals remain faithful to the criterion of truth which comes from the sense. in fact, following epicurus’ gnoseology, lucretius considers reason as the main human faculty but not as the highest one. knowledge, he says, comes from the senses (iv 469-513; epicurus, principal doctrines, 23-4 and letter to herodotus, 38-9, 63-8 and 82), which are common both to humans and animals, while reason and imagination, possessed primarily by human beings, falsify the elements coming from sensation (iv 379-468; epicurus, principal doctrines, 24 and letter to herodotus, 50-1). in so doing, the poem denounces the ambivalent power of reason which, thus, loses its paramount role. and with reason, also human beings lose their supposed supremacy (v 988-1142). similarly, on the moral level, good and evil are not something fixed, concerning only reason and human beings, but come from the faithfulness to the laws of nature, which teach the search for pleasure 3 and the avoidance of pain. therefore good and evil are something common to both humans and animals. from the above it follows that in the poem the subdivision of the “living” does not imply a hierarchy of earthly species, rather lucretius affirms the equality of all living beings. in doing so he opposes the anthro 3 regarding the epicurean classification of pleasure see epicurus, letter to menoeceus, 129-32; principal doctrines, iii, iv, viii-xi, xv, xvi, xviii-xxi, xxvi and vatican sayings, 4, 17, 21, 42, 68-9, 71, 80-1. the living in lucretius’ “de rerum natura” 49 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ pocentric idea – widely held by his contemporaries – of human beings as the undisputed kings of the universe (v 738-820, 925-1010). in order to corroborate his horizontal view he confronts the reader with a series of examples showing how animals resemble humankind. animals, he says, especially those who have been domesticated, are subject to the same emotions of human beings, as pleasure (i 1-49), love (iv 1192-208), affection, sadness, distress (ii 352-66), and fear (v 1056-61); like humans, animals display willingness (ii 263-71, iv 883-4); their sleep includes the dream state (iv 916-1036); and, though speechless, they are able to express their feelings and emotions vocally (v 1062-91). furthermore, adds the poet, the same tripartition – spirit, soul, and body (animus, anima, corpus) – is at the base of the possibilities of human and different animal species life (book iii); knowledge comes from sensation for every creature (i 398-417); and all living beings must follow the same laws of nature (the foedera natura: v 924). hence, corporeal differences – which allow us to perceive the various species as different from each other – are nothing more than the multiple variations that the identical common base can assume – just as atoms, equivalent according to the being, are different according to the shape. 3. pacts: historical roots in the same way the earth needs an agreement among atoms in order to exist (foedera natura: v 924), living beings need pacts to reach stability (communia foedera pacis: v 1155). at the roots of human evolution there are, in fact, the relations that each human has with his/her neighbours. in telling the history of human life, lucretius explains that human beings, in their primitive state, led a lonely and wild life, bound to the law of survival of the fittest (v 988-1010). only later, when humans started to engage in non-aggression and mutual collaboration pacts with each other and with other living beings with whom they shared the planet, did their life become less isolated (v 1011-27). at some point in their evolution human beings formed alliances: first with their partners, then with their offspring, then with neighbours, and, finally, with those animals that could be domesticated. it is thanks to these non-aggression and collaboration pacts that a short golden age started, in which humans were faithful to pacts (v 110512). but this idyllic state ended precisely when “ambition was invented” and “gold was discovered” (v 1113-60), that is, when the bases of the corrupted civilization were founded and human beings were condemned to a life of troubles. alma massaro 50 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ lucretius contrasts humans’ anxious, unstoppable, and aimless search for power (v 1430-4) with the simplicity of animal life. for the latter, in fact, the lack of intelligence, initially seen as a disadvantage because it condemns them not to experience the great comfort which follows from progress, changes into a tool necessary to reach a serene existence. like animals, the poet claims, humans of the golden age judged things according to “beauty and strength” (v 1105-12), until ambition got the upper hand. therefore animals represent the precise embodiment of the possibility of conducting a serene life on this earth even today. nature, a generous mother (ii 991-8), provides everything to animals, who, in turn, remain faithful to the sensitive criterion of truth and follow only natural pleasures – as epicureanism teaches us – as they do not care about the foolish opinion of others and are completely unfamiliar with ambitions and lust for power. 4. the meaning of pacts before going on to analyze the previously mentioned passages about the practice of cruel sacrifices, it is worth noting something more on the idea of pact. as we saw above, lucretius says it is the event which, in the history of the universe, permits the whole of reality to start existing. similarly, in the history of humanity, it is the event from which human beings developed from an initial indigence to a fully civilized state and, at the same time, permits some animals to become domesticated. therefore, in the same way the earth needs an agreement between atoms (foedera natura), in order to reach an equilibrium, so human beings need an agreement between them in order to live a serene life (communia foedera pacis). hence, we can say that, at the roots of evolution, the poet identifies the relations that each human being maintains with their fellow beings and domestic animals, in each of these relations there is always the idea of a reciprocity based on an agreement stipulated in a non defined time of the past. and as foedera natura could not be broken without provoking a regression to chaos and undifferentiated existence, civilized humans cannot break pacts with other living beings without causing a regression to their primordial fierceness and loneliness. it is worth noting that as there exists no necessity in the genesis of the physical world (clinamen), similarly it does not exists in the formation of the civil life. pacts come, in fact, from the free will of each individual to share a life in communion with others. hence in this perspective there is no room for a speciesist order since each individual, human and animal, has the opportunity to choose what they prefer (shelton 1996, 50). the living in lucretius’ “de rerum natura” 51 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 5. “de rerum natura” pluralistic view from the above it is possible to understand the de rerum natura pluralistic view that is, that human beings are just a particular kind of animal species, and their own features do not make them superior to other living beings. it also follows lucretius’ “morality of respect”. respect, firstly, for the living because of their sentience – sensibility is the attribute common to all animals, humans and non-humans –, secondly, respect for those rules, norms, pacts, which are at the roots of our society. however the poet does not only propose the respect for these differences but adds the reproof of those who, by means of a presumed superiority, think to hold the right to break the pacts stipulated and to abuse the others. as we will see, the poet presents us with two situations in which the said duty is transgressed, when humans do not keep their promise, they cause their allies to suffer and in turn, suffer themselves. for this reason, the poet morally condemns everything that leads human beings to break the aforementioned pacts driving them to their primordial condition of indigence. as a result, lucretian teaching is set up as a message of freedom, antianthropocentricism, and of respect of other living beings who together with humans constitute nature, regulated by the unique universal law of aggregation and destruction. from an understanding of the co-originality of humans with all other forms of lives comes the possibility to drive away those tormentors of human lives – religion, war lust, ambition, and greediness – whose dangers lie in the fact that they fool humans into thinking they will guarantee serenity when, in fact, they feed some of the anxiety they try to run from. lucretius contrasts the human being who ignores the serene laws of nature with the domesticated animal who already has this serenity and is perturbed only by the evil actions of that human who frequently chooses to break contracts. in particular, his critique is set against the source of all evils, that is the fear of death (iii 59-86; cf. segal 1970, 118), which leads human to break those pacts essential in gaining serenity. when this fear gains the upper hand, the condition of the civilized human beings leave space for a bloody scenario where humans, overwhelmed by fear and ambitions, waste their energy in fighting (v 1308-49) and in the worship of a religio which is mixed up with the superstitio (i 80-101). to this fear, lucretius opposes the universal and positive force of love the lepos, voluptas inspired by venus (i 1-23), guarantor of peace and of the continuity of the species that is the aggregative force of nature, the source of life. essentially lucretius critiques human religio – identified with the superstitio – because of its amoral character which prompts humans to alma massaro 52 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ break pacts. the poet contrasts traditional religion with the true epicurean pietas: while the first consists in the wrong opinion about gods and therefore is a monster to be defeated (i 62-5) and the highest expression of human impiety, the latter consists in the serene contemplation of nature (v 1203), and is already possessed by domesticated animals (i 14-23). 6. two passages in the light of the above, we can proceed to analyze two notable passages of de rerum natura where lucretius’ deep interest in animal lives clearly emerges. as we will see, the iphigenia’s sacrifice passage (i 80-101) is not set apart from the rest of the poem; rather, it is the first of five lucretian attacks against cruel sacrificial practices (i 80-101, ii 352-66, iii 51-3, iv 1233-8, v 1198-203); in particular, it is recalled in and completed by the bereaved cow episode (ii 352-66) 4. it is noteworthy to identify both parallels and differences between these two passages because they express lucretius’ ethical message. in iphigenia’s story, the poet presents agamennon, the danai’s king, who is going to sacrifice his daughter, iphigenia, in order to achieve victory for his fleet. the princess is depicted at the very moment in which she realizes that she is the sacrificial victim. this story portrays the worst side of religion which leads people to madness, convincing them to break the pacts which bind parents to their offspring 5. as the poet points out neither iphigenia’s terror nor people’s greed succeed in making the king halt his horrible project: this is what i fear herein, lest haply you should fancy that you are entering on unholy grounds of reason and treading the path of sin; whereas on the contrary often and often that very religion has given birth to sinful and unholy deeds. thus in aulis the chosen chieftains of the danaï, foremost of men, foully polluted with iphianassas’s blood the altar of the trivian maid. soon as the fillet encircling her maiden tresses shed itself in equal lengths adown each cheek, and soon as she saw her father standing sorrowful before the altars and beside him ministering priests hiding the knife and her countrymen at sight of her shedding tears, speechless in terror she dropped down on her knees and sank on the ground. nor aught in such a moment could it avail the luckless girl that she had first bestowed the name of father on the king. for lifted up in the hands of men she was carried shivering to the altars, not after due performance of the customary rites to be escorted by the 4 this episode is recalled by ovid, fasti, iv 459-82 and virgil, eclogues, viii 85 ss. 5 see empedocles, purifications, fr. 430 dk. the living in lucretius’ “de rerum natura” 53 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ clear-ringing bridal song, but in the very season of marriage, stainless maid mid the stain blood, to fall a sad victim by the sacrificing stroke of a father, that thus a happy and prosperous departure might be granted to the fleet. so great the evils to which religion could prompt! (i 80-101) in the bereaved cow passage, the poet presents another cruel sacrifice, now a calf takes iphigenia’s place. while the calf lies on an altar, a warm flow of blood running off its breast, its mother is looking for it. and since she cannot find it, she runs through the woodland, yearning; she stops mooing and then she restarts her search: thus often in front of the beauteous shrines of the gods a calf falls sacrificed beside the incense-burning altars, and spirts from its breast a warm stream of blood; but the bereaved mother as she ranges over the green lawns knows the footprints stamped on the ground by cloven hoofs, scanning with her eyes every spot to see if she can anywhere behold her lost youngling: then she fills with her moanings the leafy wood each time she desists from her search and again and again goes back to the stall pierced to the heart by the loss of her calf; nor can the soft willows and grass quickened with dew and yon rivers gliding level with their banks comfort her mind and put away the care that has entered her, nor can other forms of calves throughout the glad pasturer divert her mind and ease it of its care: so persistently she seeks something special and known. (ii 352-66) the correlations between the two scenes are so strong that there is no doubt that lucretius, in this last passage, wants to continue the invective against the insensate human terror – of death, of lacking power – he started in the first book. however, if the parallels are strong and numerous, the different parents’ behaviours show the reader the guilt of human beings, who are so compromised by the impious religion that they become the unnatural executioners of their own offspring. they also demonstrate the correct devotion (the true pietas) of animals to the law of nature. 7. similarities and differences it is worth recalling sobrino’s analysis of these two passages (sobrino 1993, 193-8). as he notices, the setting of the action and the occasion are similar: an altar on which a ritual slaughter is about to take place or has already been performed. the subjects who enact the parent-child roles are different: the heifer takes agamemnon’s place, the calf iphigenia’s one. the focus of attention is similar, the distress as a result of an unjust action, but the subject who feels these feelings is different, firstly the victim of book i – the princess – then the parent – the cow of book ii. alma massaro 54 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the reader’s reactions, though, are the same. one the one side feeling pity for the unjust destiny of the two victims and condemning the practice of cruel sacrifice; on the other doubting a religion which prescribes this rite. lucretius strikingly creates a chiastic comparison between the father’s obstinate will to bring his wicked action to an end in order to gain the gods’ favour, and the passionate race against time of a heifer who, unreasonably aware of her calf’s destiny, still tries, even if in vain, to find a sign of her calf to deny her ominous premonition. the times of the narrations are also noteworthy, the inertia of the first passage expresses the unavoidability of the evil which comes from the belief in a false religio; similarly iphigenia’s distress is reflected in the crying of those people who assist the cruel scene. what follows is the impression of a slow procession: men carry the “trembling girl” to the altar, where the father is waiting with the sword guiltily hidden in his garments, while the crowd is attending in tears. on the contrary, the second scene is dynamic. warm blood comes out of the calf’s chest “in waves” (ii 354) while the mother is desperately running in search of her child, she stops at the view of the “cloven hoofs” (ii 356), and she turns to look, but, not seeing the calf, she starts to run again. another important difference is the gap between the mother-heifer’s natural aphasia and the father-king’s voluntary and ominous silence. the king, as a human being, by virtues of his reason and speech, could have pronounced a word to stop the criminal gesture, instead, he permitted his daughter to become the victim of an impious and wicked act. therefore the innocent animal’s inarticulate shout is contrasted with man’s consciously guilty silence. the king, putting his desire for war above his parental duties, breaks pacts; on the contrary, the cow’s willingness to be faithful to that union is total. desperation is the reaction of one who endures the violation of the pact, anguish and pain are, in fact, iphigenia’s and the cow’s answers. the final reason for condemning the father is the deception he plotted against his daughter who is shown in the exact moment she realizes what is happening. until that moment she had, in fact, believed it was to be her wedding day and people were looking at her because she was the bride. the blame of this machinated deceit is amplified by the distance between the fate of a victim and that of a spouse. notwithstanding the differences in the events dynamics, lucretius demonstrates the analogue gravity and atrocity between these two situations. thanks to the poet’s narrative strategies, which bestows the same dignity to both the subjects of these passages and confers an identical value to the two way of suffering, the reader does not feel more compassion for the wretched princess than for the cow’s crying. furthermore, attesting the the living in lucretius’ “de rerum natura” 55 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ analogy between human and animal sacrifice, we find that the bereaved cow’s passage creates a temporal bridge between the religio’s crimes which happened in a remote time – compared with the poet’s epoch – and those which are still perpetuated in contemporary time, as at that time, and whose consequences are impious and opposed to the course of life. 8. animal faithfulness and human unfaithfulness eventually these two passages clearly state that humans are led by their own fears to perform destructive and against-nature actions. as we have seen these fears come from the distorted consideration of the source of true pleasure and cause, therefore, the unfaithfulness to pacts. not understanding the security which comes from the knowledge of the law of nature, human beings are perturbed by fear of death, and therefore by fear of gods, and that leads them to break the pacts stipulated both among themselves and with animals. and that is because humans do not understand the nexus existing between pleasure and the willingness to be faithful to pacts (shelton 1996, 57). as jo-ann shelton suggests, by comparing agamennon’s and the cow’s attitudes, it is possible to talk of an “instructive contrast” between two different ways of being faithful to parent-offspring pacts: […] the sacrifice of one’s own daughter to satisfy the demands of religion is a shocking violation of the bond between parent and child, between protector and dependent […]. in contrast, the bereaved cow […] who, of course, has no understanding of gods and religion, is desperately trying to fulfil the role of parent assigned to her by nature, that is, to keep her calf alive and safe from harm, but she is frustrated by humans who have invented for themselves a perverted and unnatural sense of obligation which overrides all beneficial obligations […]. thus the bereaved cow passage is a foil for the iphigenia story, reinforcing its condemnation of religion, which demands the abuse of those in our guardianship. (shelton 1996, 56) considering the sacrifice as “the mythical archetype of violating the natural rhythms of life” (segal 1970, 111-2), lucretius suggests that both sacrifices – of the young girl and the calf – are similar crimes against the alma venus. in particular, the cow is not just a victim of religio, but gains a moral superiority on her tormentors by means of her associations with the beauty and serenity of nature (segal 1970, 107). it is not by accident that both venus and the cow embody the creative process of nature, just like the goddess, even the cow is mater and guarantor of life, but the animal assumes the role of mother in a universal way since she represents the mothers of alma massaro 56 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ all species, the human one included. as paratore points out, her cry has a “universal resonance” (cit. in segal 1970, 107-08) 6. therefore the cow, and with her all other animals, results in being morally superior to human beings, she does not lose sight of the source of vera voluptas and, hence, she keeps faith to those pacts which are at the roots of order and peace. conscious of being part of the universal force of nature, she does not break her promise of guaranteeing safety to her offspring and to offer her utilitas for human service, even if human beings are not faithful to the pact. failing to comprehend the law of nature and, therefore, the source of true pleasure, the human being looks for serenity in behaviours that are the opposite of what he is looking for, which increase, and not decrease, the amount of anguish and suffering in his life. ultimately in the de rerum natura animal’s simplicity becomes the model for the right behaviours opposed to human sophisticated culture which leads to transgress the fundamental bond of our society. if the goodness of actions depends on the sensation of pleasure and pain, their righteousness depends on fidelity to pacts since faithfulness is necessary to serenity. human beings, in fact, belong to an all-embracing whole that is called nature; and what they have to do in order to reach serenity is to follow the law of nature. the failure in comprehending this reality is the cause of human evils. therefore religio belongs to a deeper discomfort, that is the “marring of nature’s restorative beauty by those faulty, artificial desires which results in death, not in life, in the ‘hot rivers’ of blood and not in the cool streams of bucolic serenity” (segal 1970, 117). if the incomprehension of the source of true pleasure is at the roots of all the discontent, then only the understanding of the vera ratio will heal these forms of rupture between human and natural world 7. serene contemplation of nature is, hence, the only tool useful in defeating the terrors of religio. 6 translation is mine. see segal 1970, 107-8: “man’s superstition, ignorance, and susceptibility to corruptive excess interfere with that peace which nature ought to be able to confer. they confuse the ordering of the pleasures which forms the heart of epicurean moral philosophy. the unnecessary and ‘unnatural’ pleasures of luxury supplant those which are ‘necessary and natural’. the cow cannot ‘delight her mind’ [in the text, oblectare animum: ii 363] in the proper objects of pleasures”. 7 see segal 1970, 118: “[…] blind to his participation in the universal processes of creation and dissolution and ignorant of the principles behind these movements, man does not see that the pleasures he creates in opposition to those simpler offerings of nature only drive him deeper in his anxieties. tormented by the fear of death himself, he fails to acknowledge the ebb and flow of life and death in nature’s rhythms”. the living in lucretius’ “de rerum natura” 57 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 9. conclusion as we have seen, human beings belong to nature’s all-embracing set – they are, in fact, formed from the union of the same atoms which compose the rest of life – and, consequently, the only thing they have to do in order to reach serenity is to follow nature. in order to do that, they need to follow the sensitive criterion of truth – as other living beings already do – and try to satisfy only those desires which are “natural” – as epicureanism teaches. but not realizing they belong to the all-embracing nature, humans lose sight of the source of true pleasure and are worried by those fears which drive them to perform destructive and anti-nature actions, increasing the accumulation of anxiety and suffering in their life. in this sense the cow like all other animals is morally superior to human beings, she does not lose sight of the source of true pleasure (vera voluptas). by acknowledging herself to be a part of the unique universal force of nature, the cow violates neither the promise of protection she has made to her offspring, nor to the utility covenant she has made with humans – not even after their incessant violations – and, consequently, she is faithful to all of her pacts. in so doing, domestic animals – similar to the epicurean sage – lead a serene life, disturbed just by wild animals’ aggressions and human breaking of the pact. as boyancé says “it is noteworthy and paradoxical how this philosophy [epicureanism], which makes pleasure supreme without distinguishing between humans and other existing beings […] demands on the other hand for happiness that everyone […] receives teaching physics, and thus can enjoy, thanks to knowledge, of the whole well-being which is given to animals” (boyancé 1963, 194) 8. as i have previously pointed out, it is important to regain understanding of the philosophy of those authors who, like lucretius, started to inquire about the animal world in ancient times. in this way, we will have the opportunity to combine ancient wisdom with modern scientific achievements. the non-temporality of this openness of lucretian thought to the rest of the living, other than human and to which set man belongs, is a specific peculiarity which deserves to be re-evaluated and examined. the fact that animals are speechless does not give us the right to ignore them, after all we should now understand that, as lucretius suggests, our opportunity to find happiness depends also upon them. 8 translation is mine. alma massaro 58 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ references boyancé, pierre. 1963. lucrece et l’epicurisme. paris: presses universitaires de france. dionigi, ivano, ed. 2007. i classici e la scienza. gli antichi, i moderni, noi. atti del convegno internazionale scientia rerum, bologna, 29-30 settembre 1 ottobre 2005. milano: rizzoli. 2008. “lucretius, or the grammar of the cosmos”. in lucrezio. la natura e la scienza, edited by marco beretta and francesco citti, 27-34. firenze: olschki. empedocles. 2001. purifications. toronto: university of toronto press. epicurus. 1989. opere. torino: einaudi. lucretius. 1952. de rerum natura. chicago: encyclopaedia britannica. ovid. 1995. fasti. bloomington: indiana university press. saylor, charles. 1972. “man, animal, and bestial in lucretius”. the classical journal 67: 306-16. segal, charles. 1970. “‘delubra decora’: lucretius ii 352-66”. latomus 29: 104-18. shelton, jo-ann. 1996. “lucretius on the use and abuse of animals”. eranos 94: 48-64. sobrino, e. oton. 1984. “el culto impetratorio en lucrecio”. helmantica 44: 193-8. virgil. 2006. eclogues. ringwood: penguin. against the view that we are normally required to assist wild animals against the view that we are normally required to assist wild animals clare palmer professor of philosophy, texas a&m university doi: 10.7358/rela-2015-002-palm c.palmer@tamu.edu in this brief paper, i will defend the position that while sentient animals are morally considerable, we are not normally morally required to assist suffering wild animals, though this does not mean that it is ethically impermissible to do so. i will argue that this position can be defended without denying that we have obligations to assist distant suffering humans, and that it need not rely on the claim that there is something wrong with intervening in human-independent processes (“the wild”). for the purposes of this paper i will just assume that sentient animals are morally considerable. this view is widely accepted and not particularly controversial (see palmer 2010 for a more substantial defense of this view). what is owed to wild animals in terms of assistance has been relatively little discussed. understandably, the first priority of those defending sentient animals’ moral importance has, historically, been the systematic harms undergone by agricultural and laboratory animals. but most such positions in animal ethics are extensions of approaches to human ethics on which we should, at least to some degree, assist people who are suffering, even distant people whom we have never met. for example: most forms of ethical consequentialism aim at reducing distant suffering as (normally) likely to bring about the best consequences (singer 1972). and even though on most deontological ethical positions our strongest duties are not to harm, weak positive duties of benevolence are still generally accepted (o’neill 1986; pogge 2007). it seems consistent, then, that if distant humans should be assisted to reduce suffering, so too should distant animals. after all, if as singer (1979) argued, we should extend the “basic principle of equality” to non-human animals; and as he also argued (1972) we should give until we reach the level of marginal utility in order to assist those people who are distant and suffering, then it seems to follow that we should also try to reduce the suffering of wild animals, at least where we can do so “without sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance” (singer 1972). cermailto:c.palmer@tamu.edu http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 clare palmer 204 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ tainly, many environmental ethicists have interpreted positions like singer’s in this way: sagoff (1984), for instance, maintains: “the liberationist must morally require society to relieve animal suffering wherever it can at a lesser cost to itself, whether in the chicken coop or in the wild”. however, while some philosophical (and religious) positions are driven by the imperative to reduce suffering, including animal suffering, wherever possible, there is considerable unease – especially among environmental ethicists – about a moral requirement to intervene to reduce wild animal suffering. one reason for this – more formally defended in environmental ethics, but with considerable popular appeal – is the idea that “wildness” or “naturalness” should be preserved: “[…] human intentional processes need to be circumscribed in such a way that the human-independent processes are left intact” (preston 2011). but even without defending the high value-significance of wildness, a requirement for human intervention in the wild for humane purposes can be seen as both over-demanding and over-reaching. trying to reduce (non-anthropogenic) suffering in the nonhuman world is an enormous and demanding task; and, plausibly, another exercise of human (or perhaps, humane) power, intent on shaping the entire world to fit human preferences. this prompts the question whether humane wild intervention is a necessary commitment of any consistent form of animal ethics that defends animals’ moral importance. i will argue here that it is not – though not because there is something wrong with intervening in human independent processes, nor because intervention is over-demanding or over-reaching; but rather because we just do not have such obligations to assist wild animals. first, though, the question needs to be stated more precisely. rights theories (whether of humans and/or animals) that defend only negative rights do not generate requirements to assist others (except to protect negative rights from being violated). regan’s (1984) account of animal rights, for instance, focuses on the instrumentalization of animals, and on animals’ negative rights, such as the right not to be killed; he does not defend positive rights (for instance, to food, medical care, or rescue); and he is clear that moral agents do not have duties to intervene in predation to prevent suffering. a negative rights view, then, can consistently defend animals’ moral importance without any commitment to humane wild intervention. but such a view – in the human case at least – seems incomplete, suggesting that we have no obligations to assist anyone – for instance, to rescue a drowning child from a shallow pond in front of us. so the more precise question here is whether humane wild intervention is a necessary commitment of any consistent form of animal ethics that http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 against the view that we are normally required to assist wild animals 205 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ defends animals’ moral importance and accepts that we do have some obligations to assist others, but where these obligations don’t extend to include wild animals. what i will call “contingent consequentialist arguments” defend something like this position. either because of our ecological ignorance (singer 1973) or because of the long-term benefits of leaving evolutionary processes undisturbed (everett 2001) we should not intervene in wild ecosystems to reduce suffering. this is not because there is something valuable about human-independent processes, but rather because such wild interventions, over time, risk causing more, rather than less, suffering, including wild animal suffering; so, from a consequentialist perspective, we should not intervene. it is perfectly consistent with this view that we should assist distant suffering people, if the expected consequences of doing so are to reduce overall suffering. as presented here, this consequentialist argument is contingent on the expectation that wild intervention, over time, can be expected to cause more suffering than it relieves. but this is not obviously the case. we can certainly think of one-off interventions that are extremely unlikely to have this effect. and there are likely to be more systematic, repeatable interventions (for instance: the use of wildlife contraceptives for particular rapidly growing populations, vaccination against extremely painful diseases, or mercy-killing animals that will shortly die painfully anyway) that we can surely reasonably expect to cause less suffering than they relieve over time, even if we take into account alternative uses of the resources that would need to be employed to carry out such interventions. ignorance of the consequences is not a resilient argument that management of the wild is ethically undesirable in principle; and given technological advances, such ignorance will apply to a diminishing number of cases in practice, at least where such actions are on a relatively small scale. so such contingent, consequentialist positions look as though they will, normally, actually require some assistance to wild animals. it is possible, however, that some kind of rule-consequentialism, or harean two-level utilitarianism (see varner 2011) could propose a set of rules on which at least some interventions to relieve wild animal suffering would be impermissible, on the grounds that there is at least a good chance that their expected consequences would increase animal suffering. however, these rules would have to be multiple and specific, since a general rule that humane wild intervention should not be undertaken because it increases suffering is (i am arguing) empirically implausible. these more complex consequentialist positions, though, look very different from my argument here. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 clare palmer 206 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the argument i will now develop is non-consequentialist, non-contingent and clearly distinct from the positions so far considered. it does not rest on the value of non-intervention into human-independent natural processes; it does not claim that human interventions in the wild are normally expected to increase animal suffering; and it does have a place for assistance to suffering distant humans – and domesticated animals, for that matter. i will call this the contextual view. this contextual view i should immediately note, does not defend a noninterventionist view in the sense that intervention is impermissible (this was an implication both of a view based on the value of human-independent processes and contingent consequentialist arguments as i have described them). it defends, instead, a non-interventionist view in the sense that intervention in wild nature to relieve wild animal suffering, or otherwise to assist wild animals, is not required, although it may be permissible. this contextual view has two significant features. one feature (shared with negative rights views) flows from its non-consequentialism: it does not primarily aim at best consequences, but rather concerns constraints on harmful actions (taking harms in something like feinberg’s [1992] sense to mean the wrongful setting back of significant interests). harms, in this sense, are understood to impose on someone, depriving them of something they would have had, had we not acted as we did (kamm 2007); harms make someone worse-off. on this part of the contextual view alone, other things being equal, we should not harm morally considerable beings including wild animals. however, that we should not harm does not, on this view, mean we have duties to assist. assistance, as kamm (2007) argues, makes someone better-off; to assist is an imposition on the agent, rather than on the individual being assisted (assuming that we are not wholly or partly responsible for their situation). when we harm, we change an individual’s independent situation for the worse; when we do not assist, we merely fail to improve on what the individual would have independently of us. on this view, while we should not make individuals (whether humans or sentient animals) worse-off on account of their dealings with us, we have no general duties to make them better-off at our own expense. so, on this view, there is no general duty to impose on ourselves in order to intervene in the wild to make animals better-off. but while, on this view, we do not have general duties to assist others, we may still have special obligations to help others, obligations that are not in principle owed to everyone, but that rather emerge from certain morallyrelevant contexts, histories, relations and entanglements. arguments that we have special obligations are commonplace in human ethics, though have been much less frequently defended in animal ethics. for instance, the idea http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 against the view that we are normally required to assist wild animals 207 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ that we have special obligations to care for our own children that we do not have to other children is widely accepted, even though we normally consider all children to be morally considerable and to have similar morallyrelevant capacities (for instance, see o’neill 1979). in the case of animals, the contextual argument maintains that animals’ capacities, such as sentience, are not all that is relevant to determining what they are owed; certain relations can create special moral obligations. for instance, just as bringing a dependent and therefore vulnerable child into the world can be argued to create a special obligation to care for it, so too can breeding a dependent, and therefore vulnerable, animal. although these arguments can take different forms (see palmer 2010), their broad thrust is that where humans have deliberately created relations of dependent vulnerability with animals (especially where this involves prior harms, such as wild capture), special obligations to care for these animals, and to assist them, are also created. related arguments can be made for requirements to assist those who are distant and suffering in the human case: the entanglements of human societies, in particular the social and structural connections between virtually all people, connections that benefit some while causing suffering to others, provide a basis for human obligations to assist other humans (see for instance, pogge 2007). certain kinds of human and animal entanglements, then, especially where they benefit some and lead to vulnerability and the potential for suffering to others, create special moral obligations to assist. however, such special obligations to assist do not extend to truly wild animals – by which i mean animals that have not been selectively bred, trapped, confined or restrained, and are still living their lives relatively independent of human contact. our lives are not entangled with theirs – in particular, we are not causally responsible for their suffering – so we are not required to free them from snowdrifts, slake their thirst in a drought, nor rescue them from predators. we can think of them as in some sense living in “sovereign” autonomous communities (goodin et al. 1997). this does not mean that we are not permitted assist them (as, for instance, a view based on non-interference with human-independent processes would maintain). the claim is just that it is not wrong if we do not. this contextual view has a number of implications, some useful, some more difficult or troubling. one implication is that – unlike on consequentialist views such as that proposed by mcmahan (2010) – we have no reason to try to reduce overall suffering in nature by managing or shaping nature differently, trying to find ways to reduce predation, disease and the harshness of wild conditions, assuming we could do so successfully. this seems to me to be a helpful implication. however, there are two obvious and serious complications. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 clare palmer 208 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the first is that this contextual view draws on what nozick (1974, 155) calls a “historical principle” where past circumstances or actions can be a direct justification for different entitlements. however, as with similar human cases, the story of entanglement may not be clear, and this may lead to doubts about who is responsible for assistance, and whether the argument depends on some kind of disputed account of collective responsibility (for instance, who is responsible to assist a diseased feral cat, several generations on from the individual who abandoned its ancestor?). this concern about who bears responsibility for what is particularly difficult in the case of some domesticated and feral animals. however, for the purposes of this paper, this problem is much less acute: in the context of wild animals, the argument is that no-one has a responsibility to assist, because there is no prior morally-relevant entanglement. but this leads to the second, more troubling question. what counts, in a time of globally pervasive human influence, as a “truly wild” animal, and a “morally relevant entanglement”? wildlife management, human development of animal habitat, anthropogenic fires, and so on, have affected many wild animal’s lives; and anthropogenic climate change is already impacting many wild animals’ habitats. do more diffuse anthropogenic phenomena such as climate change create special obligations to assist wild animals? i do not have room to do justice to this important complication here (though i am planning future work on this). however, here are some considerations, in brief. first: accepting that anthropogenic environmental change does create special obligations to animals does not undermine the contextual argument; it just means that now most sentient animals have been drawn into relations with humans that generate special obligations, just as human societies now have entanglements that draw in virtually all people. this makes the position more demanding; but then, its objection to a requirement for humane wild intervention was not based on the over-demandingness of the requirement. second, any special obligations flowing from climate change are likely to be weaker than those flowing from (say) deliberate selective breeding for dependence. the impacts of climate change on animals are harder to identify, less intentional and certainly less predictable than selective breeding (though this argument may weaken over time) (see nolt 2011). over time, more vulnerable animals will shift geographical location (if they can) or else disappear; and animals from less vulnerable species will move in; such successful incomers would not need assistance. and finally there is no point offering assistance that is ineffective; given the degree of climate change to which we are now committed, there will be some cases where assistance would not constitute a benefit over time. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 against the view that we are normally required to assist wild animals 209 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ while these factors may require us to think very hard about what more diffuse negative impacts may cause us to owe to wild animals, they do not obviously undermine the basic argument that we may have special obligations to assist wild animals, if we are (even diffusely) responsible for putting them in situations that negatively impact on their welfare. to conclude: the contextual argument presented here defends the position that we are not normally required to assist wild animals, resting on the claim that requirements to assist, unlike requirements not to harm, depend on the existence of some kind of morally-relevant context or relation. this is not a defense of the view that we are never permitted to assist wild animals, nor that we are never required to assist wild animals; we may be required to assist them when we have harmed them and it is possible for us to succeed in helping them. the contextual view allows that assistance to distant suffering humans is likely to be required, on the basis of global inter-human entanglements, even when it is not required for distant suffering animals. and finally, defending this contextual argument is not intended to imply that other arguments could not generate similar conclusions. some kinds of consequentialism may in fact do so, but these arguments rest on contingent empirical facts, rather than on in-principle arguments. references everett, jennifer. 2001. “environmental ethics, animal welfarism, and the problem of predation: a bambi lover’s respect for nature”. ethics and the environment 6 (1): 42-67. feinberg, joel, ed. 1992. freedom and fulfillment. princeton, nj: princeton university press. goodin, robert, carole pateman, and roy pateman. 1997. “simian sovereignty”. political theory 25 (6): 821-49. kamm, frances. 2007. intricate ethics. oxford: oxford university press. mcmahan, jeff. 2010. “the meat eaters”. the new york times, september 19. http:// opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/the-meat-eaters/?_r=0. nolt, john. 2011. “nonanthropocentric climate ethics”. wires climate change 2 (5): 701-11. nozick, robert. 1974. anarchy, state and utopia. new york: basic books. o’neill, onora. 1979. having children. oxford; oxford university press. 1986. faces of hunger: essays on poverty, justice and development. london: harper collins. palmer, clare. 2010. animal ethics in context. new york: columbia university press. pogge, thomas (1997) 2007. “eradicating systematic poverty”. in ethics in practice, 3rd edn., edited by hugh lafollette, 633-46. oxford: blackwell. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/the-meat-eaters/?_r=0 http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/the-meat-eaters/?_r=0 clare palmer 210 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ preston, christopher. 2011. “rethinking the unthinkable: environmental ethics and the presumptive argument against geoengineering”. environmental values 20 (4): 457-79. regan, tom. 1984. the case for animal rights. berkeley: university of california press. sagoff, mark. 1984. “animal liberation and environmental ethics: bad marriage, quick divorce”. osgood hall law review 22 (2): 297-307. singer, peter. 1972. “famine, affluence and morality”. philosophy and public affairs 1 (3): 229-43. 1973. “food for thought [reply to a letter by david rosinger]”. new york review of books 20 (10), june 14. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/ archives/1973/jun/14/food-for-thought/. varner, gary. 2011. personhood, ethics and animal cognition: situating animals in hare’s two-level utilitarianism. new york: oxford university press. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1973/jun/14/food-for-thought/ http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1973/jun/14/food-for-thought/ animal music: david rothenberg, dario martinelli, and martin ullrich exchange their views on the topic animal music david rothenberg, dario martinelli, and martin ullrich exchange their views on the topic jessica ullrich phd, university of lueneburg doi: 10.7358/rela-2014-002-ullr jesmarullrich@t-online.de david rothenberg (www.davidrothenberg.net) has written and performed on the relationship between humanity and nature for many years. he is the author of why birds sing, on making music with birds, and of survival of the beautiful, on the evolution of beauty, and how art and science can be better intertwined, among others. his latest book on insects and music, along with a companion cd, was published this year under the title bug music. david rothenberg is also a composer and jazz clarinetist, recording for ecm, monotype, terra nova, earthear, and other labels, and performing often around the world. dario martinelli is a musicologist and semiotician. he is the director of the international semiotics institute, professor at kaunas university of technology, and is also affiliated to the university of helsinki and the university of lapland (adjunct professor). martinelli has brought the term zoomusicology to general attention and describes it as the ’aesthetic use of sound communication among animals’. he is author of a critical companion to zoosemiotics and of birds whales and other musicians. martin ullrich is a music theorist, pianist and professor for interdisciplinary musiology and human-animal studies. he is the president of the nuremberg university of music and chair of the rectors’ conference of the german universities of music. he is founding member of the research group animals and aesthetics as well as member of various other academic animal studies research groups. he has widely written and presented on how human composers have been influenced by birdsong as well as on the individuality of animal musicians. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ jessica ullrich 116 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ju: could you tell us a little bit about your academic background? how did you come to animal music? dm: for me, it was the result of an attempt to combine two major interests of mine: music and nonhuman animals. at the times of my master studies in musicology, in bologna university, i expressed this intention to my then supervisor, prof. gino stefani (one of the historical pioneers of musical semiotics), and he suggested to read f.b. mâche’s book music, myth, nature, the first one to employ the term “zoomusicology”. i was impressed by it and decided to defend my master dissertation on that very topic (focusing on the songs of the humpback whale megaptera novaeangliae). then, as i started my phd at helsinki university, i thought i had to “systematize” the field a bit, being so new and little explored. the first of such attempts was my doctoral dissertation how musical is a whale? towards a theory of zoomusicology (2002). the same year i gave what i believe is the absolute first academic course on zoomusicology, and i could happily witness an increasing popularity of the field. by 2009 (year of my second monograph on the topic, of birds, whales and other musicians – introduction to zoomusicology), i felt this process of systematization was complete, as far as i was concerned, so i could take that date as a coming of age of my background. mu: as a musician and a musicologist trained in classical music, i have always been interested in the phenomenon of the periphery. i have done research on popular music and on digital media, and in a way the technological post-humanism for me has been a good pathway to the animal turn of human animal studies. at the same time, i have always been fond of the aesthetics of birdsong, even before i started to approach it in an academic manner. ju: all three of you work on animal music, each of you in a totally different way. could you please briefly sketch your (artistic) research/project/ research interest at the moment. dr: i feel like taking stock of all my activities, somehow changing my direction in what i do next. on the one hand i want to perform more, make more of an impact in the world of music, though i see that as a particularly difficult road. on the other hand, i’d like to write something more literary, more like storytelling, more like italo calvino and less like r. murray schafer. dm: i’ve always felt i could give my best as a scholar by producing theoretical models: it is probably in my semiotician’s dna. i’m not much of a field scholar, i’m afraid. so, whenever i work on a topic (any topic, not just zoomusicology), i tend to elaborate “research templates” that other scholars can hopefully find useful in their own specific research. i see, for instance, that my own definition of zoomusicology tends to be quite often animal music 117 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ adopted by other scholars. when something like that happens, i feel i have done my job properly. mu: my main interest is in exploring the cultural history of animal music: how has animal music influenced human music, and vice versa? and how have human discourses dealt with the phenomenon of nonhuman musicians? this leads to the question of the further development of interspecies music in the future and its aesthetical and ethical challenges. what i would really like to add is some empirical research in collaboration with the cognitive sciences. ju: do you believe that animals have aesthetic capacities as well as aesthetic sensibility or preferences? and if so why do you think so? could you give a short example from your expert knowledge. dr: the evolution of bird songs certainly suggests to me, as it did to charles darwin, that certain species have a natural aesthetic sense that is developed over millions of years of selection. but perhaps even more impressive are the sculptures made by bowerbirds, complex artworks that have no simple practical purpose. they are not nests, but intricate constructions that are built by males only to impress females. as with human females, most of the time the birds are not impressed and just fly away. but occasionally, rarely, perhaps just enough times, mating happens and the boy gets the girl. dm: to be honest, i am tempted to revert the question: why not? meaning: what rational explanation there could be for denying that animal species (and homo sapiens is one of them, as we all know) have aesthetic capacities and sensibility? if aesthetics is, as it is, a biological phenomenon, then it is just obvious that such processes have an active role in animals’ cognition. anyway, as examples, i suggest to focus on all those species where an aesthetic action is followed by an aesthetic reaction: for example, male bowerbirds build constructions (action) and females choose the most attractive (reaction); male humpback whales develop and perform their songs in competition with other males (action), and female are attracted by the most elaborated performance (reaction). and so forth. mu: i agree with dario and i would like to add that the real interesting questions in the field seem to be (as so often) not the “what” questions, but the “how” questions: e.g. how can we know about the aesthetic experiences of other species? i am quite convinced that many non-human animals do have them and would really like to know more about them. ju: are all animal species musical and which species are especially musical? jessica ullrich 118 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ dr: no, of course most are not musical, just as most do not use language or live in complex societies. but exceptions are always the most interesting, in humans and in animals. i have sought out particularly musical species: nightingales, lyrebirds, humpback whales, seventeen-year cicadas, snowy tree crickets, and tried to make music with them, thereby extending the human limits of art. dm: one of the parts where a lot of work is still needed is to elaborate a definition of “music” that is acceptable at general level, across all species. at the moment, it seems, we can only see the kind of music that is more recognizable to us, human beings, and therefore the assessment is based on that. therefore, say, a nightingale sounds more musical than a crow, a wolf more than a hyena, etc. but, i wonder, what would happen if we found other relevant criteria to define music? maybe, in that case, we should revise this humanly-oriented chart. mu: may i add that the question of “being musical” in my eyes should be approached in a multi-dimensional way: music can be seen as a sound phenomenon, but also as a social practice or as a psychological object. especially when non-human species are concerned, we should be prepared to use several academic disciplines and a rich variety of scholarly and scientific methods. this of course includes the kind of practice-based artistic research david does. ju: david, do you consider yourself primary a musician, composer or philosopher? dr: oh, i don’t know, i’m rethinking all these boundaries. as a job i guess i earn most of my keep from being a philosophy professor, which includes teaching and writing. but i don’t think philosophers pay much attention to my writings. i don’t think the music world pays much attention to my music. but in the general public, the nonspecialist world to which most of us belong, a few people do seem interested in the books and the music. so i guess i am a writer and a musician who works at being a professor. most of the music i play is composed by me, together with various interspecies collaborators, so i suppose i am a composer as well but that word often implies being part of a particular elite group who writes music for orchestras and chamber ensembles, and that doesn’t include me. ju: dario, do you consider yourself more a semiotician or a musicologist? dm: without wanting to sound too solomonic, i would claim both areas with equal emphasis. the main point is that musicology is mostly a “field of inquiry”, while semiotics is a “methodology”. most of the subjects animal music 119 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ i deal with are musicological, most of the methodological tools i employ are semiotic. ju: martin, do you feel more like a theorist or like a practitioner in the field of animal music? mu: certainly i feel more like a theorist of animal music. i admire david’s practical work but i would have yet to find my own approach to making interspecies music myself. ju: could you please describe your methodology? mu: in terms of popular culture you could say it is a methodological remix: what i try is to blend the traditional methods of musicology (music analysis, hermeneutics, even philology) with the new interdisciplinary approach of human-animal studies. i think it is a real challenge for orthodox musicology to be confronted with the recent critique of human exceptionalism and anthropocentrism. concepts as heterophenomenology, biomusicology and zoosemiotics bring a lot of innovative potential with them. ju: dario, could you briefly explain your concept of zoosemiotics? dm: i define it as the study of semiosis within and across animal species. emphasis on “semiosis”, because the focus of zoosemiotics is not simply communication (which is what people normally expect to be the actual goal of semiotics), but rather, following charles morris, the process in which something is a sign to some organism. by consequence, zoosemiotics is interested in at least three important phenomena, of which communication is just one: (a) signification, occurring when the receiver is the only subject taking part in the semiosis, and a true sender is missing. in other words, zoosemiotics studies here the way animals make sense out of each other, or out of their environment; (b) representation, occurring when the sender is the only semiosic subject. in this case, zoosemiotics studies here the way animals construct sense and, often but not always, offer it to somebody else; and, finally (c) communication, occurring when sender and receiver take both part in the semiosic phenomenon, and therefore the above-mentioned “sense” (or text) is exchanged, understood or misunderstood. ju: david, the title of one of your books is why birds sing. could you very briefly explain why birds sing? dr: because they have to. they must. that is what they have evolved to do, it is of their very essence. kind of like people. some people. and some birds. jessica ullrich 120 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ju: martin, one of your essays do birds sing makes reference to david’s work. what is your answer to the question in your title? mu: actually, the reference is a bit more complex. in the early 20th century an influential german musicologist, erich von hornbostel, published an essay titled singen die vögel überhaupt?. i translated the title as “do birds sing?”. von hornbostel’s paper is a brilliant and paradigmatic example of musical speciesm. by the way this is especially interesting as von hornbostel in other fields has been groundbreaking and innovative, for example when ethnomusicology is concerned. with all due respect to von hornbostel and his predecessors and followers, i answer the question with “yes” – as david does with his explanation why they do so. ju: dario, in your books you make multiple references to david’s work. how did his books inspire your own work? dm: david, besides being a friend, belongs to a group of musicians who try to make sense out of what they do, and that alone is a plus to my mind. in the specific of “zoomusic”, people like david (but also hollis taylor or jim nollman, to mention a couple more) always considered their artistic sensibility as the main requirement for defining a certain phenomenon as “music”. in other words, their basic strategy is based on empathy. if a musician – that is, as an individual who is not alien to the musical phenomenon, but in fact is an active part of it – perceive a certain sound as music, then there is already an acceptable reason to think of that sound as “music”. it seems too subjective an argument to be taken seriously in the scientific sense, and not long ago i, too, was of that opinion. however, the truth is that many are the phenomena for which empathy and subjective recognition are the main (if not the only) criteria for decodification. as a scholar, i may not think that this strategy is alone a sufficient reason for making a scientific statement, but i am increasingly persuaded of its necessity as one important argument. plus, it becomes a “clue”, and the “traditional” scholar may use it as a point of departure for whatever empirical demonstration s/he needs to perform. ju: martin, you translated one of dario’s articles on zoosemiotics into german. how do you think his theories could inspire your own work? mu: actually, they already have done so! i am not an expert in semiotics, but dario’s approach is an important part of the methodological toolkit everyone needs who wants to deal scholarly with animal music. ju: david, you seem to be the most practical and most interactive of the three of you in your approach to animals. do you think you have a animal music 121 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ more intimate knowledge of animal minds because of this than someone who only reads about the capacities of other animals? dr: i would never say martin or dario are not practical! i like to interact with these various animal species because in the interaction i can be surprised, and go beyond myself and create new things that i would not be able to discover explain before i dared to reach beyond my own limited abilities and senses. the most interactive pieces in my performances may be the most unusual and least accessible to the audience, but i believe them to be the most interesting. ju: martin, you are also a pianist and sometimes perform classical animal related music, for example in lecture concerts. could you imagine playing with whales and birds as david does? mu: yes, i certainly can imagine that. i sometimes wonder whether it is mainly a question of logistics for me – it is just more difficult to bring a grand piano out of the concert hall than a clarinet. actually, as i have done quite a lot of open-air concerts with the piano, i have had my private share of experiences. on this occasions i often got the impression that the birds where directly answering to the schubert and schumann melodies. ju: dario, do you also make music yourself? dm: i do, actually. i call it my mr. hyde part. i am mostly a composer/author: i’m nowhere near to be a professional performer, even if i can put my hands on a few instruments without making people escape. i have released two albums (of very limited distribution), one of electronic/ experimental type, and another one with straight pop songs (vaguely beatlesesque, if we need a reference). i am working on a third one, but i never have time to sit properly and finish it. one is even called do not feed the artists. ju: martin grounds his research on a historical and music theorist background. are music history and music theory also important for your own research? dr: i am not primarily a theorist but i really think there should be much more music theory applied to the study of animal sounds, and i think this could really influence the way biologists understand animal communication. this is the subject of a recent paper i wrote together with a group of scientists in the journal of hearing research (http://www.sciencedirect. com/science/article/pii/s0378595513002141). we really want more serious and methodical music theorists to become part of this work, so if you, martin, have time to help that would be great! or, if not, please suggest jessica ullrich 122 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ someone who would undertake the challenge, for example, of taking a nightingale song and analysing it, in itself, as if it were a piece of music. as to history, of course, i am quite interested in everything previous generations of musicians, theorists, and composers have had to say and do with regards to the sounds of the more-than-human world. dm: sure. my other main field of expertise, besides zoomusicology, is popular music, and there my approach is mostly of theoretical/historical type. in zoomusicology, too, there is a need for these areas. at the times of my phd, i also made a little history of how human philosophers/musicologists/and so on, have been considering “animal sounds” in relation to “music”. ju: dario, you write on the aesthetics capacities of animals with a philosophical and ethological background. do you do field work as well (listen and record animal sounds in the wild, for example)? dm: not really. as i said before, that is not really my “forte”. then again, there is a very ample amount of empirical material and recordings, that a theoretician like myself can take, listen to, and to draw his conclusions. having said that, one day i would like to do that as well, perhaps in the company of a more expert colleague. ju: martin, you write on animal as well as human composers/musicians. what is the difference? mu: i see the difference as a mere construction. but as we all know, constructions are powerful, and they create reality. i think the anthropological machine runs partly on the fuel of what you could call human exceptionalism in music. so many boundaries have already fallen. humans appreciate a great diversity of musics, without bothering about differences in gender, ethnics or classes any more. in a paradoxical way this emancipation within the human world seems to make “the other”, which is projected into nonhuman animals, ever more important. so i think informing and educating the public about nonhuman music has ethical and practical implications besides the aesthetical necessities. ju: dario, is your pioneering work in zoomusicology fully grasped and appreciated in your academic environment at kaunas university? dm: first of all, thank you for the compliment. as i said, the real pioneer was mâche, really. it all started with him: i perhaps gave a little contribution in spreading the field. as for kaunas university, the answer is “no”, but i do not mean it polemically. my university is very goal-oriented and strategy-based, and i knew from the start that zoomusicology was animal music 123 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ not a priority. things may change in the future, however. zoomusicology was not a priority in my previous university (helsinki) either, and then it became the first academic institution in the world to offer a course in this discipline. so, you never know, really. ju: david, do you think the audience at your concerts is more interested in the animal content of your music or in experimental music in general. dr: hard to say. i think they show up at the concerts because they are interested in something different. they may end up surprised because my music is not as dissonant or assaulting as a lot of “experimental” music but i guess it depends on what experiments you are used to. when i think of experimental i think of very dissonant 12 tone music but of course that’s hundred-year-old traditional stuff by now. living in berlin it seems experimental can sometimes mean a huge wash of ear splitting noise, and at other times it ends up being dance music with a steady 4-4 beat but weird speeches or sound textures on top. we all conduct our own experiments inside the boundaries of many different paradigms. ju: martin, you teach in a very traditional academic setting at nuremberg university of music. how is your interest in animal music perceived there? mu: as the university has been founded only a few years ago, it actually is a less traditional academic setting than you may imagine. as a young institution it is open to innovative research, and i have already had the opportunity to have david in nuremberg for a workshop and a concert. ju: do you think that your work has ethical implications as well? dr: i would hope that if we listen to the natural world more closely, we will not harm it so indiscriminately. if we feel that other species are also musical and also emotional, we will not treat them merely as food, nuisance, or property. dm: absolutely. by all means. yes yes yes. most discriminations, abuses, mistreatments derive from ignorance. the more we know about a subject, the more we develop respect, tolerance and sympathy. in the specific of my own research, as you probably know my critical companion of zoosemiotics (which is possibly my best known work), has a whole section entitled does zoosemiotics have an ethical agenda?, where i maintain that ethically-minded research is (a) possible, (b) in many cases welcome and (c) in fact unavoidable, in zoosemiotics too. to make the issue a bit clearer, i would counter: can a scholar in, say, gender studies avoid ethical implicajessica ullrich 124 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ tions in his/her research? it would be very difficult, because this scholar is studying a category of subjects and interactions where discrimination and abuse had a huge historical role. so, you just can’t help it, and frankly i don’t think that is a problem at all. mu: as i have already said, i clearly see ethical implications in the field of animal music. whether my own work helps to address these implications i cannot say, but at least i hope so. ju: do you think that the recent animal turn in the academic world can foster your own research? dm: i think so. but, i would say, the most important part is that this academic turn is finally happening. whether or not my research will benefit from it is not so relevant. what is relevant is that more and more people are getting interested in topics that were previously overlooked, taken for granted or totally misunderstood. back to the ethical implications, this increase of interest can only do good for animal welfare. mu: very true! it is great that this turn is actually happening and that we have the chance to contribute a little bit to it. ju: how important is the individuality of an animal musician? dr: some animals are more individuals than others, at least in my experience. easier to tell one bird from another than one whale from another, and when playing with insects it seems like to play along is just to become one tiny voice inside a giant throng … dm: i think it is just as important as it in the human animal. some human has a very distinctive musical identity, some other seems to be more comfortable within a crowd. among other animals, too, there can be dozens of “teen-idols” and one bob dylan, dozens of piano bar musicians and one thelonious monk. mu: this is one of the questions that in my mind turns inevitably to us humans. how important is the individuality of a human musician? our cultural history with its overestimation of individuality – with its construction of individuality, you could say – has underestimated the collective aspects of music as a social practice. honestly i think this is one of the aspects where human and non-human animals do only differ gradually, not categorically. ju: what animals made the most impression on you when it comes to animal music? dr: first birds, because they are immediately so easy to find and to hear. but humpback whales are impossibly great and sublime in their hugeanimal music 125 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ness and mystery. and, of course, insects are so much part of our world that they are easy to forget, but always there. hard to pick just one. dm: humpback whales were my first love, so there is always a special place for them in my musical heart. i have a fascination for blackbirds and wolves, and i still remember one occasion, in the middle of a lake in estonia, when i could hear so many different frog species singing, as one of the greatest musical experiences of my life. mu: i love blackbirds. nonetheless, my very first fascination with animal music came from gibbon song. i listened to it in a zoo when i was four years old. ju: what comes first, language or music? dr: for who? me? or in evolutionary history? i would say music … there is much more animal communication whose performance and function is more similar to music than it is to language. that question is dealt with in detail in many of my books. usually. i summarise it to mean that animals perform utterances with a beginning, middle and end, with precise inflection, emotion, shape and form. they perform these things over and over and over again. musical performances can be heard thus many times and still have emotional weight, but if the sound is more like a language we tend to think if the message has gotten across, then enough is enough. say something else. but music thrives on repetition. and one can derive meaning from it even if we don’t exactly know what is said. dm: i tend not to keep them separated. i think of music as a form of language, with its specific characteristics and potentials, but still with a great semiotic value. music may have been the first form of language to ever use the acoustic channel, because – among its potentials – it has exactly that of shaping emotions in a more powerful way. if we assume that the display of emotions must have been the first communicative need, then there may be a reason to think that the first form of language had musical characteristics. but of course, i am just speculating. mu: i am with david and dario – even if there is a bit of speculation in it, language could be derived from music or at least from a kind of protomusic. their interdependence is, in my eyes, one of the most fascinating research questions of today. ju: what do you think is the function of music? dr: to communicate what can be communicated in no other way. dm: the same as language, or any other tool for semiosis, but of course with certain specific features, where it can be more or less effective than jessica ullrich 126 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ these other forms. among the more effective ones, its ability to describe and affect emotions in ways that are unsurpassed by other tools. mu: i do not think there is only one answer to that. cultural evolution is (like biological evolution) great in switching original functions to new ones. music amongst great apes could have evolved as an aggressive group behavior and then been transformed into a mating strategy. or has it been just the other way round? i think we will see a lot of interesting hypotheses and surprises concerning the functions of music in the near future. ju: what can human musicians learn from animals? dr: a lot. dm: many things, the most important of which is musically reconnecting with their own animality, something we constantly try to escape from, not only in music. mu: foremost, singing and listening. ju: is there a big difference between the reasons for a bird, a whale or a human being to sing? dr: no. dm: no. capitalistic reasons aside. mu: even if it may seem conformist, no. ju: do you think that there is semantic meaning in bird song? dr: as much as there is in human instrumental music, though we of course have more variety and more choices. but they know what is right, something we are endlessly trying to achieve. dm: yes, definitely. if nothing else, displaying certain feelings, emotions, cognitive states is already a semantic action. mu: yes, in the sense dario just formulated. nevertheless i am even more interested in the question of its aesthetic meaning. ju: how should the field of zoomusicology be defined? do you want to encourage specific research, or do you want to embrace many kinds of people already doing related work? dm: i definitely like diversity in research, and as long as it is considered a resource and dealt with respectfully, science can only benefit from it. david, remember when we both participated to that special issue of trans-transcultural music review? i wrote there that zoomusicologists can be anthropological, ethological, empirical and theoretical, and that all combinations among these four were possible (you were an empirical/ anthropological, and i was a theoretical/ethological). i still believe that! animal music 127 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ dr: of course dario, that was a great issue we worked on together. now how can we get more musicologists and theorists to take this stuff seriously? we need to have many more people doing this kind of work. animal music should become a required part of our musical education system. it should enter the canon! mu: i think interdisciplinary work helps. i remember a dear colleague of mine in berlin just laughing when i told her i was interested in birdsong for the first time. as a musicologist, she thought i was just joking. soon after that she ran into a biologist who did research on nightingale song and she started to realize that there was something in birdsong that was interesting for musicology as well. ju: how can the research of the other two be productive for your own work? dm: i see them very complementary to my work, so there is every chance for each of us to be an additional value to each other. mu: exactly! ju: do you maybe see any possibilities to cooperate in the future? dr: sure. name the time and place, i’ll be there. and i’ve already suggested what i want martin to do – a serious musicological phrase-byphrase analysis of the song of the nightingale. the next nightingala will be somewhere in berlin on june 1st, 2014, at the university of the arts. i hope you can both be there. dm: it would be really nice. mu: i will be there! ju: what are your plans for the future music-wise? what are you up to in the next months? dr: i am trying to make another ecm record, and in march i played a concert with live flying quad-copter drones in arizona. i gave voice to these drones, expressing their fears and frustrations, unlike the ones we hear so much about in pakistan and iraq. let them speak their own peace. i will bring language to the machines and play my own music in and amongst them (http://terrain.org/2014/columns/a-concert-with-drones-inphoenix). thanks for asking all these good and tough questions jessica! dm: well, leaving aside that third record of mine (which may be like godot), i have to say there is a lot of stuff that does not concern zoomusicology, unfortunately. i am writing a big history of popular music with franco fabbri (who is one of the greatest in the field. for me, to write about popular music with him is like playing football with cruyff), and i jessica ullrich 128 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ have this project for a monograph on the semiotic analysis of protest songs. in the field of animal studies, too, cooking have submitted two monographs, earlier in 2014: a monograph on the representation of nonhuman animals in cinema, and a non-academic book about animal rights and environmentalism. it is in form of letters to my 3-year-old son, which i use as an excuse to be as clear as possible on certain choices and why i am trying to convey him certain values. thank you for your interview. it has been a real pleasure. mu: i would like to publish my thoughts about the discourse on birdsong in a western european cultural history. musically i would like to stray once again into pop music and compose a song about laika, the first dog in space, and her tragic fate. it was a great pleasure to have this inspiring communication. thank you, jessica, david and dario. more-than-green ecologies more-than-green ecologies christopher schliephake lecturer, universität augsburg christopher.schliephake@phil.uni-augsburg.de cohen, jeffrey j. 2013. prismatic ecology. ecotheory beyond green. minneapolis: university of minnesota press. 349 pp. $ 25.00 isbn 978-0-8166-7998-0 by now most of us will know that there are many shades of grey. it may come as a surprise that green is a color with many shades and guises as well. situated between yellow and blue on the spectrum of visible light (in the subtractive color system, it is indeed created by a combination of the two), green has various cultural meanings often connected to youth, peasantry or commons, permission or monetary systems. most importantly however, it is associated with nature and has also featured prominently in monotheistic religions as the color of paradise. as such, it has been used by nongovernment organizations, political parties, and environmental activists in their protection of the non-human world and advocacy of environmental justice. the downside of this symbolic usage is twofold: on the one hand, subsuming different environmental initiatives under one label misses the heterogeneity, contradictions, and conflicts inherent in their respective programs. on the other, it can easily be appropriated by actors whose intentions may be diametrically opposed to these issues and whose actions are anything but sustainable – for instance, mcdonald’s changed, in a much-noticed advertisement campaign, its logo from red to green a few years ago. that the time may have come to re-think the primer upon which our environmental debates have been drawn and open the canvas up to the full color spectrum is one of the most important insights of the challenging, surprising, and insightful book prismatic ecology. ecotheory beyond green. as its title indicates, prismatic ecology adjusts the focus of environmental philosophy, ecocriticism, and the new materialisms toward a more comprehensive take on colors and concerns, trading in an exclusive focus on “green” matters for a wider spectrum of hues and environments. as jeffrey j. cohen makes clear in his introduction to the volume, “a preponderance of green prevents the eye from noticing that the aerial is as much part of an mailto:christopher.schliephake@phil.uni-augsburg.de http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 christopher schliephake 118 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ecology as the arboreal (xix). however, this does not entail leaving behind the theoretical insights and committed practice of “green criticism”, but rather to look for new inter-relations between the experiencing i, the phenomena of the world, and the physical and material conditions that enable an exchange between the two. cohen takes the example of a rainbow to illustrate how this optical phenomenon involves non-human matter, the individual perceiver and her position, combining them in “a sudden relation that changes the quality of light itself” (xxxvi). paraphrasing the ancient philosopher heraclitus, one could say that no human ever looks at the same rainbow twice. this insight does not deny that the human eye perceives the world in a certain (and individual) way, but rather reminds us that our surroundings are ever-changing, re-fracturing and re-assembling their material and optical fabrics. we look, but there is a world that looks back at us; we are co-perceivers. in this context, “color is not some intangible quality that arrives belatedly to the composition but a material impress, an agency and partner, a thing made of other things through which worlds arrive” (xvi). the phenomenological and posthuman outlook of prismatic ecology is, against this background, to be thought of as a seeing instrument which helps us dissect the different natural, material, and sociocultural layers of our more-thanhuman worlds and explore how they interact to negotiate meaning. as lawrence buell’s “foreward” and serenella iovino and serpil oppermann’s “onward”, which frame the volume, make clear, this posthuman perspective also entails a new kind of ethics that does not abandon categories like human/non-human or culture/nature, but that re-aligns them on a horizontal axis where they share the same universe and where they constantly merge. like this, the more-than-human world enters our interpretative and narrative horizons as an agent in its own right. this observation brings to mind a beautiful passage of cormac mccarthy’s otherwise harrowing landmark epic blood meridian, or the evening redness in the west in which the narrator describes a desolate prairie by pointing to “the optical democracy of such landscapes” where “all preference is made whimsical and a man and a rock become endowed with unguessed kinship” (mccarthy [1985] 2008, 247). uncovering this kinship without neglecting the cultural mediation involved in the act of perceiving and interpreting it is one of the merits of prismatic ecology. in sixteen essays, the authors look at a wide palette of colors that include primary (red, blue), design (chartreuse) and super-optical ones (ultraviolet). in accordance with the phenomenological and posthumanist tone set by the introduction, the individual close readings of a respective color show that what we are faced with are not neatly distinct categories or http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 jeffrey j. cohen, “prismatic ecology. ecotheory beyond green” 119 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ phenomena but rather interacting formations that are impure and ambiguous. drawing on a different set of theoretical categories that emphasize co-habitation and entanglement (like stacy alaimo’s concept of “transcorporeality”, timothy morthon’s “mesh” or bruno latour’s “network”), the essays point to the sets of ecological formations that make up our storied worlds. these range from arctic (or alaskan) adventures (“white”, “maroon”) over the economics of the slaughterhouses and the high-tech menace of biotechnology (“red”, “greener”) to the liminal worlds of the undead or the deep sea (“grey”, “violet-black”). there is a lot to discover in prismatic ecology and although some essays have the tendency to lose sight of their initial topic, relegating environmental issues to the background in favor of other concerns (“blue”, “pink”), or trade their color in for a noun associated with it (“gold”, “orange”), we are still faced with a collection of essays that challenge common assumptions of what counts as environmental issues while also broadening the canon of our environmental texts (e.g. jeffrey cohen’s own essay on the undead which complicates notions of life and death as well as the discussion of ward moore’s neglected 1947 science fiction novel greener than you think or the works of alaskan artist john luther adams). a prismatic ecology as outlined in the volume has the benefit that it can take us to places and uncover parts of the world usually removed from sight or access. this is true for the deep-sea as well as the ultraviolet light spectrum or “x-ray”. in their respective essays, stacy alaimo and timothy morton take color as a signifier that can also tell us about things obscure or invisible to us, which gives them, in turn, room for problematizing an anthropocentric outlook on the world and for reflecting on the presence of non-human subjectivities or a thing world beyond our reach. there are also topics that remain outside of the scope of the volume, however: urban and postcolonial ecologies are subjects noticeably absent, although some of the colors would have invited an examination of these important fields of environmental debate. yellow as a primary color would have deserved a chapter, as would have petrol. on the bright side, this means that there remains a lot of ground to cover and that our prismatic lenses are open to ever new colors in our examination of our more-than-green ecologies. references mccarthy, cormac. (1985) 2008. blood meridian, or the evening redness in the west. new york: vintage. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 pigs vs. boars: the ethics of assisting domesticated and wild animals 5 is sn 2 2 8 0 -9 9 5 3 beyond anthropocentrism 1 • january 2013 inside the emotional lives of non-human animals a minding animals international utrecht 2012 pre-conference event special issue (genoa, italy, 12-13 may, 2012) edited by m. andreozzi, r. bennison, a. massaro, s. tonutti capabilities approach and animal bioethics • michele panzera animals and our emotions. how to approach the study of an interspecific community? • sabrina tonutti advocacy and animal rights • kim stallwood the emotional lives of animals: a christian perspective • alma massaro – gianfranco nicora animalia: ontology and ethics in weak antispeciesism • leonardo caffo the contemporary debate on experimentation • susanna penco – rosagemma ciliberti non-human animals and genetic engineering • arianna ferrari the relationship between humans and other animals in european animal welfare legislation • paola sobbrio human’s best friends? • matteo andreozzi elationsre l a t io n s . b e y o n d a n t h r o p o c e n t r is m 1 • 2 0 1 3 r 9.1-2 november 2021 animals: freedom, justice, welfare, moral status, and conflict cases edited by francesco allegri studies and research contributions pigs vs. boars: the ethics of assisting domesticated 9 and wild animals beka jalagania the chincoteague ponies and what it means to be free 27 alexis flower beyond the fairy tale of the shape of water: reimagining 41 the creature viktorija lankauskaitė max scheler e la possibilità di una nuova forma di antispecismo 59 enrico r.a. calogero giannetto distributive justice and animal welfare 75 paola morreale unitarianism or hierarchical approach for moral status? 91 a very subtle difference francesco allegri relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ relations. beyond anthropocentrism 6 comments, debates, reports and interviews animals and justice: the unfinished journey 111 paola fossati author guidelines 123 relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 9 pigs vs. boars the ethics of assisting domesticated and wild animals 1 beka jalagania universität mannheim doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2021-0102-jala beka.jalagania@gmail.com abstract among animal ethicists who accept that we have positive duties toward wild animals, there are some who maintain that these duties are considerably weaker than the duties we have toward domesticated animals, other things being equal. in this article i intend to examine whether this claim is true. to do this, i consider various factors that are often thought to render our duties to assist domesticated animals stronger than our duties to assist wild animals. my discussion will show that these factors fail to make our duties toward domesticated animals any stronger than our duties toward wild animals. keywords: animal ethics; domesticated animals; domestication; duties of assistance; laissez-faire intuition; partiality; special relationships; vulnerability and dependence; wild animals; wild animal suffering. 1. introduction in animal ethics, early discussions concerning duties to assist animals had primarily centered on domesticated animals 2. in these discussions it was widely agreed that by engaging in animal domestication, a practice that creates vulnerable animals unable to survive on their own, humans acquired duties to care for the animals resulting from this practice. some authors went so far as to argue that domestication renders human socie 1 i would like to thank oscar horta for his helpful comments on an earlier version of this article. 2 by “domesticated animal” i mean an animal who has been selectively bred by humans. relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2021-0102-jala mailto:beka.jalagania@gmail.com https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ beka jalagania 10 ties as a whole collectively responsible for assisting domesticated animals (donaldson and kymlicka 2011, 94). these early discussions largely excluded wild animals 3. this exclusion was, partly, due to a misconception, commonly held by animal ethicists, about the quality of animal lives in the wild. this misconception is now referred to as the idyllic view of nature, according to which wild animals generally fare well, requiring no significant human assistance. thanks to the diligent efforts of some authors (ng 1995; horta 2010a, 2010b; tomasik 2015) to raise awareness of the harsh lives of wild animals and their systematic suffering, questions concerning wild animal assistance started to appear. the question of whether we have duties to assist wild animals turned out to be rather contentious and divided animal ethicists into two camps. drawing on peter singer’s (1972) famous argument for the obligation to assist distant strangers, philosophers in one camp argued that we are required to assist suffering wild animals when we can do so without excessive cost to ourselves (nussbaum 2006; horta 2010b; mcmahan 2015; faria 2016). they maintained that if human suffering matters morally, there seems to be no reason why animal suffering should not matter too, unless we are speciesists and it is shown that speciesism is indefensible (singer 1975; pluhar 1995). in contrast to this, philosophers in the other camp argued that unless we are in some way responsible for the suffering of wild animals, we are not required to assist them (regan 1983; pluhar 1995; francione 2000; gruen 2011). this view is now called the laissez-faire intuition (lfi), according to which we simply do not have general duties to assist wild animals (palmer 2010; 2013). the lfi endorses an account of positive duties on which a requirement to assist others is created only on the basis of special relations or circumstances, one of which is being causally responsible for creating the need of assistance (palmer 2010, 84). the troubling implication of this account, and the lfi in general, is that if we are not required to assist wild animals, and this is explained by the appeal to the lack of special relations with them, then we are also not required to assist complete strangers (humans) with whom we have no such relations. to recall singer’s famous drowning child analogy, the lfi and the account of positive duties that underlies this view would imply that we have no moral obligation to save the stranger child, even if we could do 3 by “wild animal” i mean an animal who is undomesticated (i.e., has not been bred by humans) and lives independently in a natural environment that is generally undisturbed and unaffected by human actions (i.e., wilderness). relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ pigs vs. boars 11 so at little or no cost to ourselves. as most of us would find this implication very hard to accept, the lfi should be given up. but even if it is granted that we have duties to assist wild animals, there are some philosophers who argue that these duties are considerably weaker than our duties to assist domesticated animals, other things being equal (nussbaum 2006; palmer 2013). it is this claim that i want to critically examine here and see whether it is true. considering the limited resources we have for assisting needy animals, exploring this claim will prove especially useful in conflict situations in which we are able to assist either domesticated or wild animals but not both. 2. animals and duties of assistance as noted above, among animal ethicists who accept that we have positive duties toward wild animals, there are some who maintain that these duties are considerably weaker than the duties we have toward domesticated animals, other things being equal. for example, martha nussbaum argues that while we have duties to assist both domesticated and wild animals, our duties toward them are nevertheless different in strength. she states: “it seems plausible that we have less responsibility to protect gazelles than we do to protect domestic dogs and cats, since we are the guardians of the latter and they have evolved in symbiosis with us” (nussbaum 2006, 379). on a similar note, palmer points out that even if we accept that we are required to assist wild animals, this requirement will be much weaker compared to the requirement we have to assist domesticated animals. she writes: “there might be a different version of this view – that requirements to assist [wild animals] do exist in such cases but that they are much weaker where there’s no prior entanglement” (palmer 2013, 29). drawing on these claims, in the following subsections i will examine the question of whether our duties to assist domesticated animals are stronger than our duties to assist wild animals. to do this, i suggest that we look at the ways in which we come to be bound by duties to assist domesticated animals and see whether they provide stronger reasons to assist or care for these animals. 2.1. voluntary creation of domesticated animals while most domesticated animals are brought into existence by deliberate actions of humans, fully wild animals come into existence indepenrelations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ beka jalagania 12 dently of any human involvement. thus, while there is a human causal role in the existence of domesticated animals, there is no such role in the existence of fully wild animals. could this mere fact, then, affect the strength of our positive duties toward domesticated and wild animals? suppose you are a pig farmer, raising and breeding pigs for commercial purposes. one day, at the request of your children, you decide to bring one of the piglets at home and raise him as a pet. since, as a breeder, you are responsible for bringing the pig into existence, you acknowledge your obligation to take care of him by making sure that his basic needs are satisfied. suppose also that your house is located next to a forest, where there is a solitary wild boar running around. you know that during winter her food becomes scarce and she starves most of the time. unless you provide additional food for your pig who lives in your garden, he too will have to face starvation frequently. you are concerned about the well-being of your pig and the boar, but you realize that you can feed properly and thus prevent the starvation of only one of them. what are you required to do? it could be claimed that, because you created the pig, you have the obligation to provide care for him and this would include making sure that he is well-fed. the defense of this claim could go as follows: by creating the pig you created a possibility that he can be harmed; that is, you put him in a situation in which it is possible that he can be harmed. such a possibility did not exist before, nor was the pig in a situation in which he could have been harmed. the same cannot be said about the boar, because she came into existence independently of your actions. now you have the obligation to make sure that the pig is not harmed and this obligation is stronger than your obligation to assist the boar, because you created the former but not the latter. we can notice several problems with this argumentation. first, the fact that you created a needy being tells us that you acquired a duty to care for him, but this fact does not tell us anything about the strength of this duty – that is, while the creation of a needy being gives you a reason to assist him, it would be a mistake to think that it provides you with an additional reason to give such a being priority over the other equally needy being. second, intuitively speaking, we do not ascribe moral relevance to the fact that by creating a being we also create a possibility that he can be harmed. if this fact was morally relevant, then it would have moral relevance not only when a created being is needy, but even after he is a self-sufficient adult, because the fact that we created a being persists as long as this being exists. most parents believe that, after their children become self-sufficient adults, they are no longer required to care relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ pigs vs. boars 13 for them, nor do they feel responsible for the harms their adult children may experience in the future. what thus seems to be the case is that the act of creation has no independent relevance. if we created a being who was self-sufficient from the very moment of his birth, we would not think that we bear any responsibility for the harms he may suffer throughout his life, even though we once created him and this way created a possibility that he could be harmed. if being causally responsible for the existence of other beings as a property has any moral weight, then this property should have some moral weight in any other circumstances. if the presence of this property cannot make any difference in other circumstances, then it cannot be said to have any moral relevance. suppose you have two children: one of them is your biological child, while another is an adopted one. if both of them become infected with a deadly virus and you can save only one of them, whom should you save? would you think that your duty to assist your biological child is stronger than your duty to assist an adopted one, simply because you are causally responsible for the existence of the former and not of the latter? i believe most of us would answer these questions in the negative. then, if your duties to care for both of your children are equal in strength, so should be our duties to care for domesticated and wild animals. the relevance of this scenario can be challenged. it could be argued that in this scenario the only morally relevant difference between your children is not that you created one and not the other. it also matters that you adopted one and not the other. it could be argued, then, that this scenario does not necessarily show that your causal responsibility for the existence of your child has no moral weight. it may nevertheless have some moral weight; it is just that its moral weight might be counterbalanced by the moral weight that adoption carries and that is why we do not see the difference between the strength of the duties toward your biological and adopted children. but what moral weight does adoption carry? by adopting that child, it can be argued, you closed off his opportunities to be adopted, and thus taken care of, by others 4 – that is, you deprived him of the opportunity to have different parents who would be happy to assist and save him in distress. this way, it could be claimed, adopting that child generates a requirement to assist him and that this requirement is as strong as your requirement to assist the child you created. then, it could be that the moral weight of this requirement evens out the moral weight of the requirement generated by your causal 4 for a similar point, see burgess-jackson 1998. relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ beka jalagania 14 responsibility for the existence of your child and that is why the strength of your duties toward them are equal. i think this objection can be easily avoided by adding an assumption to the scenario: that an adopted child is dying as a result of a genetic disease and that, if not you, nobody would ever adopt him. we can even add that the child would surely die if not adopted by you. i think that even in this modified scenario most of us would still think that your duties to assist both of your children have equal strength. if this is right, then the mere fact that we created domesticated animals cannot give us an additional reason to give priority to them over the equally needy wild animals. 2.2. causal responsibility for the vulnerability and dependence of domesticated animals if our causal role in the existence of domesticated animals could not provide a ground for asserting that our duties to assist them are stronger than our duties to assist wild animals, can our causal role in the vulnerability and dependence of domesticated animals provide such a ground? palmer thinks that it can. she claims that humans are responsible for making domesticated animals vulnerable and dependent by selectively breeding them and, in some cases, they are made even more vulnerable and dependent once in existence by modifying their anatomical features (e.g., by clipping their coats, declawing, etc.) (palmer 2013, 28). generally speaking, the practice of domestication is characterized by the change of animals’ natural genetic traits into the traits that are profitable and desirable for humans. such a change, in its turn, significantly diminishes the animals’ natural skills necessary to be self-sufficient. because of this, domesticated animals require regular human care and supervision to fare well. considering how the practice of domestication works, palmer’s claim that through domestication humans make animals vulnerable and dependent may seem inappropriate. this is because an individual domesticated animal with a particular identity exists because of domestication and if that animal had not been domesticated, he would not have existed at all, and since domestication inherently causes vulnerability and dependence, domesticated animals cannot exist without being vulnerable and dependent. if being vulnerable and dependent is the only form or way of existence of domesticated animals, then it would be inappropriate to say that domestication makes animals vulnerable and dependent, for the word “makes” here suggests that there is a state relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ pigs vs. boars 15 in which these animals are not vulnerable and dependent before being domesticated. but we have seen that in the case of domestication such a state does not exist, because without domestication these animals would not have existed at all. thus, it would be more appropriate to say that domestication creates animals who are vulnerable and dependent and, in that sense, through domestication humans can only create such animals. if humans do not make domesticated animals vulnerable and dependent but only create them (or bring them into existence), then they will have causal responsibility only for the existence of domesticated animals and this brings us back to the previous discussion concerning the question of whether causal responsibility for the existence of domesticated animals gives us a stronger reason to assist them and i have shown that it does not. while it makes no sense to say that through domestication humans make domesticated animals vulnerable and dependent, it does make sense to say that humans (can) make domesticated animals vulnerable and dependent after they are brought into existence. this is because the existing domesticated animals already have certain properties and/or abilities that can be altered in such ways as to make these animals less able and more susceptible to certain harms. since making a being vulnerable and dependent does not directly affect his well-being negatively and since making him more susceptible to certain harms is not the same as harming him, it cannot be said that such an act is harmful and thus even pro tanto wrong. however, since making a being vulnerable and dependent significantly increases the likelihood that he can be harmed, such an act is at least morally problematic. but what does this tell us regarding our main question of whether making existing domesticated animals vulnerable and dependent gives us stronger reasons to assist them? since answering this question very much relates to the later discussion concerning harming animals and our duties toward them, i will postpone further discussion of this question until later (section 2.4). perhaps palmer can nevertheless insist that because the vulnerability and dependence of domesticated animals are human-caused or have a human origin, this alone can justify the claim that our duties to care for domesticated animals is stronger than our duties to care for wild animals. first of all, if domestication as a practice is neither harmful nor morally problematic and if through domestication humans do not make animals vulnerable and dependent, how can the mere fact that domestication has a human origin be of moral relevance? moving on, to examine whether the human origin of vulnerability and dependence gives us stronger reasons to assist or care for domesticated animals, let us consider the folrelations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ beka jalagania 16 lowing scenario: suppose you are a dog breeder – you breed dogs to sell them afterward. similar to typical domesticated dogs, the dogs you breed are vulnerable and dependent and require regular care to fare well. at the request of your child, you decide to adopt one of them and bring him into your family. but the dog is not the only being who is adopted in your family. you also have an adopted child, who, like any other child, requires regular care and supervision. now, on the assumption that your child and your dog have equal interests and that, if not you, nobody would ever adopt any of them, what would be the strength of your duties to care for them? if it is right that our reasons to assist others are stronger when their vulnerability and dependence is human-caused, then it follows that your duty to care for your dog is stronger than your duty to care for your child, because the vulnerability and dependence in the case of your dog are human-caused, while in the case of your child they are natural. but i do not think that many would accept this implication. most of us would hold that, as long as your child and your dog have equal interests, your duties to care for them would be equal, and if this is right, then our duties toward domesticated and wild animals would be equal too. 2.3. special relationships with domesticated animals although most of us do not have special relationships with most domesticated animals, some of us certainly are related to some domesticated animals in a special way. a paradigmatic example of such special relation is pet adoption. for most people adopting a pet means bringing a new member into their families, where an animal will be loved and adequately cared for. most people are not related to wild animals in that way. although some humans may develop close relationships with some wild animals and may even coexist with them to some extent, special relationships between ordinary people and fully wild animals are almost non-existent. this difference, then, could provide some justification for the claim that our reasons or duties to assist at least some domesticated animals are stronger than our reasons or duties to assist wild animals. in what follows i will examine two possible ways of developing such a justification: the first concerns an act of adoption, while the second focuses on the value of special relationships. it could be argued that by adopting an animal one closes off his opportunities to be adopted by others who would not only care for him but also prioritize his well-being in conflict situations. thus, in conflict cases, an adopter should do what a different or even better adopter could relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ pigs vs. boars 17 have done – prioritize the well-being of an adopted animal. for that reason, it could be said, adopting an animal gives us a stronger reason to assist an adopted animal rather than a stranger wild animal 5. this argument is problematic in various ways. first of all, it should be noted that while adoption implies that an adopter undertakes a duty to care for an adopted animal, it by no means implies the requirement that in conflict cases this animal should be favored or given priority over the equally needy animal. this means that in conflict cases favoring or prioritizing an adopted animal requires justification. second, the premise that one should treat an adopted animal similar to the way a better adopter would treat that animal is question-begging, for it assumes that a better adopter is already justified in prioritizing the well-being of an adopted animal. it might be that a better adopter could have really prioritized that animal, but he too would be required to justify doing that. the truth is that in conflict cases any adopter, including a better one, would need a justification for favoring an adopted animal. the claim that we owe more to domesticated animals than we do to wild animals can be defended by the appeal to special relationships that may develop between humans and domesticated animals. such relationships are characteristic of humans and animals living together as one family. indeed, humans and their animal companions often develop deep emotional bonds and powerful loving relationships that are mutual and can be very intense. considering their value and significance to some humans, such relationships are often thought to provide some justification for giving priority to the interest of individuals to whom we are specially related. whether special relationships really provide such justification is a subject of a heated debate between the proponents of partiality and impartiality (see, for example, jollimore 2018). the case for impartiality seems rather simple: since all morally considerable beings matter equally, they should be treated as equals. if their needs are equal, special considerations aside, then moral reasons to satisfy their needs are also equal. to say that despite their equal needs our moral reasons to satisfy their needs are not equal requires justification. for example, if my cat and a feral cat are dying but i can save only one of them, then, on the assumption that they will equally benefit from being 5 it is worth noting that when it comes to adoption, any kind of animal – wild or domesticated – can be adopted, however, as it typically is the case, adopted companion animals are domesticated ones and the conflict case here refers to conflicting interests of domesticated animals living in human families and fully wild animals living in the wild. relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ beka jalagania 18 saved, my moral reasons to save each of them are equal. saying that my moral reasons are not equal calls for justification. thus, the proponents of partiality will need to appeal to the allegedly morally relevant differences between my cat and a feral cat to provide such a justification. they could argue that my reason to save my cat is stronger than the reason to save a feral cat because i have a special relationship with my cat that i do not have with a feral cat. after all, my cat is not just another animal; he is an animal with whom i developed a deep and meaningful relationship that provides a moral reason for treating him in a special way – to prioritize his well-being over the well-being of an equally needy but a stranger animal. simon keller, in his book partiality, provides a comprehensive assessment of the different defenses of partiality. in a lengthy discussion, he critically examines and rejects the relationships view, according to which our reasons to be partial are grounded in the intrinsic value of our special relationships, before he develops his own – the individuals view, according to which our reasons to be partial are grounded in the value of individuals with whom we share our special relationships. keller’s main criticism toward the relationships view is that, in explaining why we have reasons to be partial, this view relies on the intrinsic value of special relationships, without making a reference to the significance these relationships have for us, for our well-being. as he notes, this view “attempts to explain the importance of human relationships by dissociating them from the contributions they make to human needs and interests. it drags human relationships from their human context” (keller 2013, 77). since keller effectively and persuasively discredits the plausibility of the relationships view, i will not be concerned with examining it further and directly move on to the evaluation of his own view 6. unlike the relationships view, keller’s individuals view states that our motives for being partial toward certain individuals are best explained by the reference to the value of these individuals. indeed, when we rush to assist the individuals with whom we share special relationships, the motivating factor of our actions seems to be the individuals themselves and not the relationships we have with them. in assisting them we do not think about the value of our special relationships; rather, we think about the value of these individuals. although the individuals view best explains our actions when we are partial toward certain individuals, if it is to gain any credibility, it further needs to explain why we should be 6 for a thorough and powerful criticism of the relationships view defended by joseph raz, samuel scheffler, niko kolodny, and others, see keller 2013, 45-77. relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ pigs vs. boars 19 partial. in other words, the individuals view owes us a justification for the claim that our duties to assist individuals with whom we have special relationships are stronger than our duties to assist complete strangers, other things being equal. keller acknowledges the need for such a justification: behind the puzzle of partiality, and behind the main problem for the individuals view, is the assumption that if two entities have the same kinds of value, then any reasons generated by the value of the first entity must also be generated by the value of the second entity. if the individuals view is to succeed, then it must challenge that assumption. it must find a way to say that you can have a reason to give certain treatment to one person, because he has a certain value, without having the same reason to give the same treatment to another person, even though she has the same value. (keller 2013, 114) but can keller’s view solve the puzzle of partiality? can this view explain why we should treat equally valuable and equally needy beings unequally? this is what keller has to say in response: the individuals view has the option of saying that it is a primitive fact, admitting of no further explanation, that the value of an individual generates certain reasons, duties, and permissions for some agents, without generating the same reasons, duties, and permissions for other agents. the main objection to the individuals view is that it seems unable to explain why we have special reasons regarding the particular individuals with whom we share special relationships; it is an option for the individuals view to respond by saying, “we just do”. the puzzle of partiality is the puzzle of saying why we should treat some people differently from others, even when those others are no less inherently valuable; it is an option for the individuals view to respond by saying, “we just should”. (ibid., 138) this response is as inadequate as it is disappointing. an adequate account of partiality must be able to explain why we should be partial toward certain individuals if it is to outweigh the demands of impartiality, and keller’s resort to the primitivism about the reasons of partiality seems rather an ad hoc move and insufficient. it is also disappointing because, after all, keller’s “explanation” for our having special moral reasons of partiality is that there is no explanation. such an uninformative response will not be able to convince even a hesitating impartialist, let alone change the minds of avid proponents of impartiality. thus, i conclude that the individuals view is deeply unsatisfactory and unpersuasive, and that special relationships cannot make our moral reasons to assist animals with whom we have special relationships any stronger than the moral reasons we have for assisting animals with whom we lack such relationships. relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ beka jalagania 20 2.4. prior harmful actions harmful actions of humans often cause victims to be in need of assistance and thus generate the duties to assist them. although domesticated animals are the typical victims of human harms, they are not the only ones; wild animals too suffer harms from the actions of humans. thus, my discussion of the duties to assist the victims of human harms will concern not only domesticated animals but also wild ones. in that sense, this subsection will not resolve the specific question of whether our reasons to assist domesticated animals are stronger than our reasons to assist wild ones. rather, the question i am concerned with here is whether our duties of assistance that are generated as a result of our prior harmful actions are any stronger than our duties of assistance that have a different origin, other things being equal. exploring this question will prove useful, for it will provide guidance for conflict cases in which among the animals we are required to assist some are the animals to whom we owe assistance because we harmed them, while some others are the animals toward whom we have duties of assistance on other grounds. let us start exploring the question by considering the following scenario: suppose that the chemical waste released from your factory located nearby a forest has deteriorated the soil that used to provide food for a group of wild animals (group a). due to the resulting food shortage, these animals are having a hard time finding enough food to feed themselves and most of the time they are starving. on the other side of the forest, due to a natural forest fire, another group of wild animals (group b) has lost a big part of their food supply and they too are starving most of the time. on the assumption that you can relieve or end the suffering of only one of these groups of animals and all other things are equal, which one should you assist? it is clear that you have the obligation to assist both groups of animals, although your obligations to assist each of them differ in their origins. your duty to assist animals in group a is special which you acquired through your harmful actions. you made these animals worse off and now you have a special duty to restore the injustice – that is, you ought to compensate for the loss they suffered as a result of your actions and restore their condition at least to the point it was prior to the infliction of harm. your duty to assist animals in group b is general which is imposed on you simply because it is within your power to end their suffering and you can do so without excessive cost to yourself. as it seems, your duty to assist animals in group a is grounded in the requirement of justice, while your duty to assist animals in group b is derived from the relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ pigs vs. boars 21 general requirement of morality. having clarified the difference between the grounds of your duties to assist both groups of animals, we can ask again: which group are you required to assist? in conflict cases like this, a standard view is that, all other things being equal, the requirements of justice take priority. this view employs an assumption that negative duties are much more stringent than positive duties (palmer 2010, 88). if that is so, then the requirements that are created as a result of the violation of negative duties will be stricter than the general requirements of morality. such requirements are the requirements of justice, that demand that the individuals who are the victims of injustice should be given what they were deprived of or what they would have had had they not been treated unfairly 7. in relation to the animals in group a, you violated your negative duty not to harm them by damaging their food supply and making them starve. that is why your obligation to assist them now is grounded in the requirements of justice. what would, then, a standard view require you to do? for simplicity, let us put aside difficulties associated with collective responsibility and assume that you are directly causally responsible for the starvation of the animals in group a. on the standard view, then, you ought to give priority to their well-being and use all your limited recourses to mitigate or end their suffering. this is because the animals in group a are the victims of injustice, since you unjustifiably made them worse off by deteriorating the soil on which their livelihood depends. consequentialists would deny this. they would insist that, since both actions – alleviating or ending the suffering of animals in group a or group b – would produce the same amount of value, either of them is optional and none of them has a priority over the other. i find the standard view intuitively very plausible. unfortunately, due to the scope and focus of this article, i cannot offer a full defense of this view, but below i can mention a few considerations that will demonstrate its intuitive plausibility. so, why are negative duties stronger than positive duties? i suggest that the plausibility of this claim rests on the assumption that doing harm is worse than allowing harm. since the violation of negative duties constitutes doing harm and the violation of positive duties constitutes allowing 7 it should be noted here that the requirements of justice are applicable only to the agents who are the perpetrators of injustices and it is the perpetrators’ standpoint from which the requirements of justice have more force. otherwise, if you are in a position to assist two individuals, one of whom is the victim of injustice, but you are not causally responsible for this injustice, i do not see why the fact that one suffered injustice and another did not should have a moral significance for you. relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ beka jalagania 22 harm, it follows that the violation of negative duties is worse than the violation of positive duties. the latter claim explains why negative duties are stronger than positive duties: if a particular action is worse than the other, it is natural that the requirement that prohibits the worse action will be stronger than the other. for example, if killing is worse than letting die, then an act of killing will be more strongly prohibited than an act of letting die. as a matter of fact, saying that negative duties are stronger than positive duties is just another way to say that the violation of negative duties is worse than the violation of positive duties. if negative duties are stronger than positive duties, then the requirements of justice that are generated by the violation of negative duties will be stronger as well. but in order for this argumentation to gain any credibility, the fundamental assumption that doing harm is worse than allowing harm must be properly defended. frances kamm offers a valuable insight into why doing harm is worse than allowing harm, by demonstrating why killing, which is an instance of doing harm, is worse than letting die, which is an instance of allowing harm. first, she notes that to see that killing is worse than letting die, we need to ask whether we would think it permissible to impose the same losses on the individuals who committed the acts of killing and letting die, assuming that the imposition of these losses was necessary to bring the victims back to life. she argues that, while most of us would accept the killing of a killer, most of us would think it impermissible to kill the individual who let someone die. she also uncovers the essential features that draw the difference between killing and letting die and also, arguably, commit us intuitively to the idea that the former is worse than the latter: (a) in killing, we introduce a threat that was not previously present, while in letting die, a (potential) threat is already present; (b) in letting die, it is always the case that a victim loses a life that he would have had only with our assistance at that time; (c) in killing, we initiate an interference with the victim, while in letting die, we avoid being interfered with (kamm 2007, 17-19). another defense of the claim that killing is worse than letting die is this: if killing and letting die are morally equivalent, then, other things being equal, the use of such harmful means that is justified in preventing one, will be justified in preventing the other 8. let us consider the following scenarios. suppose that in case 1 an aggressor unjustly attacks you with the intention to kill you. since you can defend your life only by killing the aggressor, you shoot him dead. now, suppose in case 2 you fell in a swamp and are slowly drowning. luckily, you notice that there is a stranger walking nearby and ask him for help. however, upon 8 for a similar point, see frowe 2007, 60-61. relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ pigs vs. boars 23 approaching, he tells you that he would rather watch you die than save you and refuses to offer any assistance. in desperation, you realize that if you shoot him dead with your gun, his body will fall into the swamp, then you can crawl up the fallen body and get out of the swamp. since there are no other alternative ways to save your life, you kill the stranger. the situation in case 1 is a clear case of a justified self-defense. it is more than obvious that you are justified in using deadly force against the attacker who was going to kill you. but are you justified in using deadly force against the stranger in case 2? i highly doubt that you are. most of us would consider the killing of the stranger grossly impermissible. yet if killing and letting die were morally equivalent, the use of deadly force in both cases would be justified, other things being equal. but it seems that you are not justified in killing the stranger in case 2. thus, killing and letting die are not morally equivalent. the fact that the use of deadly force is justified only in case 1 shows that killing is worse than letting die. if we find the discussion above intuitively appealing, then this would provide support for the claim that, other things being equal, the requirements of justice are stricter than the general requirements of morality, as the standard view states, and thus you ought to prioritize the well-being of the animals who are the victims of injustice for which you are causally responsible. finally, i will now turn to the discussion i started in section 2.2 and postponed until this moment. the discussion concerns the question of whether making existing domesticated animals vulnerable and dependent gives us stronger reasons to assist them. the reason why i postponed discussing this question until this moment is that this question is morally analogous to the recently discussed question of whether the fact that one’s need for assistance is caused by the harmful actions of ours gives us stronger reasons to assist harmed individuals. previously i noted that although making animals vulnerable and dependent is not a harm, it is nevertheless morally problematic. this is because making animals less able and less self-sufficient significantly increases the likelihood that they can be harmed. but since making animals more susceptible to certain harms is not the same as actually harming them, the duties that are created by making animals more vulnerable will not be any stronger than the duties that are created by bringing vulnerable animals into existence. thus, as long as making animals more susceptible to certain harms does not result in actually harming them, the requirements of justice are not generated. but as soon as they experience harm as a result of being made more susceptible by our actions, the requirements of justice thus created will demand that we give priority to their needs, as i have argued above. relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ beka jalagania 24 3. conclusion the question of whether we have duties to assist wild animals at all is a matter of dispute among animal ethicists. but even if some philosophers accept that we do have duties to assist wild animals, they nevertheless maintain that these duties are considerably weaker than the duties to assist domesticated animals. in this article i critically examined this claim. in doing so i explored various possible grounds that could substantiate this claim. my examination of these grounds showed that they fail to render our duties to assist domesticated animals any stronger than our duties to assist wild animals. references burgess-jackson, keith. 1998. “doing right by our animal companions”. journal of ethics 2: 159-185. donaldson, sue, and will kymlicka. 2011. zoopolis: a political theory of animal rights. new york: oxford university press. faria, catia. 2016. animal ethics goes wild: the problem of wild animal suffering and intervention in nature. phd thesis, pompeu fabra university. francione, gary. 2000. introduction to animal rights: your child or the dog? philadelphia: temple university press. frowe, helen. 2007. “killing john to save mary: a defense of the moral distinction between killing and letting die”. in action, ethics, and responsibility, edited by joseph k. campbell et al., 47-66. cambridge (ma): mit press. gruen, lori. 2011. ethics and animals. cambridge: cambridge university press. horta, oscar. 2010a. “debunking the idyllic view of natural processes: population dynamics and suffering in the wild”. télos 17: 73-90. horta, oscar. 2010b. “the ethics of the ecology of fear against the nonspeciesist paradigm: a shift in the aims of intervention in nature”. between the species 13 (10): 163-187. jollimore, troy. 2018. “impartiality”. in the stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2018/entries/impartiality/ kamm, frances. 2007. intricate ethics: rights, responsibilities, and permissible harm. new york: oxford university press. keller, simon. 2013. partiality. princeton: princeton university press. mcmahan, jeff. 2015. “the moral problem of predation”. in philosophy comes to dinner: arguments about the ethics of eating, edited by andrew chignell et al., 268-294. new york: routledge. ng, yewk. 1995. “towards welfare biology: evolutionary economics of animal consciousness and suffering”. biology and philosophy 10 (1): 255-285. relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2018/entries/impartiality/ https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ pigs vs. boars 25 nussbaum, martha. 2006. frontiers of justice: disability, nationality, species membership. cambridge (ma): harvard university press. palmer, clare. 2010. animal ethics in context. new york: columbia university press. palmer, clare. 2013. “what (if anything) do we owe to wild animals?”. between the species 16 (1): 15-38. pluhar, evelyn. 1995. beyond prejudice: the moral significance of human and nonhuman animals. durham london: duke university press. regan, tom. 1983. the case for animal rights. berkeley: university of california press. singer, peter. 1972. “famine, affluence, and morality”. philosophy & public affairs 1 (3): 229-243. singer, peter. 1975. animal liberation. new york: new york review. tomasik, brian. 2015. “the importance of wild animal suffering”. relations. beyond anthropocentrism 3 (2): 133-152. relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ relations_9-1-2-2021_00b_sommario.pdf studies and research contributions pigs vs. boards beka jalagania the chincoteague ponies and what it means to be free alexis flower beyond the fairy tale of the shape of water viktorija lankauskaitė max scheler e la possibilità di una nuova forma di antispecismo enrico r.a. calogero giannetto distributive justice and animal welfare paola morreale unitarianism or hierarchical approach for moral status? a very subtle difference francesco allegri comments, debates, reports and interviews animals and justice paola fossati author guidelines the “cruel absurdity” of human violence and its consequences: a vegan studies analysis of a pandemic novel 5 is sn 2 2 8 0 -9 9 5 3 beyond anthropocentrism 1 • january 2013 inside the emotional lives of non-human animals a minding animals international utrecht 2012 pre-conference event special issue (genoa, italy, 12-13 may, 2012) edited by m. andreozzi, r. bennison, a. massaro, s. tonutti capabilities approach and animal bioethics • michele panzera animals and our emotions. how to approach the study of an interspecific community? • sabrina tonutti advocacy and animal rights • kim stallwood the emotional lives of animals: a christian perspective • alma massaro – gianfranco nicora animalia: ontology and ethics in weak antispeciesism • leonardo caffo the contemporary debate on experimentation • susanna penco – rosagemma ciliberti non-human animals and genetic engineering • arianna ferrari the relationship between humans and other animals in european animal welfare legislation • paola sobbrio human’s best friends? • matteo andreozzi elationsre l a t io n s . b e y o n d a n t h r o p o c e n t r is m 1 • 2 0 1 3 r 10.2 december 2022 human beings’ moral relations with other animals and the natural environment edited by francesco allegri studies and research contributions what we owe owls: nonideal relationality among fellow 9 creatures in the old growth forest ben almassi the “cruel absurdity” of human violence and its consequences: 23 a vegan studies analysis of a pandemic novel jessica murray duality of abuse and care: empathy in sara gruen’s water 39 for elephants moumita bala smriti singh immanuel kant e l’etica ambientale. tre proposte per rivisitare 55 (e una per riattualizzare) la morale kantiana matteo andreozzi ecosocial autonomy as an educational ideal 75 jani pulkki sami keto comments, debates, reports and interviews is there a moral problem in predation? 93 francesco allegri author guidelines 101 relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 23 the “cruel absurdity” of human violence and its consequences a vegan studies analysis of a pandemic novel jessica murray university of south africa doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2022-02-murj murraj@unisa.ac.za abstract this article teases out what a vegan studies theoretical framework can offer a literary analysis of a selected pandemic novel, “the fell” (2021), by sarah moss. pandemic fiction accommodates texts from a wide range of genres, and these types of literary texts have seen a resurgence in the wake of the spread of the corona virus. while literary engagements with pandemics have often been relegated to the realms of dystopian science fiction, our current realities have shifted to such an extent that they can now comfortably be read alongside more realistic fictional representations of contemporary societies. the causal relationships between anthropocentric abuse of the environment in general and of animals in particular, and pandemics have been energetically contested in the media and in scholarly disciplinary fields ranging from virology to critical animal studies. the argument that i will develop is that vegan studies is a theoretical rubric with unique and salient generative capacity and that it allows for the emergence of fresh and necessary insights when we start unpacking how to make sense of pandemics through fiction. i will use moss’s novel to anchor and illustrate my argument in favour of the value of vegan studies in these discussions. keywords: animals; factory farming; food politics; literary studies; more-thanhuman; pandemic fiction; sarah moss; veganism; vegan studies; violence. 1. introduction while veganism has been much maligned and misunderstood as an eccentric lifestyle choice, i will focus on vegan studies as a framework rather than on veganism as either an identity or a dietary practice. in other words, this article offers an argument in favour of vegan studies relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2022-02-murj mailto:murraj@unisa.ac.za https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ jessica murray 24 as a theory and a reading strategy rather than a defence of veganism as an identity category. even this statement comes with the acknowledgment that there will necessarily be some overlaps and points of alignment between the two positions and rationales, and these will be addressed as the argument progresses. vegan studies owes its existence to multiple and layered iterations of veganism, and it is thus necessary to offer some preliminary comments on veganism before moving on to an articulation of the theoretical framework. the term “vegan” was coined by donald watson from the uk vegan society in 1944 by using the first and last few letters of the term “vegetarian” because he regarded the former as the logical outcome of meaningful engagement with the latter. annie potts and philip armstrong (2018, 395) offer a useful explanation of the term by noting that, in “the broadest sense, veganism extends concern for animals beyond a meat-free diet to a purposeful way of life that opposes and avoids the exploitation of animals in any form”. while not eating animals has come to signify veganism, it is merely the most basic element of a much more expansive concept. the influence of watson and the uk vegan society in popularizing veganism in western societies should not, however, obscure the much longer history of veganism in various cultures in the global south and the east. suffice at this stage to recognize a. breeze harper’s (2011, 158) salutary reminder that “the culture of veganism is not a monolith and is composed of many different subcultures and philosophies throughout the world”. any attempt to grapple with the nature and potentialities of vegan studies must depart from a space that takes seriously the multiplicities and histories of global cultures of veganism. in a useful overview of the origins of vegan studies as a unique disciplinary stance, laura wright (2021, 7) explains that is it necessary “to situate it as at once informed by and divergent from the field of animal studies, which is in itself multifaceted, consisting of critical animal studies, human-animal studies, and posthumanism”. without devoting too much space to definitions of these fields, some brief conceptual clarifications will be useful because they will both help to situate the relatively new theoretical intervention of vegan studies and they will serve the analysis that will follow, when the mobilization of work from these other fields will clearly become relevant. in terms of relevance to the rest of my analysis, critical animal studies (cas) will be of particular use. peter singer’s 1975 text, animal liberation, is widely credited with solidifying the central tenets of the field. nik taylor and richard twine (2014, 2) note that cas “takes a normative stance against animal exploitation and so ‘critical’ also denotes a stance against an anthropocentric relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the “cruel absurdity” of human violence and its consequences 25 status quo in human-animal relations, as demonstrated in current mainstream practices and social norms”. this emphasis on a critical, normative commitment to challenging anthropocentric and oppressive assumptions about animals is also the point where cas diverges most insistently from human-animal studies. while sharing a strong interdisciplinary approach, margo demello (2012, 4) describes the latter as a field that explores “the spaces that animals occupy in human social and cultural worlds and the intersections humans have with them”. posthumanism turns its focus to attempts at “understanding of species in a space that challenges our conceptions of what it means to be human” (wright 2021, 9). two of the most important theorists in this field are donna haraway and cary wolfe who both, albeit in different ways, explore the extent to which the very concept of the human must necessarily be destabilized once we understand how “species exist in a knot of interactions that coshape one another” (wright 2021, 9). wolfe (2010, xv) regards posthumanism as the field best able to articulate the “embodiment and embeddedness of the human being in not just its biological but also its technological world, the coevolution of the human animal with the technicity of tools and external archival mechanisms”. these are very rudimentary explanations of complex and multi-faceted fields and various scholars offer important critiques of blind spots and marginalized voices within them (as these critiques relate to gender, for instance, see wright 2021 and fraiman 2012; for critical interventions related to race and postcolonialism, see deckha 2018 and kim 2015). wright transparently draws on all these existing scholarly contributions when she offers her own articulation of vegan studies as follows: [i] posit this field as a product of the discourse of vegan representation as it is situated within and outside of extant conceptions of animal studies, animal welfare/rights/liberation, and ecofeminism – the best theoretical model that i know for addressing enmeshed oppressions that include the oppression of nonhuman animals and the environment. (wright 2017, 3) she offers this additional explanation that resonates powerfully with my own academic forays into the emerging field of vegan studies: vegan studies constitute a lived and embodied ethic that impacts one’s scholarly trajectory; for vegans in the academy, veganism finds its way, via our theoretical musings, into the scholarship that we produce. being vegan is a bodily action, dependent upon what one chooses to put in and on one’s body, and coming to this realization as a scholarly endeavor – for myself and the other vegan scholars that i have met – has been a life-long journey. (wright 2017, 8) relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ jessica murray 26 jessica holmes (2021) draws on wright’s contributions when she articulates her own explanation of the need to distinguish between veganism and vegan studies while, as i have done above, noting the practical and intellectual entanglements between the two. she describes this as follows: while veganism as an aspirational paradigm seeks to end animal exploitation (and while vegan studies as a discipline contributes to that pursuit), the intentions and objectives of vegan studies differ from those of the vegan movement itself. as wright’s work exhibits, vegan studies seeks to explore and deconstruct vegan identity. (holmes 2021, 175; emphasis in original) in this section, i have sketched out the considerations of distinct, yet overlapping, scholarly fields, conceptualizations of vegan identity, vegan practice, the vegan movement, a vegan reading and vegan studies. i have also signaled some of the contestations that come into play when one attempts to engage with these fields, theoretical frameworks and concepts. in the next section, i will draw on these considerations and contestations to expand the critical gaze in an example of a literary analysis that takes veganism and animals seriously, rather than glossing over them or instrumentalizing them as literary props. 2. a vegan studies reading of a pandemic novel 2.1. novel overview in the analysis that follows, i will take my analytical cue from emelia quinn’s (2016, 507) insistence on “the potential of developing a distinct vegan mode of reading”. the text in which i will ground my argument is sarah moss’s the fell. this is very explicitly a covid pandemic novel that is set in late 2020 and was published in 2021. the plot mainly revolves around the ways in which three central characters navigate a two-week period of quarantine in england’s peak district. kate lives with her teenage son, matt, and their neighbor is the elderly alice, who lives alone. although they all struggle with the confinement of quarantine, kate is the one who finds it most difficult to cope. much of the novel deals with attempts to rescue her after she breaks quarantine to go for a hike and falls. this brief overview is intended merely as background for the vegan reading that, i argue, allows fresh meanings and insights to emerge from a text that will likely be read primarily as one that deals with the nature of human connection and the implications of a loss of that connection. while relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the “cruel absurdity” of human violence and its consequences 27 the text explores how human relationships shift and shape characters, a reading approach that utilizes vegan studies (and, to a lesser extent, critical animal studies) will demonstrate that the interactions with animals and the rest of the more-than-human world are no less salient and open to scholarly interrogation. 2.2. vegan studies and the politics of food by the fourth page of the novel, in a section that is narrated from matt’s perspective, the reader is alerted to kate’s awareness of the politics of food. food studies is another emerging disciplinary field that might also be mobilized usefully to enrich an analytical engagement with representations of food in this novel as it entails sustained investigations of the politics of food. while holmes (2021) provides a helpful overview of the central tenets of food studies as a scholarly discipline, it is her distinction between food studies and vegan studies that is most significant for the purposes of this article. she notes that, for vegan studies, “its fundamental organizing principle opposes the exploitation of animals” (holmes 2021, 174). while scholars in both disciplines may well explore and even challenge the ethical implications related to animal consumption, “vegan studies scholars categorically cease to presume animal subjects (or their bodies) as constituting food commodities” (holmes 2021, 174). the discursive and epistemological commitment to refusing to construct animals as killable and consumable is crucial and, as i unpack the literary representations below, i will demonstrate that vegan studies is uniquely suited to serving the analysis. in the fell, the few brief lines in which matt reflects on how much he misses being alone in their home offer a great deal of information for a vegan studies scholar. i quote the relevant lines in full below, before i move on to teasing out the implications for a vegan reading: matt has the place to himself to play his music and fry eggs and cheese sandwiches and sometimes boxes of frozen burgers from the village shop without her [his mother, kate] on at him to open the windows and wash up before he’s even eaten and she doesn’t understand how he cannot think about the cows and the workers in the abattoir who all get ptsd because you would, wouldn’t you, killing animals all day, not to mention if people didn’t eat meat we wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place […]. (moss 2021, 4) at the start of the novel, matt does not yet realize that the coveted “stillness in the house” (4) foreshadows the realization that kate is missing, which will dawn later that same evening. he is recounting his annoyance with his mother who prevents him from enjoying his animal products in relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ jessica murray 28 peace. kate is represented as the quintessential “vegan killjoy” (twine 2014, 623). alice shares the understanding of veganism as deprivation when she considers sending matt some cookies because “kate keeps him on rabbit food” (14). richard twine (2014) uses sara ahmed’s work on the figure of the feminist killjoy and convincingly argues that there are sufficient resonances with veganism to warrant coining and critiquing the construction of the “vegan killjoy”. he explains that, within a “normatively omnivorous meat culture” (628), the concept of the vegan killjoy encapsulates how “[v]eganism constitutes a direct challenge to the dominant affective community that celebrates the pleasure of consuming animals” (twine 2014, 628). the pleasure and happiness emanating from the shared consumption of food that the vegan killjoy “spoils” can only function if animals have already firmly been relegated to killable commodities whose lives and suffering do not matter. it is thus a fundamentally anthropocentric understanding of pleasure and happiness and, according to twine (2014), the vegan killjoy, by her very presence (or, in the case of kate, the memory or anticipation of her presence), exposes and disrupts this anthropocentrism. twine (2014, 638) rehabilitates the figure of the vegan killjoy and claims the “decentring of joy and happiness [as] critical deconstructive work”. for twine, this disruption, decentring and deconstruction serve important generative work: in performing a practice that attempts to re-construct happiness, pleasure and politics the vegan killjoy does what all politically wilful killjoys attempt to do: create new meanings and practices that underline the shared joy in living outside and beyond social norms once thought fixed. (twine 2014, 638) the anthropocentric dimensions that lie at the heart of the construction of the vegan killjoy require more sustained focus and i will return to the concept later in the analysis. as a brief definition, fiona probyn-rapsey (2018, 47) offers the following: “anthropocentrism refers to a form of human centredness that places humans not only at the center of everything but makes ‘us’ the most important measure of all things”. anthropocentric assumptions need to be solidly in place for a way of life that prioritizes “our” pleasure in eating over “their” suffering. anthropocentric understandings about the place of the “human” become vulnerable when we start reading veganism more seriously and this might, at least in part, help explain the overt hostility towards and backlash against veganism. decentring the “human” can feel like existential exposure. when matt and alice dismiss kate’s vegan impulses, they are thus protecting a much larger ontological framework and their place within it. while i do not seek to diminish the dietary aspect of veganism, it is fairly easy for food relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the “cruel absurdity” of human violence and its consequences 29 choices to become a smokescreen and preoccupation with those choices can hide what vegan studies is really challenging. in her important work on vegan politics, practice and theory, eva haifa giraud (2021, 40) notes that her analyses “pose questions about markets, consumption, and the politics of anthropocentrism more broadly. these topics might emanate from discussions of food, but ultimately go well beyond it”. matt’s reflections above implicate markets and the effect of food production practices on workers in his annoyance with kate’s beliefs about food. this is an important point, not only because it illustrates the broader reach of vegan studies, but also because of its potential for enriching the base of vegan advocacy. neither the eating of animals nor the practical processes through which animals are turned into food products are politically neutral. haifa giraud (2021) traces clear linkages between inequalities between people and the suffering of animals in factory farming. the abattoir workers getting ptsd is a very real phenomenon and, crucially, these workers are themselves marginalized through the intersections of various markers of “inferior” identities. this is dangerous, dehumanizing and poorly paid work that is typically relegated to employees who are from lower socio-economical classes, who have less formal education, who are black or brown and, often, those who do not have secure citizenship statuses. haifa giraud (2021, 5) insists that neoliberal capitalist systems need to be drawn into these discussions as “the institutions that violently transform animals into capital are also reliant on the transformation of particular groups of people into expendable resources”. c. lou hamilton engages with the work of val plumwood to advocate in favour of the inseparability of the struggle against anthropocentrism and campaigns to end the exploitation of people, calling upon animal rights advocates to form political alliances with workers’ movements, radical health movements, environmental organisations, small farmers and movements against neoliberalism. (hamilton 2019, 53) hamilton and plumwood are not alone in terms of positing the end of animal slaughter as a social justice issue that involves much more than the animals who are relegated to the realm of animals who are factory farmed (following conventions in vegan studies and critical animal studies scholarship, i use the phrase “animals who are factory farmed” instead of “factory farmed animals” to signal my recognition that these are animals with their own identities and social worlds whose objectification in factory farming is a situation that is imposed by human beings, rather than some essential part of their natures; “factory farmed animals” is a strategic terminological choice that furthers their epistemic erasure and this a relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ jessica murray 30 conceptual manoeuvre that i refuse to perpetuate in my own writing; similarly, my use of the relative pronoun “who” instead of “that” is a linguistic manoeuvre that attempts to move animals beyond the category of objects). the ptsd that kate mentions in relation to workers at abattoirs is a welldocumented phenomenon and it disproportionately affects people who are already vulnerable in various ways (see, for instance, cantrell 2016). finally, the “mess” to which kate refers, is about the much-contested origins of the corona virus. while i do not wish to enter into this discussion in this article, the risks to human health that result from the consumption of animal products have been extensively researched. 2.3. vegan studies, violence and the larger environment through matt’s thoughts, kate is represented as a character whose eschewal of animal products for food extends to a much wider concern for the environment. for her, recycling is something that she at least tries to take seriously rather than making it an exercise in performative greenwashing. she encourages matt to rinse containers and to separate plastic from cardboard while also using a compost bin (moss 2021). in kate, moss creates a character that allows for a nuanced engagement with veganism while also challenging a number of stereotypes of vegan practice and identity. haifa giraud (2021, 10) exposes the “sense of moral judgment that it [veganism] is seen to carry” as well as “stereotypes of the ‘preachy’ or ‘angry’ vegan” as significant “sources of tension”. while she argues that these stereotypes are much more complexly constructed tropes, the reader can explore the complexity with which these dynamics operate via other characters’ perceptions of kate. alice is a very revealing source in this regard as she seems to pre-emptively assume being judged by kate while simultaneously judging kate herself. in addition to the dismissive (and, the text reveals, inaccurate) assumptions about what kate offers to matt as food, alice feels too uncomfortable to ask them to buy her the “food” (these include hula hoops and bittermints) she really wants, “not with kate working at shoots and leaves and growing her own lentils or whatever, probably hasn’t eaten a hula hoop in decades” (moss 2021, 14). in contrast to alice’s assumptions about kate, the small family has demonstrated nothing but kindness and compassion to alice by, for instance, doing her shopping while she, as an elderly and more at-risk neighbor, shelters in place during the lockdown. while kate’s efforts to engage ethically with the environment and the other animals within it are represented as a nuanced work in progress, relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the “cruel absurdity” of human violence and its consequences 31 alice is the character who seems to struggle with contradictory senses of what constitutes ethical interaction with the more-than-human world. for instance, she is worried about the tendency of people to acquire dogs during lockdown, mostly with little consideration of these animals’ needs and how they will be fulfilled when work schedules may return to normal. she is represented as annoyed because of the dogs “worrying the sheep all summer and leaving a mess everywhere” (17). she notes that the issue of the dogs has left the “farmers fuming” and she regards this as understandable because “it’ll be worse come lambing time, doesn’t bear thinking about, what a dog will do to a field of pregnant ewes and panicky lambs” (17). when reading these lines through a vegan studies lens, it makes little sense to be concerned about the violence and fear that a dog can inflict on ewes and lambs when they are destined for the much greater violence of slaughterhouses. in alice’s reflections, the dog is the aggressor, and the image of the lambs is meant to conjure empathy for the “victims”. the only way that one could possibly interpret these lines from a vegan studies perspective, is to either read alice’s concern as being for the financial losses that the farmers will incur, or as being symptomatic of the cognitive dissonance that allows people to simultaneously hold on to an identity that constructs themselves as being kind and caring while also consuming animals. when kate thinks about animals and their vulnerability to human violence, she is much more careful to consider just how casually cruel that violence is, and how it will have a reverberating impact on the humans who insist on denying our interdependence with the more-than-human world. in a very short novel, it is significant that moss devotes numerous pages to kate’s thoughts about the causes and impacts of pandemics on animals. while i will not enter into debates about the causes of pandemics, i do recognise that kate oversimplifies some very complex scientific processes. from a vegan studies vantage point, it is worth noting that she draws direct links between what people eat, the casual violence with which we treat other animals and diseases that affect us. she thinks about “the black death washing around europe for centuries and still occasionally popping up when people eat, is it marmots in mongolia?” (30). she then moves on to “the cruel absurdity of farming mink for their fur and turning them into disease reservoirs and slaughtering them because they’re contagious” (31). she recognises that these human actions cannot be without consequences for us, and she notes that “those mink are going to haunt us forever and so they damn well should, they should be leaving small blood footprints on the street corners in copenhagen and dublin” (32). relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ jessica murray 32 3. using vegan studies to critique stereotypical representations of veganism kate demonstrates a fairly sophisticated understanding of how interspecies violence will always come back to haunt humans, but she also manages to continue raising a number of stereotypes about vegans. in addition to the angry, judgemental vegan killjoy discussed above, moss raises and challenges how assumptions about socio-economic status shape contemporary understandings of veganism. according to catherine oliver (2022, 38), “[c]lass politics have also haunted the animal advocacy movement, where critique of the representation of the animal movement and veganism has long been as a wealthy middle-class lifestyle”. in the case of the fell, however, alice is represented as upper-middle class while kate and matt struggle to make ends meet. moss also challenges some of the common stereotypes about vegans and against veganism by allowing for nuance and complexity in kate’s identity and choices. kate finds herself worrying about the environmental impact of having out-ofseason fruit available to consumers throughout the year when she thinks about how people “have mangoes flown around the world” (33). she then quickly checks herself by noting that “she’s even boring herself, it’s going to be avocadoes she’s complaining about next” (33). moss is humorously critiquing the notion that vegans are always eager to advocate their beliefs to anyone, regardless of their audience’s level of interest. this assumption is so widespread that is has become a common and dismissive joke: “how do you know someone’s vegan? don’t worry, they’ll tell you” (for an insightful account that challenges the accuracy of this assumption, as well as the implications, jan bolderdiijk and gert cornelissen use an amended version of the joke in the title of their 2022 article, “‘how do you know someone’s vegan?’ they won’t always tell you: an empirical test of the do-gooder’s dilemma”). the reference to avocados is also noteworthy because it signals a popular way of criticizing veganism that has gained a great deal of traction in recent years and avocados have become something of an unlikely lightening rod for these attacks on veganism. in these accounts, which tend to be popular in conservative media and online spaces, veganism is actually posited as a choice that harms the environment by, amongst other things, encouraging unsustainable food choices, such as avocados (see silva sousa, atkinson, and montague 2020). while i do not dispute the fact that there are unsustainable elements in the food production chains of many items, including vegan ones, or the reality that the consistent availability of certain food items is only possible through practices that do indeed harm the environment, the furore over avocados relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the “cruel absurdity” of human violence and its consequences 33 has been little more than a bad faith attempt to malign veganism because it is perceived as a threat to the status quo. shortly after raising and subtly critiquing these common anti-vegan tropes, moss introduces another response to veganism that is perhaps even more prevalent when kate says that “there is no real excuse not to be vegan” but that she “hasn’t tried all that hard, because of cheese, mostly” (35). there is no shortage of people proclaiming that their fondness for specific foods (most commonly cheese and bacon) is what is preventing them from embracing veganism. this type of response continues to prioritize the human’s right to perceived pleasure that is gained from eating certain foods over the animal suffering that is needed to produce that food. it is thus a fundamentally anthropocentric approach to dietary choices. more importantly, it falls into the trap of narrowing veganism down to dietary choices, and specifically to a plant-based diet. here it is useful to keep in mind the following reminder from jessica holmes (2021, 175): “because veganism functions as a lived ideology, it should not be categorized as a solely food-based topic like vegetarianism and plant-based diets”. haifa giraud also insists that, in order to grasp veganism’s distinctiveness as a form of food culture, it is, paradoxically, necessary to understand it as more than a diet: not just due to veganism’s concern with animal ethics beyond food, but because of the broader ethical implications of its criticism of many existing humananimal relations. (haifa giraud 2021, 2; emphasis in original) when kate notes that cheese is an “excuse” for not becoming vegan, she is thus failing to engage with veganism in its real sense and she is glossing over “the theoretically, politically, and ethically complex issues that veganism poses” (haifa giraud 2021, 2). this superficial engagement with complexity and our relationship with the more-than-human world in her reference to cheese is, however, a departure from how she is represented in most of the novel. kate embodies the complexity and messiness that characterize attempts to live ethically in a contemporary, anthropocentric, neoliberal capitalist society. i would argue that, when considered together with her concern for the “cruel absurdity” (31) of human violence perpetrated against animals, her care for the environment and sustainability and her concern for workers’ rights, her failure to challenge her family’s cheese consumption constitutes a very small part of her larger vegan identity. haifa giraud (2021) draws on the work of cudworth (2011, 67), who defines “anthroparchy” as “a complex and relatively stable set of hierarchical relationships in which ‘nature’ is dominated through formations of social organization which privilege the human”. in her conceptualizarelations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ jessica murray 34 tion of veganism, she posits it as a “way of living [which] has historically sought to unsettle the inevitability of these formations and the institutions that support them” (haifa giraud 2021, 4). kate’s ways of thinking and being in the world should be read as meaningfully vegan in ways that often remain elusive to vegans who focus on the dietary aspect of this identity. 4. the disruptive and transformative potential of a vegan studies reading of violence against animals cruelty and its salience in our interactions with the majority of the other animals in the world are never far from kate’s thoughts. she links this cruelty directly to the incessant demands of capitalism and she regards the treatment of animals as part of the much larger project of multispecies justice. the concept of multispecies justice can be traced to donna haraway’s when species meet. numerous scholars have built on haraway’s foundational text, and most conceptualizations of multispecies justice now start from its recognition of “the numerous, wide-ranging, cross-scalar, and everyday interactions that bind individuals and societies to networks of close and distant others, including other people and morethan-human beings: animals, plants, rivers, seas, and more” (tschakert et al. 2021, 2). in their exploration of the benefits of multispecies justice, eben kirksey and sophie chao (2022, 15) identify “opportunities to deconstruct and reconstruct political positions, technical systems, ecological assemblages, and figures of hope”. like the vegan killjoy, the champion of multispecies justice embraces opportunities to expose, disrupt, and re-imagine ways of being with each other in service of more hopeful and just potentialities. crucially, these others extend beyond the human, and this appears to be something that kate understands with some level of sophistication. in the pursuit of multi-species justice, we cannot disentangle completely the fates of, for instance, animals who are subjected to factory farming, the workers in those factories, the consumers of the products emanating from those factories and the larger political and economic structures within which we are all located. while we are all implicated in the larger neoliberal capitalist global economy, our levels of implication and the privileges we extract from our implication diverge widely, both amongst humans and between humans and other beings in the world. when kate starts thinking about violence in human communities, her first instinct is to interrogate gender violence, but she quickly relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the “cruel absurdity” of human violence and its consequences 35 moves beyond this as she understands that violence amongst people and violence against animals cannot be flattened out or conflated with one another in any simplistic way. she starts by comparing the lockdown of people during the pandemic to the treatment of animals, and she checks herself and her species privilege in an anthropocentric society as follows: we’re a living experiment, she thinks, in the intensive farming of humans, which is another silly overstatement, no-one’s force-feeding us antibiotics or cutting bits off us so we can’t run away and it’s all in the name of safety, not profit. (moss 2021, 57) after her fall when she is not sure whether she will survive, kate’s thoughts return repeatedly to the animals and to the reverberating effects of violence against them: “the sheep, the mink, foot and mouth, animals burnt and ploughed into the ground, contaminated, poisoned blood and poisoned soil” (111). her line of thought leads her to the conclusion that “the strange thing about the current pandemic isn’t that it’s happening now but that it didn’t happen for so long” (126). as her thoughts become increasingly incoherent as her body temperature keeps dropping, she imagines that she is having a conversation with a raven and the bird asks her the following question: “would you say you’ve been – well, sanctimonious, really, in the past, about the easy stuff, the masks and the sanitiser and all that”? (144). the raven comes to symbolize a more general animal voice that holds kate accountable for her choices and, even in her compromised mental state, kate considers the implications of ravens “watching us, keeping tabs” (144). she is then compelled to admit that she has been somewhat sanctimonious about the “easy stuff”. while the raven specifically categorizes the masks and sanitiser as being easy to advocate for, the more difficult task to which a vegan studies reading nudges us, is the necessary interrogation of all human treatment of animals and the role that our violence has played in setting the stage for this particular pandemic. this interrogation needs to include a thorough critique of all anthropocentric prioritizations of the category of the human and, indeed, a deconstruction of the entire category as such. kate’s environmentally conscious actions and ethical dietary concerns will never move us beyond the “easy stuff” if she fails to consider the very foundations of what it means to be human and animal and the privileges and responsibilities that come with these categories. kate wonders “[s]ince when […] has it been up to ravens to decide who deserves what” (144) but she admits “that it makes a kind of sense” or, at least, “as much sense as plenty of other stuff”. vegan studies offers a mode of engagement that allows us to extend our efforts to the more relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ jessica murray 36 challenging aspects of being in the world with other beings and it enables us to critique anthropocentric assumptions about who deserves to make decisions about the lives and deaths of the other animals with whom we share space. 5. conclusion this article has used a selected pandemic novel to illustrate what a vegan studies framework and mode of reading can offer to literary studies with a particular emphasis on the ways in which these scholarly interventions can invigorate readings of a fictionalized representation of pandemics. animals and human violence against them can easily slip through the cracks of academic attempts to make sense of the cultural products that have been emanating from the pandemic over the past year and will likely continue emerging in the coming decades. we cannot afford to keep glossing over animals and their voices. vegan studies and critical animal studies insist that animals matter and any reading will necessarily be incomplete and compromised if we do not centre them in our analytical frameworks and value them with same commitment that we value other parts of our worlds. if animals are vulnerable and treated as expendable, we all are, and vegan studies scholarship offers an invaluable tool for critiquing the status quo and for imagining alternatives for a more just future. our contemporary reality demonstrates very clearly that human decision making has served only a very small part of our world’s most privileged human inhabitants at enormous cost to the vast majority of the rest of earth’s human and more-than-human inhabitants. it has long been time to listen more attentively to animal voices, as represented by the raven in moss’s novel, and to engage meaningfully with what emerges from such a different mode of attunement. references bolderdiijk, jan, and gert cornelissen. 2022. “‘how do you know someone’s vegan?’ they won’t always tell you: an empirical test of the do-gooder’s dilemma”. appetite 168: 1-7. cantrell, katie. 2016. “the true cost of a cheap meal”. tikkun magazine 31: 20-64. relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the “cruel absurdity” of human violence and its consequences 37 deckha, maneesha. 2018. “postcolonial”. in critical terms for animal studies, edited by lori gruen, 280-293. new york: columbia university press. demello, margo. 2012. animals and society: an introduction to human-animal studies. new york: columbia university press. fraiman, susan. 2012. “pussy panic versus liking animals: tracking gender in animal studies”. critical inquiry 39: 89-115. haifa giraud, eva. 2021. veganism: politics, practice, and theory. london: bloomsbury academic. hamilton, c. lou. 2019. veganism sex and politics: tales of danger and pleasure. bristol: hammeron press. harper, a. breeze. 2011. “going beyond the normative white ‘post-racial’ vegan epistemology”. in taking food public: redefining foodways in a changing world, edited by psyche williams forson and carole counihan, 155-174. new york: routledge. holmes, jessica. 2021. vegan studies and food studies. in the routledge handbook of vegan studies, edited by laura wright, 172-179. new york: routledge. kim, claire jean. 2015. dangerous crossings: race, species, and nature in a multicultural age. cambridge: cambridge university press. kirksey, eben, and sophie chao. 2022. “introduction who 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studies”. in the rise of critical animal studies: from the margins to the centre, edited by nik taylor and richard twine, 1-16. london: routledge. tschakert, petra, david schlosberg, danielle celermajer, lauren rickards, christine winter, mathias thaler, makere stewart-harawira, and blanche verlie. 2021. “multispecies justice: climate-just futures with, for and beyond humans”. wires climate change 12: 1-10. twine, richard. 2014. “vegan killjoys at the table: contesting happiness and negotiating relationships with food practices”. societies 4: 623-639. relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ jessica murray 38 wolfe, cary. 2010. what is posthumanism? minneapolis: university of minnesota press. wright, laura. 2017. “introducing vegan studies”. isle: interdisciplinary studies in literature and environment 24: 1-10. wright, laura. 2021. “framing vegan studies: vegetarianism, veganism, animal studies, ecofeminism”. in the routledge handbook of vegan studies, edited by laura wright, 3-14. new york: routledge. copyright (©) 2022 jessica murray editorial format and graphical layout: copyright (©) led edizioni universitarie this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives – 4.0 international license how to cite this paper: murray, jessica. 2022. “the ‘cruel absurdity’ of human violence and its consequences: a vegan studies analysis of a pandemic novel”. relations. beyond anthropocentrism 10 (2): 23-38. doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/ rela-2022-02-murj relations – 10.2 december 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ relations_10-2-2022_00b_sommario.pdf studies and research contributions what we owe owls nonideal relationality among fellow creatures in the old growth forest ben almassi the “cruel absurdity” of human violence and its consequences a vegan studies analysis of a pandemic novel jessica murray duality of abuse and care empathy in sara gruen’s water for elephants moumita bala smriti singh immanuel kant e l’etica ambientale tre proposte per rivisitare (e una per riattualizzare) la morale kantiana matteo andreozzi ecosocial autonomy as an educational ideal jani pulkki sami keto comments, debates, reports and interviews is there a moral problem in predation? francesco allegri author guidelines relations and moral obligations towards other animals relations and moral obligations towards other animals beril sözmen faculty member, istanbul technical university doi: 10.7358/rela-2015-002-sozm beril.sozmen@googlemail.com abstract relational accounts acknowledge and emphasise the intersubjective nature of selfhood and argue that focusing solely on the capacities of animals cannot account for all moral obligations towards them. my argument is concerned with the move from the premise of intersubjectivity to differential positive duties. relationality here functions as a means of differentiating and refining our positive duties towards some animals, but this refinement often also functions as an exclusion of others, e.g. in the differential treatment of domesticated and wild animals. a similar danger lies in diminishing human moral obligation by arguing for accepting some cases of suffering and death as unavoidable tragedies. i argue that the debate about the nature and scope of our relational duties towards other animals can profit from the relational ethics of martin buber and emmanuel levinas. buber and levinas develop relational accounts, in which the fundamental ethical element is not knowledge of the capacities of the other but rather the encounter, out of which moral selfhood emerges. by applying buber and levinas we can refine the way relationality is used in animal ethics today without dismissing our positive duties towards individual animals, in the wild or otherwise. keywords: buber, levinas, ethics, animal ethics, responsibility, obligation, suffering, encounter, relational ethics, animals in the wild. one reason why the problem of wild animals is such a challenge to animal ethics today is because it points directly at the core question of not only animal ethics but ethics in general: what are our moral obligations towards the other? the case of wild animals is where many common moral intuitions seem to cluster around a set of seemingly unsolvable problems: respecting sovereignty and autonomy seems to clash with duties of care and beneficence while these in turn raise concerns about human fallibility. an influential approach to the problem of wild animals is one that recognizes the importance of relations. while there is a wide variety of relational accounts, many acknowledge and emphasize the intersubjective mailto:beril.sozmen@googlemail.com http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 beril sözmen 180 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ nature of selfhood and argue that focusing solely on the capacities of the other cannot account for all moral obligations towards her. both negative duties of respecting the basic rights of others and positive duties, which take into account the nature and history of existing relations are understood as a matter of the intersubjective recognition of selfhood. relational accounts of human moral obligations towards other animals thus share the premise that considering the capabilities of an animal is not sufficient for determining the right attitude or action towards an animal other. using terms of interests or rights, taking into account the capacities of animals is necessary – whether an entity is sentient, has a subjective first-person view on life, a sense of self etc. are all directly relevant to the question what can make her life go better or worse. relations, especially with human moral agents add to these considerations, they are not rivals to the capacities account (palmer 2010). in the following i shall take this comprehensive and complementary moral approach as my starting point. relations between agents and patients can cover anything from individual companionship to membership in a common polity. proponents argue that while capacity oriented accounts can and must be used for establishing our basic duties towards other animals, they are not capable of accounting for specific, additional duties, which emerge out of relations with them. individual animals (including humans) are not only “members of a species, but they are also members of an interspecies community” (donaldson and kymlicka 2011, 97) and taking the social and historical context of our group memberships and relations into account is required for justice. an example is donaldson and kymlicka’s account of our positive duties to domesticated animals: we have to take the history of that relation into account, which has bred certain traits into animals “which increase both their dependency on humans and their utility for humans, with no attention to the animals’ own interests” (donaldson and kymlicka 2011, 75). clare palmer argues that humans can have special obligations on the basis of “human/animal entanglements, histories, and shared institutional frameworks where humans are, or have been, either responsible for harms to animals or for the generation of particular vulnerabilities in animals” (palmer 2010, 89). such histories found positive duties to assist other animals but without these we have no such obligation (ibid.). my argument is concerned with the move from the premise of intersubjectivity to differential positive duties on the basis of our relations to other animals. relationality here functions as a means of differentiating and refining our positive duties towards some animals but this refinement often also functions as an exclusion of others. the paradigmatic example for this is the different moral treatment of domesticated and wild animals http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 relations and moral obligations towards other animals 181 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ with the endorsement of laissez-faire attitudes in varying degrees when it comes to the latter. at times, these choices are based on legitimate concerns such as fallibility, i.e. the concern that even with the best intentions, human agency is fallible and we may end up causing more harm than that we are trying to combat. the result of such considerations is that our duties of non-maleficence take precedence over duties of beneficence and that in cases of potential conflict, we should not intervene to assist wild animals in need. the different moral intuitions underlying negative and positive duties reflect our limited resources as moral-problem-solvers: in general, our negative obligations to others (not to kill, confine, torture, enslave them, or rob them of the necessities of life) are “compossible” – that is, these obligations do not conflict with one another. […] many positive obligations, on the other hand, are not compossible. assisting one animal in relation to one potential harm is likely to compete with other ways of helping other animals. (donaldson and kymlicka 2011, 162) it is here that discretion is often put forward as the solution. we do not seem to have developed a moral framework in which we can satisfactorily respond to the problem of wild animals so that in many cases it is also argued that equal consideration does not generate an obligation to benefit wild animals by rescuing them from harm (as some have supposed); our general obligation to benefit those in need is discretionary in the sense that we may choose, among the many worthy causes, which ones to support. (degrazia 1999, 124) the problem i see here is that the move from a relational or intersubjective foundation of ethics to a differentiated account of our specific obligations can lead to too wide and arbitrary a use of discretion. often this goes together with a sort of moral dismissal of what may be due to others as in cases such as wild animals in what i shall call grandmother ethics. in the following i shall argue that the debate around the source, nature and scope of our relational duties towards other animals in general and wild animals in particular can profit from the relational ethics of martin buber and emmanuel levinas. this is because in buber and levinas we have two examples of precisely the move from the relation or encounter as the fundamental ethical category to moral obligations without an acceptance of discretion as a legitimate solution. it may be surprising that i turn to buber and levinas because neither is free of anthropocentrism and levinas is in fact notorious for his persistent agnosticism regarding the place of other animals in ethics. nevertheless, http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 beril sözmen 182 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ by turning to buber and levinas i think that we can refine the way relations are used in animal ethics today. a relational account of our obligations towards animal others informed by them would recognize the most fundamental relationship of being face to face, of knowing of the other, as sufficient to ground many (but not all) positive duties. some duties would remain bound more formally to the relationship; e.g. in cases of obligations based on explicit commitments or contracts, when there is a certain compensation to be made, etc. in other cases however, while many relational accounts run the danger of dismissing some positive duties we have towards individuals, buber and levinas’ ethics of relation allow us to counter the danger of partiality and do more justice to our moral obligations towards the individual animal. 1. the emergence of responsibility in the encounter buber and levinas both develop relational accounts, in which the fundamental ethical element is not knowledge of the capacities of the other but rather the encounter. as such they both recognize that the relation is central for moral and political considerations but not in the traditional liberal sense that my concern for the other limits my freedom to act as i wish and thereby draws the line of my own (private) actions. rather the relation is where both moral agent and moral patient emerge as such and it is thereby foundational for ethics. martin buber considers relations to be central because of their fundamental role in selfhood. for buber, there is no i outside of a relation. this goes beyond the role of intersubjectivity in the recognition of the subjectivity of the other. for buber the relation is the beginning and the fundament of ethics: “[…] in the beginning was the relation” (buber 1970, 69). he rejects the idea of the atomic i that exists independently and then gets into a relation – rather it is being in a relation that is constitutive of selfhood. in buber’s moral ontology there are two modes of being in a relation: the i-it and the i-you. the realm of the i-it is that of goal-directed attitudes, judgements and actions, of perception, emotion, imagination, volition, sensation and cognition (buber 1970, 54). in an i-it relation, the i experiences the other as an it, i.e., it experiences, perceives and recognizes aspects of the other as an object. ethically, this corresponds to encountering the other as a being with properties and capacities. the i-you on the other hand is the realm of encounter and relation and can be situated in three spheres – in life with nature, with human beings and with “spiritual beings” (geistige wesenheiten) (buber 1970, 56). what http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 relations and moral obligations towards other animals 183 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ is meant by the latter sphere is not that of spirits and esoteric phantasm but the area of human creativity; most paradigmatically art. being the i of an i-you relation does not depend on the qualities – in animal ethics we can think of capabilities – of the other. it is rather my saying of you, of being in the ethical stance that makes an i out of me and this in turn is what makes a moral agent of me: only in the relation is he my you, outside the relation between us this you does not exist. […] neither is my you identical with the it of the other nor is his you identical with my i. what i owe the person of the other is that i have this you; but my i – which should be understood as the i of this i-you relation – i owe to the saying of you, not to the person to whom i say you. (buber 1963, 596) what characterizes this encounter and distinguishes it from the experience of the other as an it is that here one is faced with a moral demand, one is addressed by the other or by the situation. experiencing the other or the situation in the realm of the i-it is not amoral but it is the saying of you, the attentiveness towards what the situation demands of me as a moral agent is what turns me into one. the sphere of the i-it is also ethically relevant – it is here that the agent has to take into account the properties of the actors and elements of the situation when deciding how to act. applied to animal ethics this means that for moral agency the relation is a condition sine qua non, without which the person does not exist as a moral agent and similarly taking into account the capacities of the other is a condition, without which she cannot act. both relation and capacities are necessary conditions, neither is sufficient by itself. levinas, buber’s junior by nearly thirty years, was inspired and influenced by him. like buber, levinas considers relations to be foundational for human selfhood and moral agency. the human emerges from the encounter with the other: “it is not that there first would be the face, and then the being it manifests or expresses would concern himself with justice; the epiphany of the face qua face opens humanity” (levinas 1991, 213). as in buber then, it is not that i am first faced with a knowledge of properties but rather in the face-to-face with the other i have the opportunity of opening to the ethical 1. 1 when asked if animals have a face levinas falters: “you ask at what moment one becomes a face. i do not know at what moment the human appears but what i want to emphasize is that the human breaks with pure being, which is always a persistence in being. this is my principal thesis. a being is something that is attached to being, to its own being. that is darwin’s idea. the being of animals is a struggle for life. a struggle for life without ethics” (levinas 1988, 172). http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 beril sözmen 184 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ levinas dismisses the attempt to understand the other on the basis of their capacities as a presumption. the other cannot be grasped by her qualities because she is “infinitely transcendent, infinitely foreign” (levinas 1991, 194) – it is not possible to understand her. in buberian language, my access to the other is not exhausted by experiencing her in an i-it relation and in attempting to do so we leave out something necessary for ethics. rather the recognition of the face comes before and is constitutive of humanity and more specifically of moral agency. for levinas, ethics not ontology is first philosophy, because ethics breaks with being; the encounter with the other is the transcendent origin of my responsibility. hilary putnam clarifies the levinasian understanding of the moral agent by applying the term “mensch”, a thick description of what a human being is as a moral agent: […] for levinas, to be a human being in the normative sense (to be what jews call a mensch) involves recognizing that i am commanded to say hineni – here i am. […] if you have to ask, “why should i put myself out for him/her?” you are not yet human. (putnam 2008, 75) in a similar vein, buber writes of “being there” as the moral stance, the state of being open and attentive to the moral demand that founds my responsibility in the given situation. the attentiveness to recognize and the readiness to respond to the need of the other is a positive duty that adds to negative duties of abstaining from harming her. thus it is a stronger moral demand; not simply a letting be but an active being, an active doing: if i withstand, if i move towards it, if i encounter it genuinely, i.e., with the verity of my whole wesen (being), then, and only then am i “actually” there. […] if i am not really there, then i am guilty. […] the original state of being guilty is the remaining-by-oneself. 2 being in a relation is thus the origin of my responsibility and obligation towards the other, without it being evident what this responsibility and obligation require me to do in a particular case. general principles and ready-made answers may not only not help me but positively hinder me from responding to the moral demand of the situation, if they hold me back from saying hineni, being at the service of the other and being there (buber [1939] 2002, 136). while this may sound like a version of the discretionary argument, in fact it runs counter to it, for here the agent is not absolved of her responsibility towards the other. where she withholds herself, she moves out of the sphere of ethics. 2 buber, martin. “das problem des menschen”. in werke. erster band: schriften zur philosophie, translated by b.i.s., 363. münchen heidelberg: lambert schneider verlag. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 relations and moral obligations towards other animals 185 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ in these fundamental elements of their moral philosophies, levinas and buber are in agreement with each other 3. they appear to be precursors of contemporary animal ethicists who point to inter-subjective recognition as foundational for our (negative) duties. donaldson and kymlicka for example write: we believe that respecting inviolability is, first and foremost, a process of intersubjective recognition – that is, the first question is simply whether there is a “subject” there, whether there is “someone home”. this process of intersubjective recognition precedes any attempt to enumerate his or her capacities or interests. (donaldson and kymlicka 2011, 30) however, while buber and levinas thus share the starting point of relational animal ethicist, they come to different conclusions. a common move in contemporary relational animal ethics is to move from the role of relationality to differential rights and duties such as membership rights. while the family member, the companion, the friend, or even the compatriot can be situated in more or less central in concentric circles of moral obligation in relational theories, for buber and levinas the recognition of the fundamental nature of the relation for ethics has no such implication. here we have a relational ethics, which does not refer to membership rights and where the relationship i have with the other, while it is foundational for my responsibility and obligation, is not foundational for what is due to the other. in other words, what buber and levinas’ accounts enable us to do is to use the premise of inter-subjectivity not to found special or additional obligations based on the relation between the agent and the patient but rather to bring out the moral agent as such in the encounter. we are constituted as an agent in the moment of the encounter and the relation is constitutive of our moral selfhood because we are faced with the demand of the situation and we become moral agents if we respond to that demand. if our moral selfhood and agency were constituted only in an encounter with the friend or the neighbor, co-citizen or in other forms of shared membership relations, we would still be far off from the moral encounter. we would in fact still be un-faced by the other or in buber’s words, we would still be with us, remaining with ourselves, we would not have gone ourselves to meet the needy other. this should not be understood as an unrealistically demanding, almost religious call to the moral agent. it rather touches upon something very elementary: the moral situation only comes about when i respond to the 3 for a detailed discussion of their convergence and divergence compare atterton, peter, matthew calarco, and maurice friedman, eds. 2004. levinas & buber. dialogue and difference. pittsburgh: duquesne university press. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 beril sözmen 186 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ demand of the situation and that demand is to be found in my saying of you, in my letting myself be addressed by the other in her need, prior to investigating her properties. a narrower relational account of positive duties loses sight of this claim about moral agency. the link between the emergence of the moral agent and the moral demand is the moral obligation or the responsibility as the readiness to respond to that demand. both buber and levinas consider intersubjectivity as central in becoming a moral agent in that the encounter gives me infinite responsibility. it is infinite because i am called, i am addressed by the situation and the call is infinite whereas i am not. this i think is the central corrective that the debate about relationality in animal ethics can gain from buber and levinas: the relation, the encounter is where ethics and the moral agent emerge from and what this emergences does is to make the moral agent fully responsible: the agent is at the service of the other, in buber’s terms she is “there” with her whole being, in levinas’ terms she comes après vous. that she is not able to respond to that demand fully in her human finiteness does not diminish the obligation. 2. grandmother ethics arguing by using buber and levinas, the discretionary argument in the problem of wild animals runs the danger of pausing ethics by making a distinction between our duties of non-maleficence and beneficence and restricting the scope of the latter by relations rather than by the need of the moral patient. another common objection to considering humans as fully obligated to respond to the problem of animals in the wild revolves around practicability, i.e. the difficulty and perhaps even impossibility of coming up with a system of action that would enable non-human animals in the wild to avoid suffering and death. related to this objection is a common reminder that we should accept some cases of suffering and/or death as facts of life, rather than seeing them as a moral tragedy. donaldson and kymlicka for example write: this is not just because the scientific task of solving the problem of death seems enormous, but also because theories of justice must operate within certain defined parameters, including the acceptance that we are embodied, mortal beings. we need to start with an acceptance of human nature as it is (or might plausibly become), not a conception which is no longer recognizably human. if in the future we become “post-human”, then we will need a new theory of justice to deal with the new beings we have become. but for now, we need a theory of justice for us as we are. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 relations and moral obligations towards other animals 187 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ similarly, we need a theory of justice for wild animals as they are. viewed this way, predation amongst wild animals, who are outside the circumstances of justice with respect to one another’s flourishing, should be seen, not as the kind of tragedy we should seek to overcome, but as the kind of tragedy we should accept as a parameter of their lives for the foreseeable future (hailwood 2012: 312). (donaldson and kymlicka 2013, 159) this is an important point and often appears in a strand of moral reasoning, which is quite widespread in folk philosophy and which i shall refer to as “grandmother ethics” 4. according to this stance there are certain facts of life like the inevitability of suffering and death. it is a sign of (moral) immaturity and naiveté not to come to terms with these and instead argue that there should be certain mechanisms to keep these aspects of life in check as much as possible. certain things, grandmothers argue, are the way they are and to rebel, protest or try to fight the inevitable is immature and pointless. wild animal suffering seems to be just such a case. the little fish is doomed to be eaten by the big fish; this is the case in nature outside the sphere of justice, and is even required by balance, by the way life just is. attempting to find alternative ways is not only difficult, but positively dangerous, as it could endanger the perfect equilibrium, which supports life 5. the analogy to the appearance of grandmother ethics in politics is perhaps one possible way to evaluate it. the view that the world is the stage for immense suffering and death may be shown to be an empirical fact but it is by no means clear why this fact should lead moral agents to accept it as a necessity or as a positive good. one example of alternative ways of reacting to these facts of life comes from the buddhist tradition, which also takes the vast amount of suffering on earth as its starting point. its response is that the morally worthy way of life is the way of life that reduces suffering and goes on to explicate what such a life consists in. a very different tradition likewise takes as its starting point the fact of life that humans are rivals for resources, recognition and safety. hobbesian contractarianism and its successors take this fact of life to be a given and argue for the need to 4 donaldson and kymlicka make it very clear that their group-differentiated model does not exclude non-members from the scope of justice or political decision making (donaldson and kymlicka 2011; 2013). however in the theory of justice for wild animals a plea for accepting the suffering of animals as a tragedy to be accepted rather than one to be overcome, does not appear in the same way in the case of domesticated and liminal animals. 5 for some, this stance corresponds to the environmentalist position, in particular to adherents of aldo leopold’s land ethics or arne naess’ deep ecology. mark sagoff (1984) argues that the gap between animal liberation advocates, who put individual moral patients in the centre of their ethics and environmental ethicists, who argue for a holistic position, which puts the biotic community in the centre of their ethics, is insurmountable. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 beril sözmen 188 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ overcome this state of affairs by organizing communities under a common contract, aiming to protect citizens from each other and guaranteeing basic rights. while these approaches also focus more on negative duties, grandmother ethics seem to be neither a necessary response to the facts-of-life nor is it what has historically been put forward and politically developed into various forms of state and society. are these examples enough for a dismissal of the crux of the grandmother ethics? is our resistance against what the facts-of-life dictate in fact misguided? is a life that embraces the facts-of-life as both unavoidable and exhilarating a life better lived? robert nozick’s thought experiment of the experience machine for example aims to demonstrate that many humans consider a life sheltered from unwanted experiences not preferable to what they consider to be a life more authentic in the reality of the experience, of the person we are and an unsimulated world, i.e. in touch with the factsof-life 6. turning to buber and levinas might also help us here. authenticity or an acceptance of the facts of life, as highly we might value them, seems to be a good that may or may not be selected as the ultimate one by the moral agent herself. it does not rattle at the responsibility that she has towards the moral patient in need, as it is the encounter with the patient that both founds and specifies her obligation towards the other. what precisely follows as a guide to action is left unspecified but in contrast to a relativisation or dismissal of moral obligation, a relational ethics informed by buber and levinas would remain committed to considering the situation as belonging to the realms of ethics and in cases where no assistance is possible, as a moral tragedy. 3. considerations for animal ethics a relational animal ethics informed by a buberian and levinasian understanding of moral obligation together with a cautious approach to grandmother ethics would not agree with other relational theories that we have no or few positive duties towards animals in the wild. even if we agree that as moral agents our membership to the human community informs 6 this interpretation of nozick’s experience machine does not go uncontested. in a recent paper, de brigard developed an alternative explanation of the effect, arguing that the intuition to remain in the virtual world or to opt for the real one, depends not so much on an independent evaluation of the two, but rather on an aversion to abandon the life one had before being offered the choice or conversely a psychological bias on retaining the status quo (de brigard 2010). http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 relations and moral obligations towards other animals 189 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ some of our moral obligations depending on the history of relationships and entanglements (palmer 2010, 89), taking into account these elements help specify what our duties are in a given situation, not whether or not we have them. palmer uses the example of kittens who were left in a dumpster by a pedigree-valuing cat breeder. she argues that because “kittens are members of a breed and species from which humans derive benefit”, the person who finds these kittens has a weak moral reason to assist: “[…] the kittens have been harmed by a human and have been created, more generally, within a human-directed institutional framework that brings gains to people through making vulnerable animals”. according to palmer, our responsibility as moral agents to assist other animals in need in this case comes from two sources: firstly, we profit by the traditional use of cat-production and secondly, we share a species with the harmer of the kittens. outside of these relations, we have no duties to assist. in a relational framework informed by buber however, our responsibility comes from our capability of responding to the moral demand of this situation, we are obligated to help because we know of the plight of the kittens and we are receptive to the moral demand. our membership to the species of the culprit is irrelevant. a hypothetical alien in the same situation must be, in palmer’s account, under no obligation to assist the kittens, even if it were a moral agent superior to humans. dishing out rights and responsibilities according to group membership might be (as yet) unavoidable in some contexts like citizenship but in this case such considerations seem to lead us to neglect the individuality of beings, not only as moral agents but also as moral patients. levinas and buber’s accounts help us to distinguish between the descriptive and normative elements of relationality. as diverse relational accounts are, they seem to agree that humans are embedded in a network of relations, and are not the atomistic, calculating moral accountants which utilitarians are sometimes accused of imagining. relationality is constitutive of our selfhood, both as agents and patients. however, arguing with levinas and buber we must be wary of taking the implications of descriptive relationality too far into our normative theories. relationality founds our special responsibility in special cases but it also cuts into our responsibility in other, more impersonal cases. this means that the very choice of which relationships are nurtured to what degree (in as much as we have control over this) becomes itself a moral question. having children, having many children are accordingly not only personal life choices, they are also moral questions by not only by adding to the number of beings who consume the resources of the earth but also by creating responsibilities and obligations http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 beril sözmen 190 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ that take away from our individual capacities to honor other moral obligations. relations are constitutive of moral selfhood and agency in a very fundamental way. but they are not constitutive of what is due to the moral patient. the moral demand emanating from the moral patient can be boundless. relations are among the practical factors that determine which of the infinity of demands can be met. they might add to the already existing factors, e.g. in a case of two comparable demands, the fact that i have a relationship with one, be it only the fact that i know of her, adds to my obligation but it doesn’t found it. in buberian terms i remain guilty for not answering to the other. but what makes all the difference is whether this is recognised as a moral tragedy or dismissed from the moral sphere as a fact of life to be accepted; whether the moral agent is exempt of responsibility or incapable of answering the demand. if we opt for the language of grandmother ethics, we run the risk of stopping doing ethics. 4. open questions the benefit of bringing buber and levinas into the discussion about relational ethics in general and in animal ethics in particular is that they help us to distinguish between the descriptive claim that relations are foundational for human selfhood and agency and the normative claim that certain obligations exist only in the context of certain relations. while both claims are well-founded, i take the case of animal suffering in the wild to show that relations may add to obligations but not take away from them. some of these relational obligations are straightforward: if i am in the relation of contract, say, then i committed myself to certain obligations and it is morally wrong of me to neglect or dismiss these. if as the member of a certain race, sex, species or polity i profit from a history of the exploitation of others, this adds to my positive obligations towards them, as in cases of compensation or positive discrimination. if i am responsible for the existence of certain beings, this likewise gives me certain obligations than towards other beings. relations in short can be the foundation of obligations both voluntary and involuntary, both explicitly undertaken and implicitly. however, there is a danger in relational ethics, of making arbitrary qualities relevant beyond such cases of obligation. and, since we have limited resources, is it not morally questionable to favor the lesser interests of the other in a (close) relation to the more fundamental interests of others we know not of? has not the socio-political history of achievements had in http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 relations and moral obligations towards other animals 191 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ its core precisely the overcoming of chauvinism, favoritism, nepotism for the sake of a more egalitarian distribution of resources and justice? the application of relational ethics to the problem of animals in the wild thus opens two questions not just about this particular problem but ethics in general. firstly, is not cold impartiality far too valuable an attainment to risk, both in ethics and in politics? what buberian and levinasian accounts of moral obligation seem to indicate is that we need to fine-tune our moral sensibilities to respond to both elements of the moral situation: the moral demand emanating from the need of the other as the source of my moral agency and cold impartiality to counteract the danger of arbitrary moral responses. secondly, if we agree that relations are constitutive of selfhood and that we have limited resources in how effective a moral agent we can become, then what sort of relations should be created becomes a moral question itself. ought we to have children as this keeps us from responding to other moral demands? is it permissible to cultivate exclusive friendships or partnerships, which leave us little room to respond to the needs of strangers? 5. conclusion relational approaches in animal ethics are varied and propose very different ideas about the ways relations are relevant to the question of human obligations towards other animals in general and animals in the wild in particular. while donaldson and kymlicka for example, develop a groupdifferentiated account, which includes a theory of negative and positive obligations for animals in the wild, for palmer “what goes on in the wild is not our moral business” (palmer 2011). my concern in this paper was with two elements of relational ethics, which appear in different forms in relational accounts as different as these two examples: the tendency to attribute moral obligation in a differentiated way depending on group-memberships of both the moral agents and patients and the persuasiveness of what i call grandmother ethics. the result of these elements is a dismissal in varying degrees of human moral responsibility towards some groups or individuals of animals according to their group membership. i have argued that both relations and capacities are necessary to determine our moral obligations towards other animals. in doing so, we need to distinguish the political question of how resources and duties are allocated from the question of what the rights are – and capacity accounts remain central in determining these (donaldson and kymlicka 2011). the capacities of a moral patient remain necessary for establishing what state of affairs http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 beril sözmen 192 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ is preferable for her life to go better rather than worse, even if we may not always be in the position to find moral agents whom we could call to duty. relations are part of a moral situation but they are not constitutive of it in the sense that a moral demand exists only if there is an agent with a relationship that it can latch onto. taking relations as the starting point of a description of a situation with a moral demand puts not the patient who is the object of possible harm or benefice in the center of the moral situation but the moral agent. but the demand on the moral agent and therefore the real obligation she has emanates from the situation in general and the patient in particular. in a moral situation with a recognizable moral demand therefore, the moral obligation of the agent cannot be argued away by recourse to (special) relations. rather such considerations can only add to morally relevant factors in certain cases as in obligations which have been undertaken, a history of exploitation or compensation, or e.g. in an extreme life-boat situation, where a choice between a companion animal and a hitherto unknown wild animal is required. in contrast a relational approach informed by buber and levinas remains patient-centred and gives precedence to the need of the patient rather than to the relationship between the agent and the patient. whether we subscribe to the view that the suffering of animals in the wild is a moral tragedy or a fact of life to be accepted might seem to be a matter of definition which makes no real difference. however i believe that grandmother ethics involves the danger of neglect and dismissal. it can support the decision not to channel resources and research into the possibilities of making the lives of animals in the wild go better, which is in itself an open moral question. we should be wary of the danger that the “facts of life” as they are now, should restrict and impoverish our moral outlook. our responsibility, to stay with buber and levinas, remains infinite. how can this really help us in animal ethics? my answer is that it helps us to differentiate more clearly between the source of our responsibility and the content of moral principles. relational ethics often tries to find answers to normative questions on what to do on the relations and relations are indeed an element of the moral situation that have to be taken into account. however, relations in buber and levinas’ account are the source of our responsibility without answering the question of what this responsibility requires in a given particular case. what they do to our debate in animal ethics is to provide a warning of the danger of confusing relations in these two functions and thereby of excluding some animals in practice from the moral sphere. they show that referring to relations can make sense only in certain respects and that the encounter is misused if the resulting normative stance is one of diminished responsibility. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 relations and moral obligations towards other animals 193 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ my conclusion is in fact quite modest: relational theories that argue from intersubjectivity to discretion are not without alternatives and buber and levinas make strong cases for not confusing the source of our moral responsibility with the normative question of what we should do. a critique of grandmother ethics also goes against the discretionary argument, which might tend to lead to a premature dismissal of the problem of wild animals. neither of these are sufficient to justify such a dismissal or even the neglect of this problem. siding with buber and levinas we can argue that the problem of wild animals is in fact central not only in animal ethics but in ethics precisely because here we are faced with whatever responsibility humans have as informed moral agents in the face of a tragedy that seems insurmountable. taking on this task might not only enable us to make progress in this moral tragedy but it also promises to be rewarding in that it will help us refine our wider moral positions. references buber, martin. (1939) 2002. “the education of character”. in id., between man and man. london new york: routledge classics. 1963. “antwort”. in martin buber, edited by paul a. schilpp and maurice friedman. stuttgart: w. kohlhammer verlag. 1970. i and thou. new york: charles scribner’s sons. degrazia, david. 1999. “animal ethics around the turn of the twenty-first century”. journal of agricultural and environmental ethics 11: 111-29. donaldson, susan, and will kymlicka. 2011. zoopolis: a political theory of animal rights. oxford: oxford university press. 2013. “a defense of animal citizens and sovereigns”. leap-journal. http:// leap-journal.com/archives/leap1-donalson-kymlicka.pdf. levinas, emmanuel. 1988. “the paradox of morality: an interview with emmanuel levinas”. in the provocation of levinas: rethinking the other, edited by robert bernasconi and david wood, 168-80. london new york: routledge & kegan paul. 1991. totality and infinity. dordrecht: kluwer academic publishers. palmer, clare. 2010. animal ethics in context. new york: columbia university press. 2011. “cover interview on her book anima ethics in context”. rorotoko. http://rorotoko.com/interview/20110110_palmer_clare_on_animal_ethics_in_ context. sagoff, mark. 1984. “animal liberation and environmental ethics. bad marriage, quick divorce”. osgoode hall law journal 22 (2): 297-307. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 http://leap-journal.com/archives/leap1-donalson-kymlicka.pdf http://leap-journal.com/archives/leap1-donalson-kymlicka.pdf http://rorotoko.com/interview/20110110_palmer_clare_on_animal_ethics_in_context http://rorotoko.com/interview/20110110_palmer_clare_on_animal_ethics_in_context the case for intervention in nature on behalf of animals: a critical review of the main arguments against intervention the case for intervention in nature on behalf of animals a critical review of the main arguments against intervention 1 mikel torres phd candidate, university of the basque country doi: 10.7358/rela-2015-001-torr gm_hache@yahoo.es abstract if we assume that all sentient animals deserve equal moral consideration and, therefore, that their interests are morally relevant, what should be our attitude regarding natural phenomena like predation or starvation which are harmful for many wild animals? do we have the prima facie moral obligation to try to mitigate unnecessary, avoidable and unjustified animal suffering in nature? in this paper i assume two main theses: (1) humans and (many) animals deserve equal moral consideration; this implies that (2) we have the prima facie moral obligation to try to mitigate unnecessary, avoidable and unjustified animal suffering. based on these assumptions, i argue that we are morally obligated to aid animals in the wild whenever doing so would not originate as much or more suffering than it would prevent. keywords: moral consideration of animals, wild animals, intervention in nature, predation, environmentalism, animal suffering, moral agency, special obligations, natural selection, argument from species overlap. 1. introduction do we have the prima facie moral obligation to try to mitigate unnecessary, avoidable and unjustified animal suffering? in this paper i will argue that we do and, additionally, that this moral obligation implies the duty of intervening in nature for the sake of the interests of individual wild animals, with the aim of sparing them the sufferings they would otherwise endure. 1 the author would like to thank oscar horta and catia faria for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. mailto:gm_hache@yahoo.es http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 mikel torres 34 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ i will proceed as follows. firstly, i will present some theses which i will simply assume as a starting point. secondly, i will present what i consider to be the eight main arguments against human intervention in nature with the aim of preventing the suffering of wild animals 2, and i will argue that they do not work. 2. starting point assumptions the main thesis i will assume affirms that many animals deserve certain kind of moral consideration and, at least all the sentient ones, are worthy of moral consideration in the same way that human beings are 3. in turn, this assumption is based on other assumptions. i believe that if we assume some basic moral principles like the “principle of equality” (all human beings are worthy of the same moral consideration), the “principle of relevance” (only if there is a morally relevant difference between the members of two groups can a difference in the entitlements of the members of those two groups be justified), and the “principle of desert” (nobody should be blamed or praised for things that are beyond their control), these principles offer us a good base to elaborate a sound argument in favor of the equal moral consideration of all sentient animals. i presuppose 2 there is another very important argument that has been raised against intervention in nature on behalf of animals: the argument from absurdity. the argument runs as follows (sapontzis 1984, 27; 1987, 229): first premise. moral agents are morally obligated to alleviate unnecessary, avoidable and unjustified animal suffering – second premise. animals suffer when they are preyed upon by predators – first conclusion. moral agents are morally obligated to forestall predation – third premise. but, clearly, a moral obligation to halt predation is absurd – second conclusion. therefore, contrary to the first conclusion, moral agents are not obligated to alleviate unnecessary, avoidable and unjustified animal suffering. advocates of this argument are, for instance, sagoff (1984, 41-2) and cohen (2001, 30). the main problem of the argument is that the third premise is disputable. since this argument has been impeccably analyzed by sapontzis (1984; 1987, 229-48), i will not consider it in this paper. i agree with sapontzis when he concludes that the obligation to intervene in nature on behalf of animals is not absurd when we adopt the following principle: moral agents are morally obligated to forestall predation whenever doing so would not originate as much or more suffering than it would prevent. 3 a being deserves moral consideration if legitimate moral constraints apply to our treatment of it. moral consideration can be direct or indirect. on the one hand, a being deserves direct moral consideration if moral agents have the duty of taking into account the well-being of that creature when they take moral decisions. on the other hand, a being deserves indirect moral consideration if moral agents do not have the direct duty of taking into account its well-being, but must consider how the treatment of that being affects the well-being of the individuals who deserve direct moral consideration. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 the case for intervention in nature on behalf of animals 35 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ that these three basic moral principles are valid. additionally, based on the argument from species overlap, i assume that there are no morally relevant differences between humans and animals 4. of course, all these assumptions are debatable and, although i believe there are good arguments to support them, in this paper i will not try to argue in favor of them. i will just take them for granted. 3. eight arguments against intervention in nature on behalf of animals unless there were independent reasons to deny equal moral consideration to wild animals, the previous assumptions apply to wild animals as well as to domesticated ones. the concession of equal moral consideration to sentient wild animals leads to the problem of the moral evaluation of predation 5. animals constantly kill other animals in wild environments. if we, as moral agents, have the moral obligation to regulate our own behavior towards animals, should not we have the obligation to regulate how animals treat each other also (cowen 2003, 169)? in what follows, i will defend that, in many cases, it is our duty to intervene in nature to regulate how animals treat each other. with this aim in mind, i propose one thesis and one moral principle 6: the interventionist thesis: moral agents have the prima facie moral obligation of intervening in nature with the aim of protecting individual animals from unnecessary, avoidable and unjustified sufferings. the interventionist principle: moral agents are morally obligated to forestall predation whenever doing so would not originate as much or more suffering than it would prevent. i will examine and criticize what i believe are the eight main arguments that have been presented against the interventionist thesis and the interventionist principle. i will conclude that all of them face significant problems and, therefore, that they are unsatisfactory. 4 for an illuminating justification of the equal moral consideration of humans and animals based on these basic moral principles see rowlands 2002, 26-57; 2009, 8-30. 5 although throughout the paper i will refer mainly to the issue of predation, i am convinced that the conclusions drawn are valid regarding other problems such as starvation or natural catastrophes. 6 the thesis and moral principle presented here are directly linked with the ideas of sapontzis (1984; 1987, 229-39). http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 mikel torres 36 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 3.1. the argument from bad consequences singer (1973; [1975] 2002, 225-8) 7, rowlands (2009, 168-70) and simmons (2009, 22-5) appeal to the argument from bad consequences to justify that we should leave wild animals alone. the main reasons they offer to refuse intervention are based on the disastrous consequences it would supposedly cause: starvation, overpopulation, the extinction of some animal and plant species, etc. in spite of the fact that they base their arguments in different theoretical frameworks, we can summarize and simplify the argument they use as follows: 1. first premise: actions are right in so far as they produce good consequences and wrong in so far as they bring about bad ones. 2. second premise: intervening in nature would cause bad consequences. 3. conclusion: therefore, intervening in nature is a morally wrong action. the first thing we should note is that these authors do not show that intervention will necessarily have disastrous consequences; they simply take the truth of the second premise for granted. perhaps it is a reasonable belief but some empirical data to support the assertion would be more than welcome. in any case, for the sake of the argument, i will accept that a widespread intervention in nature would have bad consequences. does this invalidate the interventionist thesis? i do not think so. to put it simply, the interventionist principle escapes from the critique of the argument from bad consequences. if we have the duty to forestall predation only when doing so does not cause as much or more suffering than it would prevent, we do not have the duty to prevent predation in those cases in which intervention would have disastrous consequences. the interventionist principle avoids from the beginning the problems posed by the argument from bad consequences. someone might hold that the interventionist principle presents an empty obligation because there are no cases in which preventing predation would not originate as much or more suffering than it would prevent. nevertheless, this is not the case (sapontzis 1984, 31; 1987, 234). for instance, if we accepted the principle, we would have the obligation to impede that our pets become predators. to sum up, the interventionist principle eludes the objections of the argument from bad consequences and, therefore, it offers us a good base to support the interventionist thesis. 7 to be fair, singer (1973; [1975] 2002, 226) stands for a restricted interventionist position, provided that we were able to calculate reliably the general consequences of policing nature. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 the case for intervention in nature on behalf of animals 37 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 3.2. the argument from the lack of agency appealing to the fact that animals are not moral agents, regan (1983, 357) explicitly denies that we should intervene in nature with the aim of preventing the rights violations that happen there. he claims that, since animals are not moral agents, they do not have moral duties. hence, animals do not have the duty to respect the rights of other animals, including their right to life. this way, while human hunt would be immoral (because humans are normally moral agents), animal predation would not pose any moral problem (because animals are not moral agents). when there are no moral agents involved, there are no moral issues to deal with. why are similar harms morally significant in some cases but not in others? regan’s argument implicitly implies that only when an action is performed by a moral agent possesses that action moral weight. when there are no moral agents involved, consequences are neutral. the argument runs as follows: 1. first premise: only when an action is performed by a moral agent does that action possess moral weight. 2. second premise: animals are not moral agents. 3. conclusion: therefore, predation between animals has no moral weight. regan’s thesis that the harm animals cause each other is not morally significant because they are not moral agents is highly implausible. it requires that only when a moral agent consciously and deliberately decides to inflict harm is that harm morally significant. if the same harm was caused by a moral patient, since moral patients do not have the duty to respect other’s rights, that harm would not be morally relevant. but this viewpoint is extremely counterintuitive. we all normally admit that an action performed by a moral patient can be morally wrong and, therefore, that actions made by moral patients are not always morally neutral. for instance, would we say that we should not intervene if a dog bit a human baby because neither is a moral agent and, therefore, because the consequences of the action are morally neutral? while the assumption that only moral agents can make morally significant choices is reasonable, the thesis that only when moral agents are involved are the consequences morally significant is hard to accept. apart from that, regan’s response to the predation problem is inappropriate for various other reasons. first of all, regan’s answer misses the point. nobody is saying that animals have the moral duty to respect the rights of other animals. the point is to decide if we, moral agents, have the duty to intervene in nature to impede animals harming each other. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 mikel torres 38 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ therefore, to answer that animals are not moral agents and that, hence, there is no moral problem in predation is to refute a straw man. of course, the attribution of moral agency to an individual is important to settle responsibility and punishment issues but it does not affect the rightness or wrongness of the harm itself (sapontzis 1987, 231; cowen 2003, 176-7; nussbaum 2006, 379) 8. leaving aside that regan’s answer misses the point, his position faces other considerable problems. firstly, it is usually accepted that rights holders have the right to see their rights protected wherever the damage comes from. for example, we help people harmed by hurricanes and earthquakes, and we think they have the right to be assisted by the state, despite hurricanes and earthquakes not being moral agents. secondly, regan’s thesis is openly against our everyday intuitions; should we refrain from intervening in all the cases in which neither attacker nor attacked were moral agents? were that the case, we would not have the duty to intervene when a dog attacked a human baby. this conclusion is against common-sense intuitions. thirdly, it seems to be a contradiction between the traits that, according to regan, inherent value possesses and the normative thesis that recommends not intervening in nature. in regan’s (1983, 236-7) theory, individuals who possess inherent value possess it equally; inherent value does not admit varying degrees. furthermore, inherent value is not gained or reduced depending on the actions that inherently valuable individuals perform. therefore, if all individuals who possess inherent value deserve respectful treatment, and the principle of respect for individuals establishes that animals have the right to be assisted by moral agents whenever their rights are violated, then, how can regan justify that humans do not have the duty to intervene in nature to prevent predation? to justify why some animals – domesticated animals, mainly – have the right to be assisted while others – wild animals – do not, we would need to postulate that inherent value and rights are context dependent. unfortunately, regan’s theoretical commitments regarding inherent value do not allow him to support this thesis. this is not surprising: since individuals who possess inherent value possess it equally, and since inherent value is not gained or reduced depending on the actions that inherently valuable individuals perform or the degree to which they have utility with respect to the interests of others (regan 1983, 237), it would be unacceptable to declare that inherent value changes depending on the context. 8 this thesis presupposes that together with agent-dependent dimensions like motives and emotions, there are also agent-independent reasons that we should take into account in our moral evaluations; e.g., the consequences of actions. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 the case for intervention in nature on behalf of animals 39 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ briefly, regan holds two opposing views. on the one hand, animals have the right to receive assistance from moral agents. on the other hand, moral agents should not intervene in nature to prevent rights violations between animals. trying to fit together these two conflicting claims, regan presents the argument from the lack of agency. unfortunately, this argument is untenable. 3.3. the argument from ignorance this is an argument formulated in passing by simmons (2009, 23). taking into account that we do not still know very well how ecological relations work, it would be dangerous and naïve to suppose that we have enough knowledge to modify natural ecological relations without causing serious problems. we are not able to predict accurately the effects that preventing predation would have for humans, animals and ecosystems. nevertheless, we know that intervention would clearly modify ecological relations and, in all probability, due to our lack of adequate knowledge, it would also cause severe harms to animals. thus, because of the insufficiency of our current expertise, we must refrain from preventing predation. we should note first that this argument is only applicable against some forms of intervention, that is, interventions with considerable probabilities of triggering ecological catastrophes (cowen 2003, 179). if we could measure reasonably well their consequences, modest interventions would be morally acceptable. in addition, although it seems that simmons’ argument implicitly assumes it, it is important to observe that not all human caused disturbances in nature are blameworthy (cowen 2003, 180). disturbing nature might be morally justified if the consequences were good enough. the argument from ignorance does not explain why ecological balance should always be the prevailing value. furthermore, since change and instability are common phenomena in nature, it is not clear how we should define an ecological catastrophe (cowen 2003, 180). finally, our lack of knowledge and the possibility of a natural disaster does not necessarily imply that we should not intervene in nature more than it implies that we should (cowen 2003, 181). after all, uncertainty affects equally the interventionist and the anti-interventionist theses; it neither supports nor opposes intervention as such. if we are not able to predict accurately the effects that intervention in nature would have, we are probably not able to predict the consequences of not intervening either. were this correct, the argument from ignorance could be based on the “status quo bias”, an inappropriate and irrational preference for an option because it preserves the status quo (bostrom and ord 2006, 658). http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 mikel torres 40 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 3.4. the environmentalist argument environmental ethics, unlike mainstream animal ethics theories, concedes direct moral consideration to natural entities which do not have the subjective capacity to suffer (callicott 1980, 31-3). while the viewpoint of ecocentrism is holistic, animal ethics views are atomistic and, unlike animal ethics theories, environmental ethics does not rely on a hierarchical ontological and axiological scheme, it relies on a functional system of value (callicott 1980, 38). environmental ethics framework is holistic because its main focuses of concern are ecosystems, not individuals. consequently, callicott (1980, 39) claims that a thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community, and it is wrong when it tends otherwise 9. environmental ethics relies on a functional system of value because it does not ascertain value distinctions based on a fixed higher/lower order of being. on the contrary, it ascertains value distinctions based on the contextual functional importance individuals have in preserving ecosystems. in this respect, a bacterium can deserve higher moral consideration than a dog if it contributes more to the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. in line with the ideas presented above, environmental ethics holds that the moral consideration of individual animals is contextually dependent (callicott 1980, 47). animals who make notable contributions to the preservation of ecosystems are worthy of higher moral consideration than those who do not. that being so, the moral consideration of an individual wild animal will depend on the contribution it makes to the preservation of the ecosystem. therefore, we would only have the duty of helping a wild animal in need when doing so helped to preserve an ecosystem. if we acknowledged that intervention in nature to prevent predation would not contribute to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community, we would arrive at the conclusion that intervention is immoral. moreover, due to the critically important role they play in preserving many ecosystems, we should concede higher moral consideration to predators than to prey (callicott 1980, 39). portrayed in this way, the environmentalist argument is untenable. first of all, the extreme holistic moral standpoint callicott defends is arbitrary (sapontzis 1987, 261-4). it is perhaps acceptable that a fraction of an individual’s value is determined by his role in an ecosystem. perhaps it is even acceptable that, in some circumstances, the overall good of the ecosystem should prevail over the good of an individual and, therefore, the 9 as he openly recognizes, embracing this moral principle callicott is directly following aldo leopold’s land ethic (leopold 1949). http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 the case for intervention in nature on behalf of animals 41 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ good of the ecosystem is sometimes an adequate criterion to resolve conflicts of interests. but it is difficult to accept that the moral consideration of an individual is completely determined by the role she or he plays in an ecosystem. it is difficult to accept because it implies that it is legitimate to use some individuals as mere means to promote, in this case, the alleged integrity, stability and beauty of nature. more importantly, adopting the extreme individualism vs. radical holism dichotomous perspective, callicott presents a false dilemma. there are tolerable intermediate positions and an interventionist animal ethics does not have any problem in embracing them. additionally, callicott defends environmental ethical holism because he believes it presents a viable way of adjudicating conflicts of interests. but this claim is valid also for many moral principles and it does not necessarily entail that the moral principle at issue is acceptable. callicott (1980, 53-5) believes that, due to its value commitments, animal ethics is a world-denying philosophy. we should accept nature and life as they are, with all their hardships and all their joys. this means that we should accept that in nature some beings live at the expense of others: “if nature as a whole is good, then pain and death are also good” (callicott 1980, 54). we should not impose artificial human values on nature; just the opposite, we should assert natural biological laws. this proposal has practical consequences which are hard to endorse (sapontzis 1987, 264). by way of illustration, when callicott mentions we should accept life and nature as they are, he states that in the favored good old days when tribalism reigned “[…] animal flesh was respectfully consumed; a tolerance for pain was cultivated; virtue and magnanimity were prized; lithic, floral, and faunal spirits were worshipped; population was routinely optimized by sexual continence, abortion, infanticide, and stylized warfare” (callicott 1980, 54). if the practical implications of callicott’s stance are adoration of floral and faunal spirits, infanticide and stylized warfare, his argument is difficult to accept. to conclude, we have good reasons to reject callicott’s charge of animal ethics being a world-denying philosophy. if all moral theories which do not accept life and nature as they are should be labelled as “world-denying”, then, the vast majority of moral theories are world-denying. some of the widely accepted main goals of morality are to inhibit natural desires and to propose and fight for a better world. the unconditional approval of the current state of affairs would only be morally correct if we lived in the best of the possible worlds. as i am afraid (and hope) that this is not the case, to be anti-natural and world-denying is not immoral; quite on the contrary, morality requires a positive world changing attitude (sapontzis 1987, 267-8). thus, ultimately, i conclude that we have good reasons to reject the environmentalist objection against the interventionist thesis. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 mikel torres 42 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 3.5. the argument from natural selection predation is one of the reasonable candidates to be listed as a disvalue in nature (rolston 1992, 253-5). predation is indisputably bad for prey: it makes them suffer and, in many cases, the final result is death. nevertheless, disvalue for prey is a value to predators. from the general perspective of ecosystems and evolution, there is not so much a loss of value in predation as value transference: a life is lost to make possible the survival of other. even at the level of subjective experiences, rolston thinks predation is well-adjusted: the pains of prey are counterbalanced by the pleasures of predators. at this point, rolston takes under consideration the negative consequences that preventing predation would probably have: “an earth with only herbivores and no omnivores or carnivores would be impoverished” (1992, 254). since he believes that biological goodness, the degree to which ecosystems are pro-life and prolific, is a relevant aspect to evaluate natural processes, he concludes that the impoverishment that preventing predation would cause is not desirable. it is important to emphasize that preventing predation could impoverish not only ecosystems but the capacities of animals too. the tendency to complexity predation promotes is not only beneficial to predators, prey also gain in the process by acquiring more complex and higher capabilities by means of evolution. hence, although predation is a disvalue for individual prey, it can be valuable for prey species because it promotes the development of better perceptual, physical and cognitive skills in the long-term. eradicating the weakest members of a species, natural selection promotes the fitness of the individual members of a species in the long-run. when we adopt a standpoint based on the longterm benefits of natural selection, the disvalue of predation is transformed into value. rolston (1992, 252) acknowledges that biological goodness per se is not necessarily morally valuable. diversity, complexity, fortitude through struggle, etc., are simply natural creative activities, not moral ones. however, we may have good reasons to see them as morally important, especially if we do not exclusively tie moral value to the subjective psychological experiences of individuals. insofar as biological complexity is the necessary precondition of the subjective psychological experiences to which we attach value, we should value and protect it too (rolston 1992, 275). thus value is not only tied to subjective psychological experiences such as pleasure or pain but it is also tied to biological processes like predation. the main problem with the argument from natural selection is that it inappropriately mixes up two different issues: the welfare of individual animals and the general capacities of a species. as is perfectly clear in the http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 the case for intervention in nature on behalf of animals 43 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ human case, the policies and traits that maximize the well-being of individuals are not necessarily the ones that maximize the improvement, diffusion and reproduction of their genetic material. natural selection and individual welfare are distinct issues. since i consider sentience to be a necessary and sufficient condition to deserve full and equal moral consideration, forasmuch as species are not sentient beings i think morality should focus primarily on the welfare of individuals and not on the improvement of the capacities of a species. the improvement of biological fitness and the survival capacities of a species can be morally important indeed, but it should play a minor role in morality compared with individual welfare. despite this, at least in some cases, prey may actually benefit from the existence of predators: predators may keep down overpopulation, improving the quality of life of prey (cowen 2003, 172-3). however, even in those cases it is clear that predatory activities are not always beneficial to some prey. finally, it is relevant to emphasize that generally, due to the harsh practical consequences it would have, we would not accept the argument from natural selection when applied to humans. perhaps continuously fighting to survive would be good for us as a species, maybe it would improve our capacities in the long-term but, nevertheless, mainstream moral theories tend to promote compassion and empathy towards the weakest, not insensitivity and repudiation. this is somewhat positive, i believe. the argument from species overlap is helpful here. if all humans deserve the same moral consideration, and if animals deserve the same moral consideration as marginal humans, then, if we consider the argument from natural selection unacceptable when applied to marginal humans, we should consider it unacceptable in the case of animals too. i conclude that, because of the aforementioned problems, the argument from natural selection is problematic and we should not endorse it. 3.6. the argument from different moral obligations degrazia (1996, 274-8), scruton (2000, 79-122), simmons (2009, 22), and donaldson and kymlicka (2011, 156-209) hold that, due to the personal or historical relations we have with domesticated animals, we have positive moral duties of care towards them that we do not have towards wild ones. so, due to the special relationships we have with them, we owe positive special obligations of care to some subset of animals, in contrast to the negative obligations we owe to all animals insofar as they are sentient beings. therefore, although we have the duty to protect domesticated animals from the attacks of predators, we do not have the duty to protect http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 mikel torres 44 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ prey from predators in the wild, because we do not have positive special obligations of care in the second case 10. the right to be protected from predators is a right acquired by domesticated animals through some type of special relationship with moral agents. since wild animals do not normally have special relations with moral agents, they do not have the right to be protected from the attacks of predators. the main premise of the argument from different moral obligations says that special relations create and imply special moral duties. i think that to determine the moral consideration of animals we should focus mainly in some morally relevant capacities of the individuals, not so much on the relations those individuals have with moral agents. consequently, i think it is extremely problematic to ascribe moral consideration based mainly on relations instead of individual capacities. in any case, the main problem of the argument is that the argument from species overlap applies equally to individual capacities and relationships. hence, for every affective relation x which we consider morally relevant to determine moral consideration, we will find some humans as well as some animals which do not have that relationship with moral agents 11. this would implausibly imply that these humans and animals deserve lower moral consideration than those who have special relationships with us. special relations perhaps ground special duties of care but they do not diminish the moral consideration of beings which do not have those relationships with us. animals with similar morally relevant basic individual capacities should merit similar moral consideration, regardless of the relations they have with moral agents. moral consideration derives mainly from capacities, not relations. in principle, i agree to the idea that we have special moral obligations towards domestic animals as the result of the specific particular/historical relationships we have with them. what i find harder to consent to is the idea that we do not have the moral obligation to intervene in nature because we do not have special particular or historical relationships with wild animals. it is likely that we owe more to those animals closer to us but this does not mean we owe nothing to wild animals. the key issue here is if we consider our obligation to intervene, and duties of assistance in general, as common universal moral obligations or, on the contrary, as particular 10 to be fair, many of these authors claim that, in some particular and well-defined situations, we have the duty to prevent predation in the wild as well, but they maintain that, on the whole, we do not have the duty to intervene in nature on behalf of wild animals. 11 perhaps the argument from species overlap is not applicable in the case of historical relations but, obviously, the moral importance of historical relations and the duties they allegedly impose is controversial. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 the case for intervention in nature on behalf of animals 45 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ special obligations. in the case of human beings, we would probably reject that we only have the moral obligation to assist those humans who have a special relationship with us. it is doubtful that we must consider the right to be assisted when harmed by predators a relational right in the human case. why should this be different in the case of animals? were that the case, we would not have the obligation to help human victims of predation if they did not have a special relationship with us. perhaps we do not have the duty to assist people or animals in those circumstances but, considering the counterintuitive severe practical consequences the denial of these duties would have, i assume the ball is in the court of those who deny the existence of universal duties of assistance 12. 3.7. the argument from naturalness or “nothing wrong” from time to time, an author appeals to the naturalness of predation to conclude that, inasmuch as predation is a natural phenomenon, there can be nothing wrong with it. hettinger (1994, 17-8), for instance, says that intervening in nature to prevent predation implies a betrayal of natural values and abhorrence of natural processes. predators are carnivorous; when they predate they are simply following their nature so it is nonsensical to claim that predation is morally wrong. they are predators, it cannot be wrong for them to predate. therefore, when we disapprove of predation, we are opposing nature. to embrace natural values and value positively natural processes, we should accept that animal predation is good (but we could still consider human predation morally unjustifiable) (hettinger 1994, 18). in the first place, it is important to admit that it is by no mean easy to determine what is natural and what is not. in our current world, humans permanently interact with nature, affecting and altering it. for example, when humans introduce animals from a certain species into an ecosystem where no animal of that species used to live before, should we define the predatory activity of that species as natural? it is not clear. on the one 12 ebert and machan (2012, 154-5) outline a promising libertarian conception of animal rights that would imply that we would not have the duty to assist animals by means of preventing predation. they reject that moral rights are necessarily positive and negative and they claim that, if animals had only negative rights, then, we would not have the moral obligation to assist them when harmed by predation. according to them, each moral agent should assume duties of assistance depending on his particular feelings/beliefs. although i find this libertarian conception of animal rights interesting, it is still underdeveloped and, therefore, i will set it aside in this paper. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 mikel torres 46 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ hand, if we defined natural phenomena as those processes completely unconditioned by human influence, the predatory activity of invasive species introduced by humans would be unnatural and, therefore, immoral in consonance with the argument. on the other hand, if we accepted that human influence does not disqualify a process from being natural, the opponents of intervention should offer us a sound argument of why intervention would be immoral despite it being natural. besides, as fink (2005, 4-5) notes, the argument is based on the general moral principle that if some animals are by nature carnivorous, nothing wrong happens when those animals kill others for food. so the argument takes for granted that to live following the dictates of nature is good but, undoubtedly, this principle is questionable. there is no logical connection between natural behaviors and morally correct ones: natural acts can be immoral and moral acts can be unnatural (fink 2005, 5). additionally, the argument from naturalness seems to presuppose that we should value positively all and every aspect of nature, but this thesis is implausible. as everett (2001, 55-62) remarks, the negative evaluation of the suffering caused by predation does not mean necessarily the rejection of natural values and processes. we can see certain aspects of nature as morally bad without completely condemning or repudiating it. moreover, it is reasonable to consider the compassionate human response towards prey and the desire to help them as natural as well (donaldson and kymlicka 2011, 166). finally, we should note that it is not the same to claim that predators are acting immorally and to claim that predation is immoral. if we accept that there are agent independent reasons which can make an action good or bad, then we are capable of defending at the same time that predators are not acting immorally and that predation is morally wrong. therefore, it is not nonsensical to defend that predation is wrong. taking into account all these considerations, i conclude that the supposed naturalness of an action is difficult to define and, more importantly, it is irrelevant when trying to determine if an action is morally right or wrong. therefore, the argument from naturalness is unsound. 3.8. the argument from virtue based on virtue ethics, hursthouse (2011, 131-3) considers intervention in nature on behalf of animals immoral. she backs up her argument appealing to the virtue of respectful love. hursthouse (2011, 131) claims that the virtue of compassion is a specific form of the virtue of love. since the primary concern of love is the http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 the case for intervention in nature on behalf of animals 47 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ good or well-being of others, and in view of the fact that freedom from suffering is the central concern of compassion and a key element of the good or well-being of any sentient creature, compassion must be seen as a particular form of the virtue of love. in any case, she emphasizes that the virtue of love needs to be tempered with the virtue of respect, resulting in the virtue of respectful love (hursthouse 2011, 132). respectful love honors the right that others have to make their own choices, even in the cases in which we judge that their choices are harmful for their own good or well-being. respectful love is, in the end, a corrective to the vice of arrogant paternalism. our respectful love for animals should be based on, and informed by, “our recognition of the ways in which their needs and their lives are their own, peculiar to the sorts of animals they are” (hursthouse 2011, 132). according to hursthouse (2011, 133), the virtue of respectful love is helpful to understand why intervention in nature on behalf of animals is immoral. the interventionist thesis is a morally inappropriate conclusion deduced by theory-driven philosophers. due to their commitment to some abstract, general and basic moral principles, these philosophers have no choice but to accept the interventionist thesis when it is deduced from those principles. but virtue ethics rejects the idea that morality is reducible to a set of abstract, general and basic moral principles which should be applied every time we try to solve a particular practical moral problem. virtue ethics makes us think about the rights and wrongs of our treatment of animals in terms of virtues and vices, not in terms of some abstract basic moral principles. based on these premises, hursthouse holds that, from the perspective of virtue ethics, the interventionist thesis is just a manifestation of anthropocentric arrogance, an obvious example of unjustified paternalism. when applied to wild animals, respectful love implies that we must respect the good that really is their own. hursthouse acknowledges that the lives of the majority of wild animals are red in tooth and claw, but she concludes that respectful love demands leaving wild animals to live their own form of life, even if that form of life is harmful for them. if we intervened in nature on behalf of animals, we would destroy their habitats and their own forms of life, something completely incompatible with respectful love. as i see it, the main problems of the argument from virtue are clear. first of all, the argument is acceptable only if it is assumed the theoretical framework of virtue ethics. in the second place, even if we assumed a virtue ethics standpoint, it would not be as clear as hursthouse thinks that we should repudiate the interventionist thesis. the vicious nature of the thesis is up for discussion. after all, virtue ethics has to face three common objections (rowlands 2009, 100-1): (1) subjectivity: one’s person virtue is http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 mikel torres 48 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ another person’s vice, and vice versa; (2) vagueness: the implications of the application of a virtue in a particular case are imprecise and uncertain; and (3) conflicts: there can be unsolvable and paralyzing conflicts between virtues. of course, these problems do not disqualify virtue ethics as an adequate and stimulating approach to moral problems, but we must bear in mind that, many times, virtue-based theories come to different and even irreconcilable conclusions. this is not bad in itself, but it makes the vicious character of the interventionist thesis doubtful. for instance, we could argue that the interventionist principle is what the virtue of compassion requires in many circumstances, not an example of arrogant paternalism. finally, i think the argument from species overlap is helpful once again. we would all probably consider virtuous helping a marginal human if he was attacked by a predator so, at least in principle, we should consider virtuous assisting animals in the wild as well. 4. conclusion in this paper, i have assumed that sentient animals deserve the same (or at least similar) moral consideration as humans. afterwards, i have argued that the eight main arguments against the interventionist thesis are questionable, concluding that there are no good arguments to reject our duty of intervening in nature to avoid unnecessary, avoidable and unjustified animal suffering (whenever doing so would not originate as much or more suffering than it would prevent). accordingly, if the previous arguments are correct, a good theory of animal ethics must be one which openly embraces the interventionist thesis and the interventionist principle. references bostrom, nick, and toby ord. 2006. “the reversal test: eliminating status quo bias in applied ethics”. ethics 116 (4): 656-79. doi: 10.1086/505233. callicott, john b. 1980. “animal liberation: a triangular affair”. environmental ethics 2 (4): 311-38. cohen, carl. 2001. “why animals do not have rights”. in the animal rights debate, edited by carl cohen and tom regan, 27-40. lanham: rowman & littlefield publishers. cowen, tyler. 2003. “policing nature”. environmental ethics 25 (2): 169-82. doi: 10.5840/enviroethics200325231. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 the case for intervention in nature on behalf of animals 49 relations – 3.1 june 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ degrazia, david. 1996. taking animals seriously. mental life and moral status. cambridge: cambridge university press. donaldson, sue, and will kymlicka. 2011. zoopolis: a political theory of animal rights. oxford: oxford university press. ebert, rainer, and tibor r. machan. 2012. “innocent threats and the moral problem of carnivorous animals”. journal of applied philosophy 29 (2): 146-59. doi: 10.1111/j.1468-5930.2012.00561.x. everett, jennifer. 2001. “environmental ethics, animal welfarism, and the problem of predation: a bambi lover’s respect for nature”. ethics and the environment 6 (1): 42-67. doi: 10.1353/een.2001.0005. fink, charles k. 2005. “the predation argument”. between the species 13 (5): 1-15. hettinger, ned. 1994. “valuing predation in rolston’s environmental ethics: bambi lovers versus tree huggers”. environmental ethics 16 (1): 3-20. doi: 10.5840/ enviroethics199416138. hursthouse, rosalind. 2011. “virtue ethics and the treatment of animals”. in the oxford handbook of animal ethics, edited by tom l. beauchamp and raymond g. frey, 119-43. new york: oxford university press. leopold, aldo. 1949. a sand county almanac, and sketches here and there. new york: oxford university press. nussbaum, martha c. 2006. frontiers of justice. disability, nationality, species membership. cambridge, ma: belknap press. regan, tom. 1983. the case for animal rights. berkeley: university of california press. rolston, holmes. 1992. “disvalues in nature”. the monist 75 (2): 250-78. doi: 10.5840/ monist199275218. rowlands, mark. 2002. animals like us. london: verso. 2009. animal rights. moral theory and practice. basingstoke: palgrave macmillan. sagoff, mark. 1984. “animal liberation and environmental ethics: bad marriage, quick divorce”. in environmental ethics. what really matters, what really works, edited by david schmidtz and elizabeth willott, 38-44. new york: oxford university press. sapontzis, steve f. 1984. “predation”. ethics and animals 5 (2): 27-38. 1987. morals, reason, and animals. philadelphia: temple university press. scruton, roger. 2000. animal rights and wrongs. london: metro books. simmons, aaron. 2009. “animals, predators, the right to life and the duty to save lives”. ethics and the environment 14 (1): 15-27. doi: 10.2979/ete.2009.14.1.15. singer, peter. 1973. “food for thought, reply to david rosinger”. new york review of books, june 14. accessed october 6, 2014. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/ archives/1973/jun/14/food-for-thought/. (1975) 2002. animal liberation, 2nd edn. new york: harper collins publishers. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/56 http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1973/jun/14/food-for-thought/ http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1973/jun/14/food-for-thought/ posthumanism in literature and ecocriticism. introduction posthumanism in literature and ecocriticism introduction serenella iovino professor of comparative literature, university of turin serenella.iovino@unito.it where does the posthuman dwell? at what address? and in what type of house? these questions, borrowed from the opening of deborah amberson and elena past’s essay on gadda’s “pasticciaccio” and the knotted posthuman household, tickle our eco-accustomed ears – ears that more often than not like to take ideas back to their earthly dwelling, something that the greek all-too famously called oikos. in our case, however, to provide the right answer to these questions is definitely challenging and might require a little “veering”. the reason is simple: situated by definition in a mobile space of matter and meanings, the posthuman does not seem so prone to dwell. in fact, it moves, relentlessly shifting the boundaries of being and things, of ontology, epistemology, and even politics. and these boundaries, especially those between human and nonhuman, are not only shifting but also porous: based on the – biological, cultural, structural – combination of agencies flowing from, through, and alongside the human, the posthuman discloses a dimension in which “we” and “they” are caught together in an ontological dance whose choreography follows patterns of irredeemable hybridization and stubborn entanglement. in this mobile and uncertain dwelling, furthermore, the posthuman might not have a stable “address”, but it does address important issues: it addresses, for example, the alleged self-sufficiency of the human, the purported subsidiarity of the nonhuman, and the consistency of categorical essences and forms that hover over our visions and practices as if they had been demarcated ab aeterno by the hand of an inflexible taxonomist. taking a closer look, finally, we can see that the posthuman’s house is not only mobile and a bit shambolic, but also operationally open: open to transformations and revolutions, ready to welhttp://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 serenella iovino 12 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ come the natures, matters, and cultural agents that determine the existence of the human and accompany it in its biological and historical adventures. it is a collective house for “nomadic” comings and goings, and most of all for belonging-together and multiple becomings: its inhabitant and “namebearer”, the posthuman subject is, in fact, “a relational subject constituted in and by multiplicity” – a subject “based on a strong sense of collectivity, relationality and hence community building”, as rosi braidotti says in her beautiful interview with cosetta veronese. in other words, as its house is itinerant and accessible to numerous guests, including the elements, the posthuman subject is a restless and sociable agent, allergic to limitations and boundaries, and ontologically full of stories. a biocultural picaro, one might say. thinking the posthuman and following the stories it allows us to see is the task that we have undertaken in this special issue of relations. deliberately, we editors have decided not to limit our exploration to the philosophical conceptualizations marking out the debate’s theoretical map, but to also delve into the critical and narrative potential of this illuminating ontological framework, which has found so much room in literary studies  – especially those areas related to ecocriticism and the so-called “critical posthumanities” 1. if there is a basic premise of posthuman thinking, in fact, it is that the idea of the human is not platonic in itself, but is always already plotted: interlaced with the nonhuman in a warp and woof of intricate, joint performances of “storied matter”. the posthuman is, to put it otherwise, the ontological narrative of the human in its infinite paths of entangled becoming with its others. hence the idea of “narrative ontologies and ontological stories” that we have chosen as the collective title of this double issue, featuring a first part on literature and ecocriticism (guest-edited by serenella iovino) and a second part on theoretical approaches (guest-edited by roberto marchesini and eleonora adorni). but, before we enter our respective rooms, let us wander a bit longer in this posthumanist house, whose blueprints were sketched in the last two 1 in the posthumanist lineage of ecocritical studies can be situated collections such as material feminisms, edited by stacy alaimo and susan hekman, bloomington: indiana university press, 2008; prismatic ecology, edited by jeffrey j. cohen, minneapolis: minnesota university press, 2013; material ecocriticism, edited by serenella iovino and serpil oppermann, bloomington: indiana university press, 2014; thinking italian animals: human and posthuman in modern italian literature and film, edited by deborah amberson and elena past, new york: palgrave macmillan, 2014; elemental ecocriticism, edited by jeffrey j. cohen and lowell duckert, minneapolis: minnesota university press, 2015. a key addition to this burgeoning bibliography will be the forthcoming cambridge companion to literature and the posthuman, edited by bruce clarke and manuela rossini. on “critical posthumanities” see, among others, neimanis, åsberg, and hedrén 2015. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 posthumanism in literature and ecocriticism 13 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ decades of the 20th century by donna haraway, rosi braidotti, n. katherine hayles, bruno latour, and andrew pickering, and whose construction continues into the present thanks to the work of other prominent thinkers such as karen barad, roberto marchesini, cary wolfe, stacy alaimo, manuela rossini, serpil oppermann, heather sullivan, and jeffrey jerome cohen – to quote just a few names. the major novelty in this cooperative edifice is that, finally putting the humanities in a rigorous conversation with technology and life sciences, animal and gender studies, posthumanism shows the radical incompleteness of the human, thus marking “a refusal to take the distinction between ‘human’ and ‘nonhuman’ for granted, and to found analyses on this presumably fixed and inherent set of categories” (barad 2007, 32). in stating the intention to move onto-ethico-epistemological discourse past the human, however, the project is not so much that of debunking the human altogether, but rather that of discarding the dogma of human exceptionalism – an exceptionalism which is connected to various forms of mastery, including of gender, species, and matters. as serpil oppermann has poignantly pointed out, in posthuman terms “agency, subjectivity, and intentionality are not sole attributes of human beings. hence, the most obvious manifestations of posthumanism are in movements against the exploitation of women, animals, and the natural environment” (2013, 28). if humanism has therefore – perhaps beyond its initially liberating premises – turned into a discourse of verticality and power, posthumanism offers the chance for a “bioegalitarian turn” (braidotti 2009, 526), allowing us “to move beyond the paradigm of humanist condescension and to engage meaningfully with animality, both human and nonhuman” (amberson and past 2014, 3). this seems to fully accomplish an incitement once launched by david henry thoreau, who said: “man is altogether too much insisted on. the poet says the proper study of mankind is man. i say study to forget all that – take wider views of the universe. that is the egotism of the race” (thoreau 1962, 369). the way posthumanist studies help us take wider views of the universe beyond “the egotism of the race” is, however, not simply by finding refuge in a wilderness “out there”, but by exploring the recesses of the “in-house” wilderness within and across the human. an easy example is the alien symbiosis of our microbiome: a composite landscape residing inside our bodies, where “human” cells are outnumbered by thousands of species of fungi, archaea, and anaerobic bacteria, that – by digesting our food, cleaning our blood, counteracting toxins, and hydrating our skin – are simply indispensable to our being alive. to see this co-presence is not just a way to “bypass the metaphysics of substance and its corollary, the dialectic of otherness” (braidotti 2009, 526); it becomes the incontrovertible sign that http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 serenella iovino 14 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ existing as humans means, literally, going past the boundaries of human “nature”. this implies rejecting the essentialist separation between the human and the nonhuman, and emphasizing their hybridizations, their cooperative configurations, and their active interplay. but that every human experience depends on and produces hybridizations is true on many levels, even beyond the onto-cultural shock of admitting that we host “strange strangers” (morton 2010) inside our bodies. it is evident in the “evolving interfaces between humans, machines and prosthetic extensions” (callus, herbrechter, and rossini 2014, 103) or, more in general, if we look at the complex predicaments of material entities and discursive practices that are stratified in what we call “culture” – something which, structurally and coevolutionarily, is “the outcome of a process of hybridization with an otherness” (marchesini 2002, 15, translated by s. iovino). not only the human, but also culture and nature are confluent, co-emergent, and defining each other in mutual relations. with its onto-epistemological “irony” (sullivan 2014), the posthumanist approach dodges therefore the “great divide” of nature and culture by exposing their co-construction: there is no simple juxtaposition or mirroring between the two terms, but a combined “mesh”, an interplay, a tangle. donna haraway’s powerful term natureculture says it all. such vision pictures a wildly dynamic world: a world not only characterized by the steady “negotiation of our bodily boundaries in relationship to other bodies and the surrounding matter in the environment” (sullivan 2014, 92), but also a world whose ontological categories are performed rather than given, and where mixing with “anotherness” is the dynamic destination of being. in this communitarian space, different forms of agency and materiality feed each other, and humans are parts of a constellation of beings, things, events, concepts, and signs. existence is thus composed of the “force of collective life” (wheeler 2006, 30), and this force is expressive: if culture is an ongoing process of hybridization with nature, a continuous formation of naturecultures, the force of life is also a force of signs and information, a semiotic force. it is a potential of stories inbuilt into matter. this world is not only a world of material emergences, but is also a world that becomes meaningful because meaning co-emerges with matter, as the confluent discourses of biosemiotics and the new materialisms have also shown 2. the narrative landscape of posthumanism is thus a 2 first developed in the works of charles sanders peirce and jakob von uexküll, biosemiotics is “the study of signs and significance in all living things” (wheeler 2006, 19). as timo maran put it, “sign processes take place not only in human culture but also everywhere in nature […]. meaning is the organising principle of nature” (maran 2006, 455, 461). therefore, “all living things – from the humblest forms of single-cell life upward – http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 posthumanism in literature and ecocriticism 15 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ landscape of encounters, where “the organism-environment coupling is a form of conversation” (wheeler 2006, 126), and where the human is constitutionally responsive to “a universe which is – and perhaps always has been – ‘perfused with signs’” (wheeler 2006, 155). the fact that there is information and communication within every fragment of existing materiality implies even more that, at all levels – from cells up to complex collectives – our relationship with the world is one of conjoined determination: “the world makes us in one and the same process in which we make the world”, as andrew pickering wrote (1995, 26). in this knotted dimension of exchanging natures, the human is no longer at the origin of the action, but is itself the result of intersecting agencies and meanings. its very gist is that of a material-discursive consociability, built “through the pleasurable connection with the other, with the different, with whatever is able to produce new states of instability, thus reinforcing the human strive to conjugate with the world” (marchesini 2002, 70, translated by s. iovino). and this connection, this “sequence of conjugative events between an evolving subject and a selective otherness” (marchesini 2002, 49, translated by s. iovino) is the plot of the stories we now want to tell. the encounter of posthumanism with literature and ecocriticism is almost spontaneous. as serpil oppermann writes in her essay, “with their intersecting stories and theories, posthumanism and ecocriticism have something in common: they introduce changes in the way materiality, agency and nature are conceived”. this is particularly true after the opening out of material ecocriticism. according to this perspective, inspired by the onto-epistemology of the new materialisms, material phenomena are knots in a broad web of agencies, which can be interpreted as producing narratives: “all matter […] is a ‘storied matter’. it is a material ‘mesh’ of meanings, properties, and processes, in which human and nonhuman players are interlocked in networks that produce undeniable signifying forces” (iovino and oppermann 2014, 1-2). that this is necessarily confluent with a vision that, like the posthumanist view, is meant to overcome our “historic” solitude, is evident: in line with posthumanism, in fact, this ecocriticism and the literary imagination it heeds augment the population of our cultural world, relocating the human in a wider web of connections by staging a “performative metaphor that allows for otherwise unlikely encounters and unsuspected sources of interaction, experience, and knowledge” (braidotti 2013, 38). […] are engaged in sign relations” (wheeler 2012, 271). for a panoramic view on the new materialisms, see coole and frost 2010. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 serenella iovino 16 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ but, from the very body of material ecocriticism, a “posthuman” one has recently made its appearance. as jeffrey cohen writes, “the project of posthuman ecocriticism is to attend to animal, water, stone, forest, and world – and not to deny force, thought, agency, emergence or thriving to any of these entities, all of which act, all of which are story-producing” (cohen forthcoming, n.p.). the essays included in our first issue are the perfect epitome of this project. in their different styles and with their different foci, in fact, they all share this sense of distributed agency, of hybrid subjects and matters, which are “story-producing” in that they expressively challenge the idea of mute distinctions and inflexible boundaries between human and nonhuman matters. all these essays, written by internationally recognized theorists and critics, share the same preoccupation, namely, that “we need new genealogies, alternative theoretical and legal representations of the new kinship system and adequate narratives to live up to this challenge” (braidotti 2013, 80). in the opening contribution, from posthumanism to posthuman ecocriticim, serpil oppermann explores more closely the impact of the posthuman turn on ecocriticism. combining the perspectives of the new materialisms and posthumanism, her essay proposes posthuman ecocriticism as an engaged and “diffractive” mode of reading the co-evolution of organisms and inorganic matter in their hybrid configurations. by becoming posthuman, ecocriticism expands and enhances material ecocritical visions, considering such material agencies as biophotons, nanoelements, and intelligent machines that are expressively agentic, story-filled and co-emergent with homo sapiens. oppermann reads these agencies against examples taken from literary works that she defines as “posthuman novels”, integrating the role of bio-technologies and life sciences in the humanities debate and performing an immersion in territories within which to think about human/nonhuman/inhuman natures. the second contribution, threatening animals? by heather i. sullivan, explores the double meaning of “threatening” that comes from and towards us, as our industrial practices and energy use present the greatest threat to all multi-celled species today. considering our animal bodies and agencies as part of the earth’s corporeality, sullivan addresses german texts presenting human-animal interactions in the anthropocene’s span. these authors’ animal portrayals, she maintains, unsettle our expectations of who is threatening whom and how. in goethe’s novella, for example, the escaped circus tiger is shot after fleeing a threatening fire in the bustling marketplace – emblematic for emerging modern capitalism – while the lion is tamed by music. stifter’s brigitta presents an apparently pastoral peace threatened by wolves in the winter, whereas kafka’s metamorphosis rehttp://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 posthumanism in literature and ecocriticism 17 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ shapes the idea of “becoming animal”. karen duve’s rain novel and ilija trojanow’s melting ice, recent cli-fi narratives, oddly juxtapose the human threat to the world’s climate with endlessly proliferating slugs and biting penguins that impact the novels’ final outcomes. finally, the resurgence of wild boars in berlin’s urban space in the past few years provides a material textuality of human and other-than-human-animal agents interacting in an urban ecology that threatens, in compelling fashion, our bodily, species, and urban boundaries with posthuman renegotiations. with the third essay, the posthuman that could have been: mary shelley’s creature, we are in the context of classic english literature, here explored by margarita carretero-gonzález. the essay concentrates on the problematic meeting between the creature and his maker – a meeting marked by both ethical compassion and ontological fear. by closely analyzing the central part of shelley’s novel, carretero shows that in the encounter of these two species, however, only one seems to have truly “met” the other: the creature has indeed become with his maker in a way that victor fails to reciprocate. following the creature’s own account and not only dr.  frankenstein’s anthropocentric narrative, readers have the opportunity to see – and meet – this performing “otherness” outside the category of “monster”, thus establishing an ethical connection with him. interestingly, carretero’s analysis also sheds light on the coexistence of transhuman and posthuman discourses in the novel: in expressing his desire to create an improved species, victor indeed echoes the transhuman discourses of improvement of humankind, while remaining unable to make the transition to the posthuman phase which would grant humanness to his creature. with the fourth essay, gadda’s “pasticciaccio” and the knotted posthuman household, the attention is drawn to italian literature. the authors, already mentioned in the beginning of this editorial, are deborah amberson and elena past, whose co-edited book, thinking italian animals, is reviewed by emiliano guaraldo at the end of this issue. moving from the final scenes of carlo emilio gadda’s quer pasticciaccio brutto de via merulana, taking place in a dilapidated roman house, the authors use this weird oikos as a dynamic lens for viewing the unremitting tension between interiority and exteriority, anthropic and geological time, human and posthuman in the gaddian universe. penetrating the protagonist’s porous body and entangling him with his surroundings, this lowly house’s nomadic “squalor” helps uncover a “dirty” nonhuman universe, where alongside the tragedy of individual human death, decomposition actively recomposes the landscape and nourishes literary composition. as amberson and past cunningly show, the articulate beings, spaces, and forces that cross gadda’s http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 serenella iovino 18 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ writing – from fascism to jewels, clucking chickens to lightning strikes – inhabit a tragic world, tainted by the burden of our finite solitude, where nevertheless creative entanglement with all that is chaotic and eternally vital reveals – as posthumanism know – that we were never alone. and that we were never ontologically alone is also the tenet of the last essay, posthuman spaces of relation: literary responses to the species boundary in primate literature, by diana villanueva romero. an expert in primatology literature, villanueva romero stresses the importance of contemporary literary representations of primate relationships in our way of thinking about the “animal”. here, again, the interlacement of ontology and narrative plays a major role. since the beginning of the animal liberation movement in the 1970s and thanks to the development of cognitive ethology, primatology, and trans-species psychology, fiction writers have produced works that develop alternative ways of thinking about the nonhuman primate. contextualizing literary animal studies within the horizon of the posthuman turn, villanueva’s article presents an overview of the main ape motifs that populate anglophone literatures. thanks to its imaginative power, the author finally maintains, literature compels us to transcend the category “human” and enter into a posthuman age that is more in tune with the hybrid and porous nature of our species. this first issue culminates with a final, crowning piece: can the humanities become posthuman?, the splendid interview that cosetta veronese conducted with one of our muses of many posthuman years, the philosopher rosi braidotti. the review section is also very rich, featuring three book reviews and a comprehensive review essay, which are all in fruitful conversation with the issues raised in the essay section. but, before we move from this eco-literary room to the nearby theoretical space, allow me a final narrative reference, taken from one of the champions of literary immanence, jorge luis borges. in his tale the immortal borges wrote: “they knew that, over an infinitely long span of time, all things happen to all men. […] like cornelius agrippa, i am god, hero, philosopher, demon and world – which is a long-winded way of saying that i am not” (borges 2000, 14). the posthuman subject, in its plotted being, is not immortal. quite the opposite: it is a transitory form amidst endless other forms. but at the same time and for this very reason, like borges’s immortal, it is everything. or better, it is all things in their “differential becoming” (barad 2007, 353), including the human. if borges keeps subjectivity as a transcendental form of experience, regardless of individuality, the posthuman breaks the ties of subjectivity as a fixed category and extends the field of experience beyond the ego. what makes experience possible is the inner co-implication of matter and meaning which charachttp://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 posthumanism in literature and ecocriticism 19 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ terizes the universe’s creativity. this co-implication is narratable not only “all the way up: from cell to society” (wheeler 2006, 120), but even from the level of matter’s organization before cells even existed. therefore, every living being is not just metaphysically, but physically and structurally connected with “all things”. it is “all things”, it is the world in its differentiating complexity. enhancing both our literary imagination and our critical insights, the posthuman is a way to contain, and give voice to, all these things. crowded, pervious, and nomadic as it might be, this is the house in (and of) which we are. trouble the boundaries and enmesh the cosmos, but even a posthuman ecology remains housebound. (cohen forthcoming, n.p.) references amberson, deborah, and elena past. 2014. “introduction: thinking italian animals”. in thinking italian animals: human and posthuman in modern italian literature and film, edited by deborah amberson and elena past, 1-20. new york: palgrave macmillan. barad, karen. 2007. meeting the universe halfway: quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. durham london: duke university press. borges, jorge luis. 2000. the aleph and other stories, translated by andrew hurley. london new york: penguin books. braidotti, rosi. 2009. “animals, anomalies, and inorganic others”. pmla 124 (2): 526-32. 2013. the posthuman. cambridge malden, ma: polity press. callus, ivan, stefan herbrechter, and manuela rossini. 2014. “introduction: dis/ locating posthumanism”. european journal of english studies 18 (2): 103-20. cohen, jeffrey j. forthcoming. “posthuman environs”. in environmental humanities: voices from the anthropocene, edited by serpil oppermann and serenella iovino. new york: rowman & littlefield. coole, diana, and samantha frost, eds. 2010. new materialisms: ontology, agency, and politics. durham, nc: duke university press. iovino, serenella, and serpil oppermann. 2014. “introduction: stories come to matter”. in material ecocriticism, edited by serenella iovino and serpil oppermann, 1-17. bloomington: indiana university press. maran, timo. 2006. “where do your borders lie? reflections on the semiotical ethics of nature”. in nature in literary and cultural studies: transatlantic conversations on ecocriticism, edited by catrin gersdorf and sylvia mayer, 455-76. amsterdam: rodopi. marchesini, roberto. 2002. post-human: verso nuovi modelli di esistenza. torino: bollati boringhieri. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 serenella iovino 20 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ morton, timothy. 2010. the ecological thought. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. neimanis, astrida, cecilia åsberg, and johan hedrén. 2015. “four problems, four directions for environmental humanities: toward critical posthumanities for the anthropocene”. ethics and the environment 20 (1): 67-97. oppermann, serpil. 2013. “feminist ecocriticism: a posthumanist direction in ecocritical trajectory”. in international perspectives in feminist ecocriticism, edited by greta gaard, simon c. estok, and serpil oppermann, 19-36. london: routledge. pickering, andrew. 1995. the mangle of practice: time, agency, and science. chicago: university of chicago press. sullivan, heather i. 2014. “the ecology of colors: goethe’s materialist optics and ecological posthumanism”. in material ecocriticism, edited by serenella iovino and serpil oppermann, 80-96. bloomington: indiana university press. thoreau, henry d. 1962. the journal of henry d. thoreau, edited by bradford torrey and francis h. allen. mineola, ny: dover. wheeler, wendy. 2006. the whole creature. complexity, biosemiotics and the evolution of culture. london: lawrence and wishart. 2012. “the biosemiotic turn”. in ecocritical theory. new european perspectives, edited by axel goodbody and kate rigby, 270-82. charlottesville: university of virginia press. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 past the human: narrative ontologies and ontological stories. editorial past the human narrative ontologies and ontological stories editorial serenella iovino 1 roberto marchesini 2 eleonora adorni 3 1 professor of comparative literature, university of turin 2 independent scholar, director of centre of posthuman philosophy 3 independent scholar, researcher of the centre of posthuman philosophy serenella.iovino@unito.it estero@siua.it eleonora.adorni@gmail.com our existence, the existence of our species and its cognitive evolution, is far from being pure and confined within secure margins. starting from mitochondria and all the way up, the human is constantly mixed with the nonhuman. it reveals itself by way of hybridizations. for this reason, a perfectly consistent atlas of human biology would actually be a treatise on xenobiology. a compelling example is that of the bacteria colonies that constitute our microbiome. even though they do not have anything “human” in their genetic code, they are an integral part of our body and our health. open to transformations, the human is materially and historically permeable to other natures, other matters, and other cultural agents. to be properly human is therefore, in a certain sense, to go past the boundaries of human “nature”. this is the meaning of posthumanism, as theorists such as donna haraway, karen barad, roberto marchesini, bruno latour, andrew pickering, rosi braidotti, or cary wolfe conceptualize it. for these authors, posthumanism is a vision of reality according to which the human and the nonhuman are confluent, co-emergent, and define each other in mutual relations. “narrative ontologies and ontological stories” is the main thread of this issue of relations focused on the posthuman. the editors (serenella mailto:serenella.iovino@unito.it mailto:estero@siua.it mailto:eleonora.adorni@gmail.com http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 serenella iovino roberto marchesini eleonora adorni 8 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ io vi no, roberto marchesini and eleonora adorni) chose it because it highlights how there are no rigid dimensions, autonomous fields of knowledge or reassuring horizons in the “posthuman house”. in the posthuman reflection a significant transition takes place: the fortress of single identity – traditionally seen almost as a medieval castle, capable of segregating and isolating, dichotomous in its exclusive dialectic and in its rejection of the “other” – gives way to a communal identity founded on exchange and hospitable processes. for these very reasons, the latter is metamorphic and plural, rhizomatous and inclusive, contaminated and impure. but what are we talking about when we refer to the posthuman? what are its theoretical implications and its literary, philosophical and anthropological developments? the double issue of relations on posthumanism will explore these topics from two points of view: that of literature and ecocriticism (4.1) and that of the ethical-ontological approach of zoo-anthropology (4.2). edited by the ecocritic and philosopher serenella iovino (university of turin), issue 4.1 features five essays that explore posthuman stories in various fields and authors, from the eighteenth-century interlacements of science and literary imagination to contemporary primate studies. the contributors – oppermann, sullivan, carretero-gonzález, amberson and past, and villanueva romero – are all scholars working in different areas of ecocritical research, whose trans-disciplinary engagement with posthuman literature and criticism is internationally acknowledged. along with reviews of recent publications, the section comments, debates, reports and interviews includes a conversation on “posthumanities” with rosi braidotti. issue 4.2 aims to delve into the theoretical approaches of posthumanism. the editors, roberto marchesini and eleonora adorni (respectively director and researcher of the study centre of posthuman philosophy, bologna, italy), have collected contributions written by young and promising scholars who, from different perspectives, use the “posthuman laboratory” in order to explore new research fields of knowledge such as ecology, philosophy and pedagogy. the section comments, debates, reports and interviews gathers very interesting reports on the italian landscape of posthuman philosophy and an interview with the italian movie-maker michelangelo frammartino, author of le quattro volte (2010)  – one of a very few cases of non-anthropocentric filmmaking. finally, in the section on reviews, young researchers analyse some recently released books and movies that are deeply intertwined with the posthuman stances. the covers of both issues complete these posthumanist stories with artistic visions of interspecies bonds. created by spanish artist and ecofemhttp://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 past the human 9 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ inist activist verónica perales, these drawings really open, to quote from diana villanueva romero’s essay, a “space of relation between the human and the nonhuman that responds creatively to the kind of configuration of the humanities that is needed” in a time when human culture is called to cross the borders of our species. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 animal perceptions in animal transport regulations in the eu and in finland animal perceptions in animal transport regulations in the eu and in finland 1 outi ratamäki phd, university of eastern finland, philosophical faculty, school of humanities, joensuu, finland and finnish environment institute (syke), environmental policy centre, environmental governance studies unit, joensuu, finland doi: 10.7358/rela-2014-002-rata outi.ratamaki@ymparisto.fi abstract the long-distance transportation of horses to slaughter has been strongly criticized in various political arenas: in europe there is now a campaign underway to end transportation that takes over 8 hours. this debate is investigated here by means of a case study. the research data consists of regulatory texts used in the eu and in finland. these texts are analyzed initially according to their contents, that is, a content analysis, designed to find out how and in which connections the animal is conceptualized. this analysis is then amplified by means of critical discourse analysis to discover the kinds of discourse that are most powerful and stabilized, and also to reveal their institutional origins. the results show that there is a strong difference between market-driven and animal-centric interpretations of unnecessary suffering. it is also evident that pressure has been growing in favour of the animal-centric perspective on the part of both animal welfare ngos and of citizens. nevertheless, it has been observed that the fields of science that could offer expertise on the issue have been poorly utilized in the process of devising policies. keywords: horses, long-distance transportation, slaughter, eu regulation, animal welfare, conceptions of animal, science-policy interface, animal transport act, animal welfare act, animal turn. 1 this work was supported by the academy of finland with grant 14875, conimal: companion animals and the affective turn. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ outi ratamäki 80 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 1. introduction this article examines the regulation of animal transportation in the european union (eu) and in finland from the perspective of animal conceptions. specific attention will be paid to the finnish animal transport act and council regulation (ec) no. 1/2005. the analysis will also be supplemented by other relevant or closely related directives, regulations, and texts. the overall motivation behind this discussion is the recent changes in the ways in which animals have been conceptualized. in addition, the selection of this particular case study of animal transportation has been motivated by the recent debate over the welfare of horses during long-distance 2 transportation. in the past few years, this topic has come to the public’s attention throughout the eu and also further afield. an international coalition campaign has come into existence with the name handle with care 3 led by world society for the protection of animals, wspa. launched in 2008, the campaign is a joint effort on the part of the wspa, animals australia, born free, compassion in world farming, dyrenes beskyttelse, eurogroup, the humane society of the united states, the royal society for the prevention of cruelty to animals in both the uk and australia, and world horse welfare. the common goal is to work towards ending longdistance transportation of live animals. in europe, the most prominent role has been played by world horse welfare, which has organized a lobbying campaign targeting the members of the european parliament (world horse welfare 2011a). there are many reasons why horses, of all animals, have attracted so much attention in the public discussion of animal transportation. it has been shown that, compared to cattle, horses are more likely to suffer from injuries during transportation (stefancic and martin 2005; dalla villa et al. 2009). equidae suffer easily from dehydration, fatigue and exhaustion during and after transportation (world horse welfare 2011b), and hence one of the most debated of the issues involved has been the transportation of horses to slaughter (stull 2000). the fact that horses transported to slaughter are often in poor condition even at the start of the journey increases the risk of injury or death. world horse welfare (2011b) has suggested that these equidae should not be transported beyond 8 hours and that every 4,5 hours they should be provided with one hour with free access to water and forage. at present, however, horses are permitted to be transported for 24 hours, and this long journey can be repeated after a 24-hour 2 according to the ec 1/2005, long-distance means more than 8 hours. 3 see http://www.handlewithcare.tv. animal perceptions in animal transport regulations in the eu and in finland 81 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ rest period (ec 148/62; corson and anderson 2008). the problems are reinforced by the fact that the inspection, supervision and monitoring of the transportations have had their own serious shortcomings as a result of insufficient resources (cussen 2008). the public discussion can be examined as a case study of a more general paradigm shift in the ways in which animals are conceptualized in europe and western cultures generally. animal sentience has been one of the leading arguments in this paradigm shift (würbel 2009). in this article, the argument of an animal as a sentient being is studied in the context of legislative texts related to animal transportation. the research question is: what kind of animal perceptions are predominant in the legislation concerning animal transportation and what is their institutional basis? the focus will be on the letter of the law, not on the enforcement of the legislation. analysis will start with a short review of the literature on the so-called “animal turn”. 2. animal sentience and the paradigm shift animals have attained new positions in the ways in which they are investigated and studied in science. one of the terms frequently used in the context of this transition has been the “animal turn” (e.g. linzey and yamamoto 1998; cavalieri 2001). the core idea behind these novel ways of understanding animals is concerned with the animals’ capacity to feel and be self-aware (dawkins 2006). this transformation has resulted in several theoretical and methodological innovations (duncan 2006). ethologists have found support in the new technologies investigating animal sentience and intelligence (see, for example, appleby 2008; faragó et al. 2010). the animal turn is not solely concerned with the development of the science and its new results; after all, philosophers have discussed animals and their sentience for a long time. caring for nonhuman animals as sentient beings was introduced and discussed in classical antiquity, for example by pythagoras (sorabji 1993; franklin 2005). however, in modern times, mainstream thinking has separated nonhuman animals from humans with respect to their respective mental and cognitive abilities or rights (singer 1990). according to duncan (2006), the reason for this has been the strong popularity of the behavioural sciences. this popularity has been strongly challenged since the 1970s, both in the philosophical literature concerning animal rights, the leading scholars including peter singer (1990, originally 1975) and tom regan (1983) and also in ethology since the publication of the question of animal awareness by griffin in 1976 outi ratamäki 82 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ (see also duncan 2006). the book animal suffering: the science of animal welfare, by marian dawkins (1980), has had a strong influence on ethology (webster 2006). scholars in the fields of political science and law have also participated in the debate. in political science, for example, robert garner (2004), siobhan o’sullivan (2012), alasdair cochrane (2010), and sue donaldson with will kymlicka (2011) have all approached politics from the animalcentric point of view. these authors have explained and described the animal movement, its various forms of activity, and the status of animals in different sectors of society. in the field of law, for its part, many researchers have analyzed the legal status of animals in contemporary law, with arguments focused especially on future changes. the position of animals as “property” seems to be one issue among others that divides legal scholars (francione 2000, 50-80; wise 2001). according to gary l. francione (2000, 151), the institution of animals as property needs to abolished. this means that mere protection against suffering and pain is not satisfactory if reflected against the interests that animals themselves have. francione (2004) is highly critical of the concept of unnecessary pain. in his book, rattling the cage, wise (2000) discusses the possibility of basic legal rights for animals, such as liberty and equality. approaches of this nature have been criticized, for example, by richard a. posner (2004), who takes a pragmatic and human-centric point of view. richard a. epstein (2004) also does not think that the abolition of animal usage for humans’ benefit would succeed. sunstein (2004) suggests that, no matter how one wishes to formulate animals’ legal rights, it is the enforcement and application of these laws that would matter the most to animals. in the present article, however, it is recalled that words count. humanists have also participated in the formulation of the animal turn. perceiving animals as agents and subjects has been introduced in posthumanist writings, for instance, by cary wolfe (2010) and donna haraway (2008). haraway (2008) reminds us that animals are “significant others” for humans and the world that we live in is “more than human”. josephine donovan and carol j. adams, in their book beyond animal rights, take a critical approach to animal rights theories. they hold the opinion that these theories are very abstract and rational and hence they fail to recognize the emotional and affective side of human-animal relations. this view is arguably wrong since emotions matter and are powerful in formulating humans’ relationship to animals. this short introduction shows how multidisciplinary the research into conceptualizing animals and human-animal relations is. it also serves as a basis for reflection between current legislation and the changing underanimal perceptions in animal transport regulations in the eu and in finland 83 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ standing of animals. new research results concerning animals, their welfare, and sentience are needed and requested so that they might serve as a basis for the reformulation of laws and regulations. the role to be played of science is also evident in this case study focusing on animal transport act, as will be shown later. hence, in the present article the animal-centric position will guide the analysis of the data. it will be asked whether and, if so, how an understanding of an animal as a sentient being is present in or relevant to the animal transportation acts. in the following, explanations will sought by reading the judicial texts, first, using content analysis, and then secondly, by identifying animal discourses. 3. data and methods the primary data for this article has been provided by the council regulation (ec) no. 1/2005, the finnish animal transport act, and the finnish animal welfare act. the analysis of this data will start with its content analysis. content analysis is a way to identify and categorize the themes and topics present in any given text (smith 2000; hsieh and shannon 2005). in addition, spoken language, figures, and pictures, and even non-verbal communication can by analyzed in this way (fairclough 1993; smith 2000). in this study it is not useful or necessary to identify all of the themes in the text, and so the analysis will be restricted to the topics related to the conceptualization of an animal. a relevant question for the research task at hand concerns which parts, words, phrases, sentences, etc. contain descriptions or assumptions related to animals. similarly, the absence of such descriptions or assumptions will also be regarded as an interesting finding. this approach can be termed “directed content analysis”, which according to hsieh and shannon means a content analysis in which “analysis starts with a theory or relevant research findings as guidance” (hsieh and shannon 2005). after identifying those parts of a text that deal with animals, the analysis will be taken to another level of textual analysis. words, phrases, and figures of speech have a tendency to stabilize. some words “stick” with certain meanings or perceptions (ahmed 2004). when certain ways of using language become established and stabilized, a discourse is formulated. a discourse is a stabilized and collectively shared way of describing or defining things (ostrom 1999; dryzek 2000). discourses are powerful. according to ostrom (1999, 51), discourses are rules that are formulated in human language. dryzek (2000, 18) describes discourses as institutional outi ratamäki 84 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ software. these rules and institutional software are important for the functioning of societies, but as they contain values and have ethical outcomes they can be challenged. animal discourses within western societies have been accused of maintaining animal suffering (stibbe 2012). the way in which animals and their relation to humans have been determined allows the continuum of practices that cause pain and suffering to animals. arran stibbe uses discourse analysis as a tool in his attempt to overcome or replace these destructive discourses with alternative, more animal-friendly discourses. this demonstrates that discourses can change and that they can be changed. critical discourse analysis aims at revealing the political and practical significance of discourses and also the societal power relations that maintain such discourses (fairclough 1993; van dijk 1993). 4. contents of the council regulation council regulation (ec) no. 1/2005 of 22 december 2004 (on the protection of animals during transportation and related operations) and amending directives 64/432/eec and 93/119/ec and regulation (ec) no. 1255/97 (later: council regulation) are applied in all the member states when animals are being transported in connection with an economic activity. here, the focus will be on the kind of themes, concepts or ideas that the regulation contains. the council regulation provides a reason for the regulation: “for reasons of animal welfare”. the elimination of technical barriers to trade and allowing market organizations to operate smoothly are also mentioned, but it is evident that the protection of animals and their welfare is the key motivation behind the regulation. in conceptualizing animals, the council regulation is applied to live vertebrate animals. no further explanation is provided about what an animal is. while the concept of an animal has not been characterized in the council regulation, many other aspects have been accorded highly detailed descriptions. article 2 contains the definitions for such aspects as the container, journey, keeper, means of transport, place of departure, and unbroken equidae; and the list goes on. animal welfare, suffering, pain or injury are not defined, yet they are key concepts in the regulation. article three states that animals should not be transported “in a way likely to cause injury or undue suffering to them”. it also requests that “all necessary arrangements have been made to minimize the length of the journey and meet animals’ needs during the animal perceptions in animal transport regulations in the eu and in finland 85 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ journey”. animals should be loaded and unloaded “without using violence or any method likely to cause unnecessary fear, injury or suffering”. the role of science is mentioned several times. the council regulation contains phrases such as “consulting the competent scientific committee”; “to take into account new scientific evidence”; “in the light of new scientific advice”; etc. thus, the council regulation opens up an array of data relevant to new, scientifically-based animal conceptualizations. which sciences these phrases refer to is, however, not determined. the european community follows a methodology that involves both science and field information (gavinelli, ferrara, and simonin 2008). in the following, the role of science is explored. 5. role of science in developing regulations in the eu since 2002, efsa (the european food safety authority) has played a leading role in providing scientific advice regarding all issues related to food and feed safety. this includes animal health and welfare. the efsa panel for animal health and welfare (ahaw) 4 consists of experts on risk assessment, quantitative risk assessment, modeling, microbiology and pathology (applied to infectious diseases of food-producing animals, including aquatic animals), epidemiology animal welfare and animal production (husbandry, housing and management, animal transportation, and the stunning and killing of animals). in addition to efsa, the commission has various different expert groups to help them with legislative proposals and policy initiatives. the expert group on animal welfare 5 contains members from ngos, the world horse welfare being one of them. in this particular group, associations related to animal production are also strongly represented. animal welfare during transportation is actively on the group’s agenda. before the establishment of efsa, the commission rested on a number of different scientific committees, one of them being a scientific committee on animal health and animal welfare (scahaw) 6. the members of the scientific committee on animal health and animal welfare were experts in animal health or behavior. the composition of these expert groups indicates a strong link to the natural sciences. in 2002 the scahaw reported on the welfare of animals 4 see http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/ahaw/ahawmembers.htm. 5 see http://ec.europa.eu/food/animal/expert_group_aw_en.htm. 6 see http://ec.europa.eu/food/fs/sc/scah/members_en.html. outi ratamäki 86 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ during transportation (european commission 2002). this report starts with the idea of animals as sentient beings, with particular reference to the treaty of amsterdam (1997). very soon after the presentation of this idea, the report continues by exploring the idea of animal welfare, and this in turn is discussed in more detail using concepts drawn from physiology, biochemistry, and the behavioral sciences. the report clearly states that “to be useful in a scientific context, the concept of welfare has to be defined in such a way that it can be scientifically assessed”. in 2011 it was ahaw’s turn to publish a report titled scientific opinion concerning the welfare of animals during transport (efsa 2011). this report describes recent research findings concerning animal transport. the topics of discussion involving horses include fitness for transport, means of transport, transport practices, and space allowances. in the conclusions, it is stated that parts of the council regulation are not in line with scientific knowledge. one of the problems is that the regulation as it stands permits long-distance transportation of horses. in 2011 the european commission reported on the impacts that the regulation had had on the protection of animals during transportation. in their report, the commission acknowledges efsa’s opinion, but notes that it “does not see that an amendment would be the most appropriate approach to address the identified problems. […] for the time being this is best addressed by the adoption of guides to good practices” (european commission 2011). the european parliament was strongly critical of the commission’s report, and: […] regrets that despite the new scientific evidence on horse transportation times submitted by efsa, no recommendations for legislative changes were included in the commission’s report; requests that the commission propose a considerably shortened maximum journey limit for all movements of horses for slaughter, in accordance with council directive 2009/156/ec; insists furthermore on a thorough, science-based review of welfare standards for horses, if necessary accompanied by legislative proposals, including a reconsideration of vehicle design standards, space allowances and water provision. (european parliament 2012) the european parliament also: […] strongly condemns the weak scientific basis and data on which the commission report is based, such as a study from an external contractor based mainly on a survey to be completed by parties directly involved in or having a direct interest in the transport of animals. (european parliament 2012) animal perceptions in animal transport regulations in the eu and in finland 87 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 6. “finnish animal transport act” since the council regulation is only applied to transportation in connection with an economic activity, a lot of transportation is left outside the application of the regulation. in finland these transportations are regulated under the animal transport act. like to the council regulation text, this finnish act also contains definitions, for example, of “transport”, “long journey”, “means of transport”, “transport container”, and “transporter”. it also determines the conditions and requirements for transport, loading, and unloading. but it does not offer a definition of an animal. implicitly, it can be read that an animal is a living creature that can suffer, and experience pain and distress due to poor conditions or handling. as in the council regulation, these terms are not given an explicit definition. in the government proposal preceding the law, it was stated that the same principles for animal protection by regulating transportation in connection with commercial activity should be applied to all transportation. in a section where the effects of the act are discussed, the effects on state economy, personnel, and industrial and commercial activity are analyzed, but no effects on animals are ever opened up for discussion. both the act and the government proposal involve a reference to the finnish animal welfare act (247/1996), which is stated to be the primary act concerning animal protection. the objective of this act is to “protect animals from distress, pain and suffering in the best possible way”. the finnish animal welfare decree (chapter 4, section 14) provides some clarification of what is meant by “inflicting undue distress, pain and suffering to an animal”: 1) the use of live animals as targets for shooting practice or a shooting competition; 2) the use of spiked spurs, a spiked collar, or a spiked bit; 3) scaling or gutting a live fish or plucking or skinning an animal alive; 4) feeding a live bird or mammal or other vertebrate to an animal that is being cared for, unless this is necessary for returning the animal being cared for to the wild or otherwise absolutely necessary for the animal; 5) using human power other than that considered reasonable when the animal gives birth, for pulling out the fetus; 6) transporting an animal by suspending it by some part of its body; 6a) cutting the tail of an animal so that its skin and hypodermic tissue are damaged; 7) killing a reindeer or other domestic animal or an animal farmed for production purposes by shooting as in hunting, except for the shooting of a reindeer by a reindeer herder or other domestic animal or an animal outi ratamäki 88 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ farmed for production purpose for an acceptable reason that requires the immediate killing of the animal; and 8) other action or measure directed to an animal that causes undue distress, pain, or suffering to the animal. since the animal welfare act is applied to all animals, the above list seems somewhat arbitrary, and in many cases, including many welfare issues related to animal transportation, it could be summarized in terms of the very obscure item number 8, which only repeats the overall object of the animal welfare act. item number 6 is the only practical example of what would be considered as the infliction of undue distress, pain and suffering to an animal in transport = transporting an animal by suspending it by some part of its body. 7. animal discourses in the council regulation and finnish legislation in the following, attention will be drawn to those animal-related expressions that seem to be fairly stable, collectively shared, and firmly established in the legislative texts, that is, animal discourses. in addition to these wellestablished discourses there are also other potential discourses. potential discourses imply expressions that which have been introduced but have not (yet) been institutionalized socially. when looking for any coincidence of expression between the finnish legislation and eu regulation, one particular phrase can be found. it seems that the phrase “inflicting undue pain, distress and suffering on animals is prohibited” is a shared way of determining the relationship between human activities and animal welfare. according to the council regulation, animals should not be transported if it is “likely to” cause injury or “undue suffering” to them. the term “undue” is repeated in the finnish animal welfare act: “[…] no undue distress may be caused […] inflicting undue pain and distress on animals is prohibited”. this same phrasing is also used in the finnish animal transport act, in section 5. however, the finnish acts offer other, stronger, phrases. in the finnish animal welfare act it is stated that animals should be protected from distress, pain, and suffering “in the best possible way”. the objective of the finnish animal transport act is to protect live animals against injury and illness as well as against “all avoidable” pain, distress and suffering. these phrases are not found in the council regulation. from the point of view of implementation, it can be asked whether animals transported for other animal perceptions in animal transport regulations in the eu and in finland 89 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ than commercial purposes gain stricter protection than in the transports regulated under the council regulation. in addition to the eu and member state regulation, some international agreements offer support for animal welfare. the most important in this category is the ec convention for the protection of animals during international transport (revised), which eu signed in 2004. the convention states that “every person has a moral obligation to respect all animals and to have due consideration for their capacity for suffering”. this statement has not achieved much reference in the material investigated. instead, the statement given in the treaty of amsterdam declaring animals as sentient beings is cited more often in the research literature: “the union and the member states shall, since animals are sentient beings, pay full regard to the welfare requirements of animals”. the european union animal welfare strategy takes this statement as a starting point 7. 8. the animal undefined and the vagueness of legitimate human-animal relations what is most striking about the findings presented above is the lack of any definition of an animal. the treaty of amsterdam offers a definition (animals as sentient beings), but this is not repeated in the council regulation or in finnish legislation. these laws are referred to more frequently in the research literature and they are much closer to the implementation level than the treaty of amsterdam. since an animal remains undefined, there is a lot of room for individual interpretations (cussen 2008). in addition, the lack of any definition serves as an obstacle to discussion. how can you challenge the undefined? one result gleaned from the content analysis is that anything that goes beyond human experience or practices is left undefined in the regulative texts. another concern must be that the most significant discourse determining human-animal encounters in the legislation under inspection is also the weakest (from the perspective of animal welfare) of all of the possible discourses, that is, “undue pain, distress and suffering”. even if the council regulation states that animals should not be transported if it is likely to cause injury or “undue suffering” to them, the unclear definition of “undue” leaves a lot of room for interpretation and implementation. 7 see http://ec.europa.eu/food/animal/welfare/actionplan/docs/aw_strategy_19012012_ en.pdf. outi ratamäki 90 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ with regard to the other less well established discourses, for example, the phrase “all avoidable” might well result in different outcomes. it is possible to interpret this phrase in a way that the best way to avoid animal suffering during transport is to stop transporting live animals and focus instead on “meat-only” trade. this has been suggested by several ngos as well as by the european parliament (garcés, cussen, and wirth 2008). the european parliament states that “the transport of meat and other animal products is technically easier and ethically more rational than the transport of live animals for the sole purpose of being slaughtered” (european parliament 2012). it is a paradox that one of the reasons why horses are transported long distances is the fact that consumers desire local meat (marlin et al. 2011). however, “all avoidable” could also receive other interpretations, depending on the context. the phrase could also be regarded as a synonym for “undue” if it is seen as subordinate to human interests. osinga suggests that “as long as there is justification in terms of demand and markets, it should be possible to transport animals over long distances” (osinga 2008). if trade and transport is taken as a starting point, then “all avoidable” means all avoidable while in transfer. the council regulation also identifies this connection between trade and animal welfare but does not assert any priority over the other: the council has adopted rules in the field of the transport of animals in order to eliminate technical barriers to trade in live animals and to allow market organisations to operate smoothly, while ensuring a satisfactory level of protection for the animals concerned. (european commission 2002) the european parliament does not like this evasion. it declares: […] animals should as a principle be slaughtered as close to their place of rearing as possible; notes in this connection that consumers are in favour of shorter transport times for animals destined for slaughter, but at the same time prefer to buy fresh meat; calls on the commission, therefore, to explain what consequences are to be drawn from this. (european parliament 2012) the parliament continues with a suggestion: […] insists on a reconsideration of the issue of limiting the transport time of animals destined for slaughter to eight hours taking account of loading time, irrespective of whether this takes place on land or at sea, with some exceptions taking into account geographic conditions in the outermost regions, sparse road networks, remote location or the option of longer transport of some animal species confirmed by scientific research results, provided that the rules on animal welfare are complied with. (european parliament 2012) hence, the question is from whose perspective the phrases in the legislative texts should be interpreted. from the animal’s perspective, “all avoidable” animal perceptions in animal transport regulations in the eu and in finland 91 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ or “undue” would result in very different outcomes than from the perspective of the market economy. to solve this puzzle, the regulation should take a stand on how to balance the contradictions between the different interests. here, the commission plays a key role. to discover what the commission’s position is on this issue cannot be resolved from the legislative texts. the regulation contains only norms and no arguments, and therefore it is impossible to conduct a “cause and effect” analysis from this kind of data. hence, since the regulation cannot solve the conflict of interest, one has to look for other sources to learn about the commission’s opinion. gavinelli, ferrara and simonin (2008), from the directorate-general health and consumers, adopt a position by stating that: “[…] to be internationally successful and accepted in the long term, animal welfare objectives need to be balanced with economic concerns”. the european parliament offers a different perspective: […] whereas the protection of animals in the 21st century is an expression of humanity and a challenge facing european civilisation and culture; whereas all action designed to ensure the protection and welfare of animals should be based on scientific findings, as well as on the principle that animals are sentient beings whose specific needs should be taken into account. (european parliament 2012) one more interesting finding is the way in which the discourses change from one legislative level to another. the treaty of amsterdam is primary law within the eu and all regulation is subordinate to it. the international agreements, for example the ec convention for the protection of animals during international transport, are part of secondary legislation, but they are accorded priority over regulations and directives. the analysis presented in this paper shows, however, a clear shift from tighter to notso-tight ethical concern over animals when the regulations move from the higher to lower levels of ruling. the ec conventions talks about morals, the treaty of amsterdam about sentient beings, council regulation about causing undue suffering, and the finnish welfare decree about not transporting animals suspended by some part of their body. it would be important to investigate how familiar the practitioners working with animals are with these different levels of ruling and which level they regard as the most important for implementation. it could then be argued that at that particular level the most important discourses should be described. outi ratamäki 92 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 9. conclusions: un-institutionalized ethics and emotions if reflected against the multidisciplinary character of the discussion surrounding animal welfare and sentience described at the beginning of this article, the regulation on animal transport offers a very narrow understanding of science. ultimately, this also affects the conceptualization of an animal. the natural sciences provide the most powerful connections between science and the european commission in the preparation of the regulation. furthermore, some ngos and stakeholders are given roles in the expert group itself. the social sciences, humanities, and economics play no institutionalized role in the policy processes. despite this, experts in these fields could play a valuable role in describing and understanding the societal, cultural, and economic conditions underlying the current situation and also in connection with future change. franck berthe, head of the animal health and welfare unit (ahaw), acknowledges this shortcoming: while ethical, socio-economic, cultural and religious considerations are clearly not part of efsa’s remit, one should recognise that animal welfare is a complex, multi-faceted issue which includes ethical, socio-economic, cultural and religious dimensions. (berthe 2013) this kind of composition concerned with policy-making and technocratic or rational science is not uncommon (flyvbjerg 2001), but as long as the needs of information are determined on the basis of commensurability and technical evaluation, the social sciences and humanities will have little chance of gaining a role involving their own expertise in the processes of devising acceptable policies. on the other hand, the data used in this article shows that the connection between science and ethics can be identified from two convergent perspectives. first, the reasons for treating animals ethically can be drawn up from the existing applied animal behavior sciences (würbel 2009); and secondly, welfare standards should be underpinned by ethical discussion, and it is appropriate that such an issue should be discussed in the public domain (barnett et al. 2008). neither of these arguments rests on the concern of the humanities or social sciences with the ethical discussion. furthermore, the ethical and emotional aspects of animal welfare discussion may be labeled as “un-scientific”: animal welfare during transport is the subject of debate, a debate which has often been based on an emotional approach. however, it is important that the economic, scientific and practical dimensions should be also taken into animal perceptions in animal transport regulations in the eu and in finland 93 relations – 2.2 november 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ account by legislative and executive bodies and the animal welfare movement. (osinga 2008) schuurman (in press) has shown that conceptions of equine welfare consist of a combination of emotional and instrumental relations. according to the content and discourse analysis presented in this article, osinga’s concern about the argument of the sentient dimension taking precedence over the economic or scientific dimensions remains invalid. 10. final comments discussion of the long-distance transportation of horses contains a debate between the market economy and animal welfare discourses. there are many possible options for reference if one wishes to stress the importance of animal welfare. the ec convention for the protection of animals during international transport characterizes the relationship between humans and animals as moral, while the treaty of amsterdam declares animals to be sentient beings. the european parliament sees the protection of animals as an expression of humanity and a challenge for european civilization and culture in the 21st century. these 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1/2005. second edition, part 1: journey times”. world horse welfare. accessed january 23, 2013. http://www. worldhorsewelfare.org/help-tomorrow/transport_action?view=downloads. open&tag=world%20horse%20welfare%202011%20dossier&ajax=1. würbel, hanno. 2009. “ethology applied to animal ethics”. applied animal behaviour science 118 (3-4): 118-27. unitarianism or hierarchical approach for moral status? a very subtle difference 5 is sn 2 2 8 0 -9 9 5 3 beyond anthropocentrism 1 • january 2013 inside the emotional lives of non-human animals a minding animals international utrecht 2012 pre-conference event special issue (genoa, italy, 12-13 may, 2012) edited by m. andreozzi, r. bennison, a. massaro, s. tonutti capabilities approach and animal bioethics • michele panzera animals and our emotions. how to approach the study of an interspecific community? • sabrina tonutti advocacy and animal rights • kim stallwood the emotional lives of animals: a christian perspective • alma massaro – gianfranco nicora animalia: ontology and ethics in weak antispeciesism • leonardo caffo the contemporary debate on experimentation • susanna penco – rosagemma ciliberti non-human animals and genetic engineering • arianna ferrari the relationship between humans and other animals in european animal welfare legislation • paola sobbrio human’s best friends? • matteo andreozzi elationsre l a t io n s . b e y o n d a n t h r o p o c e n t r is m 1 • 2 0 1 3 r 9.1-2 november 2021 animals: freedom, justice, welfare, moral status, and conflict cases edited by francesco allegri studies and research contributions pigs vs. boars: the ethics of assisting domesticated 9 and wild animals beka jalagania the chincoteague ponies and what it means to be free 27 alexis flower beyond the fairy tale of the shape of water: reimagining 41 the creature viktorija lankauskaitė max scheler e la possibilità di una nuova forma di antispecismo 59 enrico r.a. calogero giannetto distributive justice and animal welfare 75 paola morreale unitarianism or hierarchical approach for moral status? 91 a very subtle difference francesco allegri relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ relations. beyond anthropocentrism 6 comments, debates, reports and interviews animals and justice: the unfinished journey 111 paola fossati author guidelines 123 relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 91 unitarianism or hierarchical approach for moral status? a very subtle difference francesco allegri università degli studi di siena doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2021-0102-alle allegri2@unisi.it abstract the article is inspired by shelly kagan’s recent book “how to count animals”, which focuses on the alternative between a unitarian and a hierarchical conception of the moral status of beings in the animal ethics debate. the paper finds a way of compromise between the two perspectives in the principle of equal consideration of interests, but above all it lessens the role of such opposition – especially its practical relevance – by emphasizing that, regardless of the fact of conceiving moral status in terms of all or nothing or in gradual terms, what really counts in our attitude towards non-human animals is to assign them an important moral consideration, that protects them not only from suffering, but also from an induced death in advance of natural times, a thesis that is compatible with both unitarianism and a hierarchical approach. keywords: animal ethics; animals; david degrazia; equal consideration of interests; hierarchical approach; shelly kagan; moral status; unequal consideration model; unequal interests model; unitarianism. 1. introduction: shelly kagan and how to count animals the importance of that specific area of applied ethics which is animal ethics is evidenced by the fact that now all or almost all the great moral philosophers have dealt with the issue of our moral relationships with sentient beings of other species. just to name a few, r. nozick, p. singer, r.m. hare, m. nussbaum, b. williams, j. mcmahan, d. degrazia, c.m. korsgaard etc. in recent years another eminent name in the sphere of philosophical ethics have been added to this long list. i refer to shelly relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2021-0102-alle mailto://allegri2@unisi.it https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ francesco allegri 92 kagan, a thinker who has made notable contributions in normative ethics and applied ethics 1. in the book how to count animals, more or less (oxford: oxford university press, 2019) he collected his ethical theses on our relationship with non-human animals. it is a text of great refinement, written in a “g. e. moorish”, analytical style, and deserves the greatest attention. it touches on fundamental themes with original solutions, and i hope that papers that explore these points will appear in relations. regardless of animal ethics, it is an excellent book on moral philosophy, well suited to give a clear understanding of the main subdivisions of this discipline (moderate and absolutist deontological theories, consequentialism, the major theories of value etc.). his points of reference for animal ethics (p. singer, t. regan, d. degrazia, j. mcmahan) are also mine. in addition, kagan benefits from the uncertain, balanced, never dogmatic tone. in the following pages, i do not intend to closely analyze the many interesting themes and arguments developed by kagan. i just want to focus on the central alternative he outlined in his volume and, in seeking which of the two options is more plausible, to highlight the subtlety and abstractness of the dispute, that does not appear to have decisive implications for the conditions of the animal world. the main topic of the book are two different conceptions of the moral status of animals and, more generally, of the moral status of beings 2. according to the first conception, that kagan calls “unitarianism” 3 (or unitarian approach to animal ethics), there is one single moral status, only one kind of moral status and a being or a thing either possesses it or does not. instead, for the second conception, that kagan calls “hierarchical approach”, moral status admits degrees. and therefore a being can possess a lower level of status, another being a higher level and so on. kagan argues against the first option and tries to defend the second one. perhaps kagan is right to propose a hierarchical model, although i prefer to speak of a gradualist approach to moral status. among other things, a gradualist approach seems to me more suitable to deal with fun 1 for the relevance of kagan’s texts, see for example kagan 1989, 1997, 2012. for the debate on animals, it is worth noting his back-and-forth with singer (and with others) on speciesism. see kagan 2016 and singer 2016. 2 as readers of relations well know, the moral status of an entity is its intrinsic relevance from a moral point of view, i.e. its value in itself or inherent value (its value as an end and not as a means; its being the object of direct and not merely indirect duties). 3 he prefers this term to the more natural “egalitarianism” because the latter is already abundantly in use in the moral field with other meanings, for example, in the sphere of distributive justice. relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ unitarianism or hierarchical approach for moral status? 93 damental bioethical issues, such as the moral status of the fetus. but my aim in this paper is another. regardless of the fact of conceiving moral status in terms of all or nothing or in gradual terms, what really counts in our attitude towards non-human animals is to assign them an important moral consideration, that protects them not only from suffering, but also from an induced death in advance of natural times, a thesis that is compatible with both unitarianism and the hierarchical approach. 2. unitarianism vs. hierarchical approach kagan is well aware that hierarchical conceptions can be and have been the basis of terrible discrimination and morally abhorrent practices, but he does not intend to advocate such hierarchism 4. he wants simply to assert that, while recognizing non-human animals an important moral status, their relevance is inferior than that of people. a statement that he specifies in two senses: (1) first of all, in a non-speciesist sense: the superiority of status refers to persons, understood as self-conscious and rational beings, and not to human beings; therefore it assigns a role to mental complexity and not to biological species membership; (2) then, the superiority of mentally more complex beings must not give the erroneous impression that his theory recognizes exactly two levels of moral status, one enjoyed by persons and the other by animals. in his view an adequate theory must recognize multiple levels of status, since not all animals have the same status (kagan 2019, 6-7). kagan repeatedly points out that, if in his conception animals count less than people, this does not in any way mean that it justifies the human behavior of exploitation and killing of animals: animals count for less than people do, but they count for far, far more than we ordinarily acknowledge. the day may come when it will be common to look back on mankind’s long history of abuse of animals and recognize it as the disgrace and horror that it is. but that day is not yet upon us. conceivably, then, given the widespread mistreatment and disregard for animal interests that continues to this very day – indeed, given the innumerable ways in which abuse of animals runs almost unnoticed through countless aspects of human life – it may well be the case that the most pressing task for moral philosophy 4 on the other hand, even the unitarian approach can be a source of profound discrimination, just with regard to the animal world. throughout history – but also currently – it has been the foundation of the exclusion of animals from the moral community, assigning moral status (at the same level) only to members of the human species. relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ francesco allegri 94 with regard to animals is to establish that they really do count morally, and that they count for a tremendously great deal more than we seem ready to acknowledge (given the horrific ways we actually treat them). (ibid., 303) since, therefore, the hierarchical alternative that kagan intends to oppose to unitarianism is within a perspective that assigns moral status to animals, we will take this point for granted and we will ask ourselves whether, in the context of a conception that attributes an important moral consideration to animals, a unitarian approach or a hierarchical approach is preferable. kagan believes that a hierarchical approach is better suited than a unitarian approach to account for the demands of distributive justice (ibid., 58-78). in addition to these arguments, which i will not address here because of a lack of space, he thinks that the reasons for hierarchical approach also emerge by focusing on the value of well-being. in contrast to the unitarian perspective, according to which “in assessing the contribution to the goodness of an outcome made by an increase in welfare for a given individual, it makes no difference whose well-being we are talking about” (ibid., 96-97), for kagan the contribution that an increase in welfare makes to the goodness of an outcome depends in part on the status of the individual whose welfare it is. more particularly, perhaps a given increase in welfare makes a larger addition to the goodness of the outcome when the welfare is going to an individual with a higher, rather than lower, moral status. on this alternative view, status makes a difference to the value of well-being. (ibid.) to support this thesis, kagan gives an apparently very simple example: suppose that two individuals have toothaches, equally intense, and i have enough painkiller to put an end to either one of the two toothaches but not both. suppose, next, that unless i stop one of the toothaches they will last equally long. finally, imagine that one of the two individuals is a normal, adult human – that is, a person – while the other is a mouse. (ibid., 99) who should i give the painkiller to? the answer that appears to conform to common sense is that my choice should fall on the person and this is kagan’s response: “when i think about this case, i find myself strongly inclined to judge that it is more important to help the person than the mouse” (ibid.). what reasons are given by kagan for justify this answer? he asserts that “the person is a more valuable sort of being than the mouse, she counts more, she has a higher moral status” (ibid.). but does this example necessarily support a hierarchical conception? it is true, who believes that moral status is of only one level, that it is the same for all who possess it, faced with this aut-aut could coherently assert that, relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ unitarianism or hierarchical approach for moral status? 95 since the moral status of the mouse is equal to that of the adult human, it is perfectly legitimate to give the painkiller to the first instead of the second, and in any case, given the equal position of the two, one option is as good as the other. and this would be a highly counterintuitive outcome. but is the proponent of unitarianism really logically obliged to such a response? can’t he consistently answer that the human being should be privileged? kagan in a similar example (although with reference to life and not to suffering) in the previous pages had granted this possibility. faced with the alternative of saving a human or a mouse from drowning, in his view even the unitarian has the opportunity to answer that the human should be saved: “appareances to the contrary notwithstanding, it is […] perfectly compatible with unitarianism to insist that there is indeed far greater moral reason to save the person than the mouse” (ibid., 42). because “under almost all realistic circumstances the person will lose more if she drowns than the mouse will lose if it drowns” (ibid.). in fact what each stands to lose is the future well-being that would come their way if only they were saved from drowning – and it is almost always the case that when a person drowns this involves a tremendously larger loss of future well-being than when a mouse drowns. […] first of all […] since mice live for only two or three years at most, while humans can live for 80 years or more, if the person drowns she is likely to be losing many more years of life than the mouse will lose if it drowns instead. but beyond that, second, each one of those years in the life of the person is almost certain to contain a tremendously greater amount of well-being than a year in the life of the mouse (since the life of a person generally involves a significantly larger and more valuable array of goods than the life of a mouse). (ibid., 42-43) from the unitarian perspective what justifies saving the person rather than the mouse is not her higher moral status, but simply the moral requirement to prevent the greater harm. but, granting this, isn’t kagan then forced to recognize that the same explanation may also apply to the toothache example? indeed he admits the difficulty: even if one does share my intuition about this example, one might reasonably worry whether i have really constructed a case in which the two potential increases in welfare are genuinely the same size. it is arguable, after all, that the person’s welfare will take a greater hit if her toothache is left untreated than the mouse’s welfare would (if it were the mouse’s toothache that was left untreated). among other reasons, the person presumably has a much better memory than the mouse has. once the mouse’s toothache is over it may immediately be forgotten; but the person will remember hers – and the longer it goes on, the more painful the later memories may be. so relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ francesco allegri 96 even if one does have the intuition that it is better to aid the person, this may simply show that one actually thinks that a greater increase in welfare will be brought about if one aids the person rather than the mouse. status may play no role whatsoever in explaining why the result will be better if we aid the person. (ibid., 100) the logic that seems to be behind this modus operandi of the unitarians, which allows them to comply with intuitive data, is the principle of equal consideration of interests (widely found in singer and regan, the two classic defenders of animals). according to such principle, interests deserves equal consideration, regardless of the nature of individuals involved in a course of action. but only if the interests at stake are the same. if the interests at stake are unequal, the principle may admit unequal treatment. but in reality this principle is also invoked by those who do not move in a unitarian horizon, as much as in a hierarchical or gradualist horizon. this is demonstrated by the following framework of possibilities offered by degrazia, which i refer to in order to shed light on such a tangled issue. 3. degrazia’s overview of possibilities for hierarchical or gradualist perspective a good overview of the possibilities connected to a hierarchical model of moral status, or gradualist model of moral status – as i prefer to express it – is outlined by degrazia in his texts 5, of which i share not only the approach to the problem, but also – as will be seen shortly – the conclusions regarding the alternative unitarianism-hierarchical model. while in general, as we have seen, a hierarchical approach asserts that there are different degrees of moral status, according to degrazia, in the context of a view that ascribes to animals moral consideration, there are two main conceptions of status admitting degrees. the first, which he calls the “unequal consideration model of degrees of moral status” (degrazia 2008, 186), is easier to understand. it is based on a principle of unequal consideration of interests (unequal consideration of the same interests at stake). according to this principle, the same interests at stake are not valued equally, because some have greater moral weight. for example, in this perspective even though a human and a lizard have the same interest in not being made to suffer, the human’s interest has a greater moral relevance than the lizard’s interest, and therefore it is morally worse to cause 5 i am mainly referring to degrazia 1993, 1996, 2002, 2008, 2009. relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ unitarianism or hierarchical approach for moral status? 97 a certain amount of pain to a human being than the same amount of pain to a lizard. analogously, from this point of view it is worse to kill humans than lizards, because we owe to the former a higher moral consideration than to the latter. this hierarchical model can take two main forms (a simpler one and a more articulated one): (1) a two-tier model, according to which rational and self-conscious beings or persons possess a full moral status, while less complex sentient beings (animals that are not persons) possess a lower moral status (cf. degrazia 2008, 192; 2009, 145); (2) a sliding-scale model, according to which there are a lot of degrees of moral status connected with the cognitive, emotive and social complexity of a sentient being. the more mentally complex a sentient being is, the higher its moral status. thus, humans have the greatest moral status, “great apes and dolphins a bit less, elephants and monkeys somewhat less than apes and dolphins, middling mammals still less, rodents less, and so on down through the phylogenetic scale” (degrazia 2008, 192) 6. the second model, which degrazia calls “unequal interests model of degrees of moral status”, is more complicated to understand, because it starts from a principle of equal consideration of interests, i.e. it derives from the principle that equal interests deserve equal consideration. the natural outcome of this conception seems to be the attribution of equal status to all beings who possess it (indeed, it is the main point of reference or one of the main points of reference, as i have said, for the proponents of an egalitarian or unitarian conception of moral status). also because, as we have seen, such principle requires equal consideration of equal interests, not of different interests. i do not violate it if i argue that, for example, an early induced death harms a person more than a sentient being who is not a person; and consequently it is more serious to kill a person than a lizard. in this way, the principle allows unitarians to reach responses in accordance with common sense. but, according to degrazia, this principle, precisely because it allows to evaluate differently different interests, for example conceiving the value of life as something that grows with the increase of mental complexity, can also be ascribable to the gradualist area. in his opinion “the noncomparability of certain interests and perhaps other factors justify sufficient favoring 6 but there are also intermediate versions between the two, and kagan seems to support one of these. in fact, the version of hierarchy conception that he ultimately embraces involves only a few levels (kagan calls it “a limited hierarchy view”): “there are at most only a small number of morally relevant divisions within the animal kingdom, with higher animals (for example, dogs, monkeys, and whales) counting for more than other animals (such as chickens, rabbits, and mice) who in turn count for still more the rest (like fish, perhaps, or maybe insects)” (kagan 2019, 303). relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ francesco allegri 98 of humans in case of genuine conflict that we may say, without distortion, that human persons have higher moral status than nonhuman animals” (degrazia 2008, 191). those who attribute the principle of equal consideration of interests to the unitarian sphere and reject assertions of degrees of moral status do so only for reasons of conceptual parsimony: these thinkers accept that there are some noncomparable interests – that death, for example, typically harms humans more than mice. but they deny that this fact justifies talk of degrees of moral status. such talk, they maintain, is unnecessary to explain considered moral judgment such as the stronger presumption against killing persons. these judgments can be explained simply by noting that killing persons harms them more than killing mice harms mice – and it’s generally worse to cause more harms than less. (ibid.) this is harman’s position, according to which “we have no reason to posit such degrees of moral status, so we can conclude that moral status is not a matter of degree, but is rather on/off: a being either has moral status or lacks it” (harman 2003, 183). the fact remains that it is the same conception that one ascribes to the unitarian field and the other to the hierchical field. apart from the nominal difference there seems to be no other difference. unitarians prefer to speak of equal moral status. degrazia instead believes that that different value of life, which grows as the mental complexity of a being increases, is best qualified by using the language of degrees of moral status. theirs appears to be a verbal dispute. focusing on the two parameters of life and suffering, the status options we have seen at stake therefore seems to be 4: (1) an undoubted form of unitarianism, which operates with a principle of equal consideration of interests and assigns the same value or weight to the suffering and life of all sentient beings (because the interests at stake are equal when the suffering has the same intensity and duration, and with the loss of one’s life); (2) a form of unitarianism also based on the principle of equal consideration of interests, but which considers that in dilemmatic cases, and particularly when life is at stake, the interests for sentient beings, though equally considered, may be different; (3) an undoubted form of hierarchical approach, which operates with a principle of unequal consideration of interests and is expressed in (3a) a two-tier model and (3b) a sliding scale-model; (4) a form of hierarchical or gradualist approach, founded on the principle of equal consideration of interests, which holds that mentally more complex sentient beings may have greater interests than less complex mentally sentient beings, in particular they have more to lose from a interruption of one’s life. option 2 and option 4 appear to be equivalent. relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ unitarianism or hierarchical approach for moral status? 99 4. equal consideration of interests, but different moral status what is the most appropriate conception? as emerges from the preceding considerations, both hierarchical and unitarian approaches present elements of plausibility. referring to two fundamental parameters such as life and suffering, also recalled by kagan in the two examples i have cited, i would say that looking at the value of life, the hierarchical model appears more suitable. but looking at the weight of suffering the advantage is reversed. my position on this kind of problems continues to be the one i have defended in recent years (allegri 2015, 2018, 2019a), which i summarize here below. i have argued, also in relations (allegri 2019b, 2020), that all sentient beings, in addition to the harm of pain, suffer harm also from an early induced death. in fact even sentient beings without self-awareness and rationality killed prematurely lose all those satisfactions conform to their own species which they would have enjoyed living longer: more food, more sex, more children to be raised, etc. they do not need to have a sense of the remote future and/or a desire to continue living to undergo harm. the fact that a lizard – assuming it is a being without complex mental skills – cannot have an interest (in the sense of desire) to live, having no sense of the future, does not mean that it is not in its interest to avoid a premature death. that it is not – cannot be – interested in continuing its life does not mean that it is not in its interest to continue it. however, i am convinced that the damage suffered by all sentient beings from an induced death ahead of time is not the same. i believe that a mentally complex individual, i.e. a person, suffers greater harm. expressed in regan’s terms, a mentally complex individual, in addition to having future-oriented welfare-interests, also has (in more) future-oriented preference-interests 7. if the former are sufficient to make wrong the killing of a sentient being (and therefore those who link this prohibition to personhood status are mistaken), the presence of a preference-interest not to die makes the life of an individual more important and the harm she receives from a prematurely induced death of greater gravity. compared to a merely sentient being, a mentally complex subject with a premature death not only loses the satisfactions of future life, has 7 by “preference-interests” regan means what we are interested in. by “welfareinterests” he means what is in our interest. the two concepts must be kept distinct because not everything that interests us is in our interest and vice versa (regan 1983, 87-88). relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ francesco allegri 100 also frustrated his preference to survive and all the future-oriented preferences that presuppose remaining alive in order to be satisfied. but, in order to establish the value of lives and the harm that individuals receive from a premature death, a simple division like that between persons and non-persons is not appropriate, because it does not capture the multiple differences existing between individuals. between fully self-aware and rational beings – typical humans – and mere sensory containers, if they really exist, there are many intermediate gradations. the concept of a person is hardly categorical. one can be more or less a person. and almost a person. self-awareness and rationality do not have an “all or nothing” nature. inasmuch as a dog, cat or ape is self-aware and rational, it is difficult to conceive of them as persons in the same way as an ordinary human being. it therefore seems more plausible to posit a gradualist conception of the value of life and the harm caused by death, for which the value of life increases gradually, rising up the phylogenetic scale, on the basis of the complexity of an organism. expressed in more precise terms, the value of sentient life is directly proportional to the cognitive, emotional and social complexity of individuals. the more an organism is complex under these aspects, the more its life has value. and the more harm it receives from premature death. does this gradualist conception of the value of life and the harm of death also apply to pain and more generally to the moral consideration of a sentient being? not necessarily. there are two possibilities in this regard. either to attribute also to pain a weight that gradually increases on the basis of the cognitive, emotional and social complexity of individuals (the higher we go up the phylogenetic scale, the more relevant is the pain of an entity). or to give the same weight to pain, accepting a principle of equal consideration of interests and believing that, with the same intensity and duration of pain, the interest to avoid it is the same for all sentient beings. adopting the first way means subscribing to what degrazia calls the sliding-scale model, in which not only life, but more generally the moral consideration for an individual (therefore including pain) must grow on the basis of his mental complexity (see degrazia 1996, 34-37; 2008, 192; 2009, 145). but the gradualist model of the value of life does not necessarily have the outcome of attributing a lower value to the pain of mentally less complex individuals. it is also compatible with the attribution of equal importance to the pain of sentient beings, on the basis of a principle of equal consideration of interests. such a principle, as we have seen, does not imply that all lives are of equal value (although it is compatible with this thesis). in fact, even if the consideration is the same, the interests at stake may be unequal. in this perspective relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ unitarianism or hierarchical approach for moral status? 101 while all sentient beings deserve equal consideration – equal protection of their comparable interests – some of their interests are noncomparable in ways that justify significantly different moral protections. thus, while it is in the interests of both mice and persons to continue to live, persons generally have a much greater stake in life – are harmed more by death – so killing persons is worse, other things equal, than killing mice. (degrazia 2008, 190) by accepting the principle of equal consideration of interests, we can therefore argue at the same time that, ceteris paribus, the value of the pain of all sentient beings is equal, and yet the value of their lives differs in gradual terms on the basis of mental complexity. is this conception to be subscribed? i would say that it has no contraindications, it has only positive implications. first of all, it seems to be dictated by the principle of universalizability or formal justice, which requires us to treat relevantly similar cases similarly and relevantly different cases differently. as degrazia states, “universalizability lays an onus of proof on the ‘inegalitarian’ […]. for she must identify the relevant difference between the two beings that justifies making different moral judgments with respect to their relevantly similar interests” (degrazia 1993, 19). degrazia, again, notes that “the avoidance of aversive mental states […] is a relevantly similar interest, no matter who has it: ‘pain is pain’” (degrazia 1996, 234). furthermore, the principle of equal consideration of interests accords with a wide range of moral theories. but above all, it does not seem to have counterintuitive results. putting the pain of animals on the same level as human pain is not to say that they suffer as much as we do. the pain of many sentient species does not appear equal in intensity and duration to ours. and even in those cases in which it can be (i am thinking of animals closer to us in mental complexity), in dilemmatic situations the greater value of our life must lead us to privilege the human animal over the non-human animal. that is to say, once we differentiate the value of lives, even if we attach the same relevance to the pain of a dog or a human, in situations of serious conflict the greater damage inflicted by the death to the human will make that we will have to give precedence to her needs over those of the dog 8. finally, such a conception allows us 8 see the excellent examples in this regard in degrazia 1993, 26-27. the fact that a typical human may receive greater harm from an early induced death than a less cognitively, emotionally, and socially complex animal does not mean, of course, that in all cases of conflict between our needs and those of nonhuman animals, the former take precedence. it depends on what is at stake. if for a less complex being (human or non-human) in a given situation a fundamental interest such as life or a great harm relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ francesco allegri 102 to attribute to the pain of marginal humans the same weight as the pain of typical humans. in this way, an important principle of equality is preserved. otherwise we should ascribe to the pain of a human with severe mental disabilities a lower relief 9. assigning equal weight to the suffering of all sentient beings, but a different value to their life on the basis of mental complexity, seems to me a good compromise, which safeguards both marginal human cases and the need to ascribe greater value to the life of men than to the life of lizards. does giving equal consideration to the equal interests of all sentient beings mean giving them equal moral status? as we have seen, for some it is so, for example for peter singer. in his view, the principle of equal consideration of interests, which he advocates in the utilitarian version, implies that nonhuman animals, or at least all nonhuman animals capable of conscious experiences such as pain or pleasure, enter the sphere of moral concern. moreover they enter it with a fundamentally equal moral status: their interests are to be given the same consideration as the like interests of any other being. (singer 1987, 5) similarly, tom regan – who argues for equal consideration in the form of equal inherent value – asserts that “all those individuals who are subjectsof-a-life […] have inherent value and thus enjoy an equal moral status” (or a great benefit) is at stake, while for a more complex being (e.g. a typical human) a less relevant interest (e.g. a slight pain) is at stake, there is no doubt that the moral point of view should privilege the needs of the less complex animal. it is only when the stakes are the same for the more complex and the less complex animal – namely equal amounts of harm are at stake – that it is reasonable to privilege the more mentally complex being. consequently, this type of position in no way justifies intensive farming, where the stakes are completely unbalanced to the detriment of less complex animals, which have their lives and well-being to lose. we, on the other hand, by renouncing to eat sentient animals, we do not lose either one or the other. on animal experimentation the issue is more complicated, but even in this case the role played by mental complexity does not authorize experiments that are not a necessary and sufficient condition (i.e. the only means) to save people’s lives. 9 this seems to me a better solution to the problem of atypical humans than kagan’s solution. to give an important moral consideration to humans who, because of profound intellectual disabilities, are not conscious of their lives as their own and do not look forward to future achievements, kagan introduce the concept of modal persohood. according to him human beings who are neither persons nor even potential persons are modal persons, namely individuals who might have been persons. in his view to possess modal personhood is sufficient for counting more, morally speaking, than nonhuman animals “that are their psychological peers” (kagan 2019, 159; more generally, see 137-145, 156-164). regarding this last point, in allegri 2015, 230-231 and in allegri 2019, 631 i have proposed a different argument (which recalls the aristotelian distinction between privation and negation) to arrive at the same result. relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ unitarianism or hierarchical approach for moral status? 103 (regan 2004, xxii). but, in my view, degrazia’s position appears more convincing. he argues against the unequal consideration inherent in the sliding scale model or in other similar simpler models (such as the two tier-model), but nevertheless thinks that equal consideration does not imply equal status. since the principle of equal consideration of interests is compatible with a different assessment of the value of life and the damage of death, the formula that degrazia considers most appropriate is “equal consideration of (relevantly similar) interests, but unequal moral status” (degrazia 1993, especially 26-28) 10. so if equal status seems to imply equal consideration, the reverse is not true. i am inclined to believe that degrazia’s position is preferable to the thesis of the equal status of singer and regan, which does not seem to adequately highlight the different value of the life of sentient beings, which they also welcome. in any case, as we have seen, it is a very subtle distinction, so much so that degrazia admits that within this dispute among defenders of the principle of equal consideration of interests “there might be no disagreement about our obligations to various beings. all can agree on the moral ‘facts’” (degrazia 2008, 191). more generally, kagan himself acknowledges that the contrast between unitarianism and a hierarchy approach “is probably less crisp than it might initially appear” (kagan 2019, 39-40). 5. four (less subtle, clearer) options for the moral consideration of animals instead of getting stuck in a distinction like the one between unitarianism and hierarchical approach, so subtle and abstract, i think it is more profitable and simpler to divide – as i have done in previous texts – the main positions on the moral status of animals into the following four options (listed in ascending order of consideration). o1: animals do not possess any moral status. we have no direct obligations to them (they are not moral patients). this is the widely prevalent attitude in the history of western thought. not to attribute any moral status to animals means not to ascribe a direct moral consideration even 10 see also degrazia 1996, 256-257 and degrazia 2008, 191 and 198, where, however, the author, while reiterating the proposed formula, prefers to put it in the background, since it lends itself to be misunderstood in a sense that debases the value of animals. relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ francesco allegri 104 to their suffering, i.e. not to accept what we might call the “minimal proanimal argument” (hereafter mpaa), structured as follows: it is directly wrong to procure unnecessary suffering to sentient beings animals are sentient beings it is directly wrong to procure unnecessary suffering to animals o1’s supporters deny mpaa either because they do not subscribe to the first premise (historically for example aristotle) or because they do not subscribe to the second (historically for example descartes) or because they reject both of them (for instance peter carruthers). they either deny that animals suffer or they deny the relevance of their suffering. while denying direct consideration to non-human sentient beings, o1’s defenders can make extensive use of indirect reasons for not mistreating them (among which stands out the one made famous by ovid’s motto: saevitia in bruta est tirocinium crudelitatis in homines). in their perspective, the interests of animals matter only when they are causally related to human interests. o2: animals possess moral status, i.e. they are worthy of direct moral consideration, but it is not comparable (in any way) to that of humans, whose value is higher and whose interests are to be given greater importance. whoever chooses this option accepts mpaa and accordingly rejects all those human practices that involve unjustified suffering directed at other sentient beings. but he does not think that animal suffering has the same weight as human suffering. furthermore, he does not believe that an early induced death constitutes a harm to beings without a sense of the long-term future. or, if it is, it is not such as to render their killing unjustifiable 11. o3: animals possess a very relevant moral status. whoever defends this type of position goes beyond mpaa, also giving weight to animal life and arguing that its abbreviation harms animals. many of o3’s supporters arrive to accept the idea that equal consideration should be given to the interests of animals and human beings when equal, coming to recognize the suffering of animals the same weight as human suffering. but they believe that this does not preclude the possibility of valuing the life of mentally more complex beings (persons) as being more important than 11 historically we can put in this option thinkers such as bentham, hutcheson, schopenhauer, primatt, just to name some philosophers of a certain importance. an excellent defender of o2 in the twentieth-twenty-first century has been scruton (on this topic, see allegri 2020). relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ unitarianism or hierarchical approach for moral status? 105 the life of mentally less complex beings (non-persons), because the former receive greater harm from a premature death than the latter. o4: all sentient beings have the same moral status, irrespective of their biological belonging or cognitive abilities. whoever supports this thesis makes the claim (addressed to defenders of o3) to draw fully the consequences of attributing equal consideration to sentient beings, placing them on the same level also in regard to the value of their lives and to the harm they receive from an early death. for the proponents of this option, there is no convincing argument for asserting that the life of a mentally more complex being has more value than the life of a less complex being. in order to adequately protect animals, it is not necessary to go up to level o4 of moral consideration; it is sufficient to go up to level o3. 6. what really matters: defending animals from suffering and killing in fact, it doesn’t seem so relevant to me (in practical terms) that animals have the same moral status as we do, i.e., deserve the same consideration as we do. what is relevant is that the consideration we give them protects them from suffering and induced death in advance of natural times. not only from the former, but also from the latter. here is the great knot. the consideration to be given to animals must include the prima facie obligation not to take their lives, regardless of whether this means giving them the same status or consideration or not. herein lies the great difference between a strong defence of animals and a weak defence of animals. i can also think that animals do not have the same status as us, but this is not decisive. decisive is whether i think animals can be killed or not. let’s take the following example, which shows where the decisive difference lies. two people can both think that non-human animals do not have the same moral status as we do. on this point they fully agree. but one of them is convinced that, by virtue of this, while it is wrong to make animals suffer unjustifiably, it is not wrong to kill them (for example for food reasons). the other, on the other hand, believes that, although animals do not have the same status as us, in addition to making them suffer, it is wrong to anticipate their death with respect to natural times (if not for euthanasia reasons). this is an important difference, far from negligible, even in the context of a conception that does not attribute to animals the same moral status as ours. relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ francesco allegri 106 that the moral status of sentient beings can be different, as kagan argues, does not mean, therefore, that we cannot assign a strong moral status to all sentient beings regardless of their mental complexity, i.e. a moral status involving the protection of life. and that we cannot embrace a principle of equal consideration of interests which equalizes all sentient beings at least where they have equal interest at stake (e.g. the interest of not being made to suffer). so the right compromise between unitarianism and hierarchical conception lies in the thesis of the equal consideration of interests, which on the one hand is compatible with assigning the same moral weight to the pain of all sentient beings, on the other hand is compatible with assigning a different moral weight to the damage that sentient beings receive from a prematurely induced death, giving a greater weight to more mentally complex beings. once we adopt the principle of equal consideration of interests and once we distinguish the value of lives, theses that are compatible with both perspectives at stake, we do not see much difference between a unitarian and a hierarchical conception. it can be accepted that there are gradations of status among sentient beings. that, for example, non-human animals have a lower status than ordinary humans. but what i do not find acceptable is that such a difference in status denies some sentient beings the right to life. that in dilemmatic situations it is permissible or obligatory to favor more mentally complex beings cannot imply that then it is permissible to kill the least cognitively, emotionally and socially complex sentient beings. references allegri, francesco. 2015. gli animali e l’etica. milano udine: mimesis. allegri, francesco. 2018. “the moral status of animals: a critical analysis and a gradualist proposal”. ethics & politics 20: 559-570. allegri, francesco. 2019a. “quale animalismo? quattro opzioni etiche a confronto”. ragion pratica 53: 611-634. allegri, francesco. 2019b. “respect, inherent value, subjects-of-a-life: some reflections on the key concepts of tom regan’s animal ethics”. relations. beyond anthropocentrism 7: 41-60. allegri, francesco. 2020. “on midgley and scruton: some limits of a too moderate animal ethics”. relations. beyond anthropocentrism 8: 137-143. degrazia, david. 1993. “equal consideration and unequal moral status”. the southern journal of philosophy 31: 17-31. relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ unitarianism or hierarchical approach for moral status? 107 degrazia, david. 1996. taking animals seriously: mental life and moral status. cambridge: cambridge university press. degrazia, david. 2002. animal rights: a very short introduction. oxford: oxford university press. degrazia, david. 2008. “moral status as a matter of degree?”. the southern journal of philosophy 46: 181-198. degrazia, david. 2009. “moral vegetarianism from a very broad basis”. journal of moral philosophy 6: 143-165. harman, elizabeth. 2003. “the potentiality problem”. philosophical studies 114: 173-198. kagan, shelly. 1989. the limits of morality. oxford: clarendon press. kagan shelly. 1998. normative ethics. boulder (co): westview press. kagan shelly. 2012. death. new haven (ct): yale university press. kagan shelly. 2016. “what’s wrong with speciesism?”. journal of applied philosophy 33: 1-21. kagan shelly. 2019. how to count animals, more or less. oxford: oxford university press. regan, tom. (1983) 2004. the case for animal rights. reprint, berkeley: university of california press. singer, peter. 1987. “animal liberation or animal rights?”. the monist 70: 3-14. singer, peter. 2016. “why speciesism is wrong: a response to kagan”. journal of applied philosophy 33: 31-35. relations – 9.1-2 november 2021 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ relations_9-1-2-2021_00b_sommario.pdf studies and research contributions pigs vs. boards beka jalagania the chincoteague ponies and what it means to be free alexis flower beyond the fairy tale of the shape of water viktorija lankauskaitė max scheler e la possibilità di una nuova forma di antispecismo enrico r.a. calogero giannetto distributive justice and animal welfare paola morreale unitarianism or hierarchical approach for moral status? a very subtle difference francesco allegri comments, debates, reports and interviews animals and justice paola fossati author guidelines korsgaard’s duties towards animals: two difficulties 5 is sn 2 2 8 0 -9 9 5 3 beyond anthropocentrism 1 • january 2013 inside the emotional lives of non-human animals a minding animals international utrecht 2012 pre-conference event special issue (genoa, italy, 12-13 may, 2012) edited by m. andreozzi, r. bennison, a. massaro, s. tonutti capabilities approach and animal bioethics • michele panzera animals and our emotions. how to approach the study of an interspecific community? • sabrina tonutti advocacy and animal rights • kim stallwood the emotional lives of animals: a christian perspective • alma massaro – gianfranco nicora animalia: ontology and ethics in weak antispeciesism • leonardo caffo the contemporary debate on experimentation • susanna penco – rosagemma ciliberti non-human animals and genetic engineering • arianna ferrari the relationship between humans and other animals in european animal welfare legislation • paola sobbrio human’s best friends? • matteo andreozzi elationsre l a t io n s . b e y o n d a n t h r o p o c e n t r is m 1 • 2 0 1 3 r 10.1 june 2022 animal ethics, ethology, and food ethics edited by francesco allegri studies and research contributions korsgaard’s duties towards animals: two difficulties 9 nico müller ethology of the freed animal: concept, paradigm 27 and implementations to the moral status of non-human animals marco celentano dario martinelli il dilemma etico dei pet: tra bestie, animali e persone 47 matteo andreozzi being there: if the pairing of the birdwatchers affects the pairing 59 of the birds evangelina w. uskoković theo w. uskoković vuk uskoković comments, debates, reports and interviews vegetarianism and veganism from a moral point of view 85 francesco allegri author guidelines 93 relations – 10.1 june 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ relations – 10.1 june 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 9 korsgaard’s duties towards animals two difficulties 1 nico müller universität basel doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2022-01-mull nicodario.mueller@unibas.ch abstract building on her previous work (2004, 2012, 2013), christine korsgaard’s recent book fellow creatures (2018) has provided the most highly developed kantian account of duties towards animals. i raise two issues with the results of this account. first, the duties that korsgaard accounts for are duties “towards” animals in name only. since korsgaard does not reject the kantian conception in which direct duties towards others require mutual moral constraint, what she calls duties “towards” animals are merely kantian duties regarding animals, verbally repackaged. hence, korsgaard’s account is best understood as an expansion (albeit a substantial one) of kant’s own view of an indirect duty regarding animals. second, the expansion does not take us quite as far as korsgaard hopes. she aims for a conception in which our duties towards animals and humans are equally important, but her argument does not support this conclusion. i point out the potential for a more radical revision of kant’s anthropocentrism that rejects his underlying assumption that duties towards others are based on mutual constraint. keywords: anthropocentrism; autonomy; deontology; duties to animals; kant; kantianism; korsgaard; moral status; non-consequentialism; obligation. 1. introduction according to a longstanding philosophical tradition, our duties concerning the treatment of animals are not directed towards animals themselves but 1 this research was funded by the nccr evolving language, swiss national science foundation (agreement #51nf40_180888). for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper, i am grateful to muriel leuenberger, elodie malbois, samia hurst, markus wild, anthony mahler, and the participants of the basel animal ethics reunion (baer). relations – 10.1 june 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2022-01-mull mailto:nicodario.mueller@unibas.ch https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ nico müller 10 towards another entity (god, other human beings, ourselves). this view was held by thomas aquinas, maimonides, clement of alexandria, the stoics, and arguably already by pythagoras (sorabji 1993, 129, 173). kant, who ties moral consideration to autonomy, is the most historically influential proponent of this tradition in the last half millennium. his views on animals, unlike those of his predecessors, continue to enjoy prominent support in ethics (see section 2 below). christine korsgaard challenges kant’s denial of duties towards animals but means to endorse many of his underlying philosophical views. in fellow creatures: our obligations to the other animals (korsgaard 2018), she argues for a broadly kantian conception in which we have duties towards animals that are just as important as our duties to human beings. the book builds on korsgaard’s influential work in both kantian ethics (e.g., korsgaard 1986, 1996, 2009) and animal ethics (e.g., korsgaard 2004, 2012, 2013). its central argument revolves around the claim that rational agency commits us to morally considering all creatures for whom things can be good or bad. if korsgaard’s argument succeeds, it shows that tying morality to autonomy does not necessarily exclude animals from moral consideration. thus, one of the most influential lines of reasoning against the moral standing of animals from the last centuries rests on a mistake. if korsgaard’s argument fails, the way in which it fails can still point us in the direction of a successful argument. so it is no surprise that korsgaard’s book has garnered great interest. previous responses have focused on various steps of her argument (howe 2019; birch 2020; godfrey-smith 2021). by contrast, i want to consider the results of the argument, provided we go along with it. does the argument get us where korsgaard wants to take us? not quite, i think. i am going to argue for two critical claims. first, the duties that korsgaard accounts for are duties “towards” animals in name only. since korsgaard does not revise the kantian conception in which direct duties towards others require mutual moral constraint, what she chooses to call duties “towards” animals are merely kantian duties regarding animals, verbally repackaged. hence, korsgaard does not truly overcome kant’s denial of moral status to animals. second, korsgaard’s argument does not plausibly show that duties regarding animals are as important as our duties towards human beings. her differential account of moral relations to humans versus moral relations to animals suggests that duties regarding animals have less weight. therefore, even if we go along with korsgaard’s argument, the results are not what she aims for. the root of the problem is that korsgaard relations – 10.1 june 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ korsgaard’s duties towards animals 11 remains committed to kant’s view that interpersonal duties derive their bindingness from a moral law that is shared between the person who has the duty and the person towards whom the duty is directed. only an argument that departs from kant on this more fundamental issue can account for duties that are directed towards animals in the same way our duties to human beings are directed towards them. more kantian animal ethicists should pursue this line in the future. 2. dealing with kant’s anthropocentrism: four basic strategies to see how korsgaard departs from kant and other kantians, one should first consider kant’s own views on the treatment of animals. kant denied that we have any duties towards animals on the grounds that interpersonal duties require mutual constraint or necessitation under the moral law: “as far as reason alone can judge, a human being has duties only to human beings (himself and others), since his duty to any subject is moral constraint by that subject’s will” (ms 6:442.8-11). in other words, if x has a duty towards y, this duty is made binding by the authority of both the agent x and the subject y as colegislators of the moral law. the moral law thus functions as a shared normative basis whose force is acknowledged by both the moral agent and the moral subject. without this shared normative basis, there cannot be duties towards others – call this the shared-basis view. since animals do not share the moral law, there can be no duties towards them according to the shared-basis view 2. however, kant points out that we do have duties regarding animals – duties that affect how we should treat them (ms 6:443.10-25). these are duties that protect animals in virtue of the end or action they prescribe (their “content”). in particular, we have the duty to cultivate our natural capacities for sympathy and gratitude. so we have duties to treat animals with sympathy and gratitude, even if these duties are directed towards oneself and not towards animals. kant’s view is thus a paradigmatic example of what animal ethicists call an indirect-duty view (see regan 2004, 174). 2 some argue that certain animals are autonomous and count as kantian persons (balluch 2016; rocha 2016; judd and rocha 2017). but the kind of autonomy dogs and pigs plausibly have is not the kind that matters in kant’s ethics, namely, the capacity to act on a self-imposed moral law. what is more, arguing that animals are autonomous implies that animals have moral duties, not just moral claims. relations – 10.1 june 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ nico müller 12 the significance of korsgaard’s account can best be seen against the backdrop of an ongoing debate. among animal ethicists, there is a virtual consensus that kant’s indirect-duty view is unacceptable (see broadie and pybus 1974; pybus and broadie 1978; hoff 1983; moyer 2001; skidmore 2001; regan 2004; wolf 2012; camenzind 2021). as a result, kantianism is far less present in animal ethics than in other areas of ethics. in the kantian literature, meanwhile, it is still contested whether kant’s indirect-duty view needs to be revised. one camp, which we might call the radical conservatives, endorses kant’s view as is (see hayward 1994; baranzke 2005; geismann 2016; basaglia 2018; herman 2018). more moderate conservatives endorse kant’s denial of duties to animals but argue that duties regarding animals take us further than kant thought (see egonsson 1997; denis 2000; altman 2011, 2019). this can involve minor disagreements with kant, say on the issue of whether the duty to cultivate sympathy implies a duty of vegetarianism, which kant denies (ms 6:443.16-19), but which egonsson (1997) and denis (2000) affirm. by contrast, a progressive camp in the literature argues that we should revise kant’s denial of duties towards animals. within this camp, there are two strategies. a moderate approach relies on adding duties towards animals as a separate class of duties, distinct in their normative grounds from our duties to human beings (wood 1998; timmermann 2005; garthoff 2011; cholbi 2014). this is the strategy korsgaard means to employ, as i will argue in section 3. if it works, the main advantage of this strategy is that it does not require revisions to kant’s views on duties towards human beings. by contrast, a radically progressive strategy amends kant’s conception of duties towards others in general, so that it can account for duties towards animals. if successful, the advantage of this strategy is that it makes it easier to account for duties to humans and animals in the same way. none of these strategies should be dismissed out of hand. they represent different ways of ensuring an intuitively adequate kantian account of the ethical treatment of animals 3. but the different strategies face specific challenges: 3 radical conservatives could argue that kantian theory is above intuitions, but the literature does not make this move. it would put kantian theory at odds with ordinary moral phenomenology and with mainstream ethical methodology. only deeply committed kantians would go along with the argument. that is why all radical conservatives mentioned in section 2 try to show that kant’s view is more benign to animals than it sounds. relations – 10.1 june 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ korsgaard’s duties towards animals 13 1. the main challenge for any conservative strategy is to show that animals receive intuitively adequate protection from duties regarding animals. they therefore must demonstrate that it makes no significant difference whether we think of these duties as duties towards animals or merely as duties regarding animals. the worry is that duties regarding animals fail to protect many animals (inadequate scope) and that these duties are comparatively unimportant (inadequate weight). 2. a moderately progressive strategy needs to show that the newly added type of duty is truly directed towards animals, despite arising from a different normative ground than our duties towards human beings. the worry is that such duties are really just another class of duties regarding animals. so moderately progressive views must demonstrate that they do not collapse into moderately conservative views. if they do, the challenge is again one of scope and weight. 3. radically progressive views must show that their fundamental amendments to kant’s system do not sacrifice too much of what makes it worthwhile. this would be the case if kantianism were rendered incoherent, or if it were turned into an odd variant of a typically more animal-friendly approach to ethics like utilitarianism. after all, it is trivial that kant could have been more animal friendly if he had been peter singer. the interesting question is whether kantianism can yield more animal-friendly results while remaining recognizably kantian. 3. korsgaard on animals and mutual constraint with her approach to animal ethics, korsgaard aims to belong to the progressive camp. she repeatedly states that kant was wrong to deny the existence of duties towards animals (korsgaard 2018, 74, 96, 141). her goal is not to defend kant’s indirect-duty view but to move beyond it. but korsgaard does not object to kant’s view that interpersonal moral obligations require mutual constraint under the moral law or that animals cannot participate in such constraint (ms 6:442.8-11). she emphasizes that in order for one person to make a claim on another, both of them must share a normative basis: suppose i claim something from you on the grounds that you are french and laws of france demand that you do this, but i am not french myself. have i succeeded in giving you a reason? only if there is some further law whose authority we do both grant, such as “everyone should obey the laws of his or her country”. (korsgaard 2018, 124) relations – 10.1 june 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ nico müller 14 following her commitment to kant’s shared-basis view, korsgaard’s reasoning in favour of duties towards animals can be summarized as follows (korsgaard 2018, 138-145). our duties respond to the legitimate claims of others. what matters, therefore, is that we have a reason to acknowledge animals as holders of legitimate claims. we have this reason because animals share with humans the property that makes humans claim holders. to understand the argument, consider first what makes humans holders of legitimate claims. korsgaard argues that rational beings must endorse their own ends as absolutely good (where “absolutely good” means “giving practical reasons to everyone”) (korsgaard 2018, 138). say that i set the goal of having a cup of coffee. i treat this goal as providing me with practical reasons to leave the house and visit the coffee shop. i also treat my goal as providing everyone else with practical reasons, including reasons not to interfere with my pursuit – for instance, people should not needlessly block my way (korsgaard 2018, 139). however, we treat our ends as absolutely good not due to some quasi-mystical insight into what is intrinsically morally valuable – such insight is impossible according to kant (korsgaard 2018, 140). rather, we treat our ends as absolutely good simply because they are ours and achieving them is good for us: we “represent” ourselves as ends in ourselves by taking what is good for us to be good absolutely, by choosing our own good, that is, what is goodfor us, as an end of action. it is as if whenever you make a choice, you said, “i take the things that are important to me to be important, period, important absolutely, because i take myself to be important”. (korsgaard 2018, 139) we therefore take ourselves to have the capacity to confer absolute goodness on ends such that they generate reasons for others. to have this capacity is what it means to be an “end in itself” in korsgaard’s vocabulary. when it comes to others, korsgaard sees several reasons why we should acknowledge them as holders of legitimate claims on us. first, rational others make claims on us. this is an appeal to a shared normative basis: “when i make a moral claim on you, i appeal to a purported moral law which says that you have an obligation to treat me in the way that i demand” (korsgaard 2018, 123). second, we can only make legitimate claims by appealing to laws that are universalizable in the sense that we could will that everyone act on them (korsgaard 2018, 125). these laws must be acceptable for any rational being. so if we assign ourselves the status of a legitimate claim holder, we must afford the same status to all rational others. relations – 10.1 june 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ korsgaard’s duties towards animals 15 third, rational others make the same commitment to their end-initselfhood that we make, with the same justification (korsgaard 2018, 140). so we should acknowledge rational others as ends in themselves and therefore as holders of legitimate claims. these considerations do nothing for animals, who are not rational in the relevant sense. but a fourth consideration initiates korsgaard’s argument: other beings share the quality to which we implicitly tie our end-in-itselfhood. that quality is being a creature for whom things can be good or bad. korsgaard puts the point as follows: […] consider my own original decision to set a value on some ordinary end of inclination, to treat something that is good-for me as if it were good absolutely. that decision is not an act of respect for my own autonomy. after all, i cannot respect my own choices or do what is necessary to carry them out until after i have made them. […] so i am deciding to treat my ends as good absolutely, simply because i am a creature with a final good. from there all we have to do is generalize: that principle requires that we should take the ends of beings who have a final good to be absolutely valuable. (korsgaard 2018, 143-144) i take korsgaard to be saying the following. we treat our ends as absolutely good (as giving practical reasons to everyone). we put this value on our ends because attaining them is good for us, not because we have rationally chosen them. therefore, while rational agency is what commits us to viewing ourselves as ends in themselves, we view ourselves in this way qua creatures for whom things can be good or bad, not qua rational agents. for the sake of consistency, we must then acknowledge all other creatures for whom things can be good or bad as ends in themselves. so we should acknowledge that what is good for them generates practical reasons for everyone. this gives them claims on us, and it gives us duties towards them. in korsgaard’s view, “our moral relations to the other animals have a different basis and a different shape than our moral relations to other people” (korsgaard 2018, 148). the difference lies in what makes particular duties binding. our duties to rational human beings are binding because they can make legitimate claims on us by appealing to a shared moral law. our duties towards animals are binding because we have a commitment to the end-in-itselfhood of ourselves qua animals, which should lead us to regard animals as creatures with legitimate claims on us too. in the landscape of strategic approaches to kantian animal ethics, this places korsgaard firmly in the moderately progressive camp, which adds duties towards animals to a kantian framework without revising kant’s views about duties to other human beings. the question relations – 10.1 june 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ nico müller 16 is whether korsgaard can deliver the results a moderately progressive approach needs to deliver, namely, duties towards animals that do not collapse back into mere duties regarding animals. 4. duties towards animals in what sense? moderately progressive views in kantian animal ethics face the challenge of explaining how duties towards animals are directed towards them, even though they rest on a different normative ground than duties towards human beings. the worry is that such an account, even if its arguments are valid, only produces another class of duties regarding animals. it thus collapses back into a moderately conservative view, which argues that indirect duties take us further than kant thought. here, korsgaard’s view runs into trouble. when it comes to spelling out the sense in which our duties towards animals are directed towards them, korsgaard immediately draws a distinction: laws are by their very nature universal, according to kant, and a universal law can extend its protection to someone who did not participate, and could not have participated, in its legislation. so there are actually two senses in which you can “owe a duty to someone”: you can owe a duty to someone in the sense that he is the recognized authority who made the law for you, or you can owe a duty to someone in the sense that the law by its content gives him a right, which enables him to make a claim on you. (korsgaard 2018, 125) we have duties towards human beings both in the sense that they are an authority that makes our duties binding and in the sense that they are protected by the content of our duties (korsgaard 2018, 125). we have duties towards animals only in the latter sense. they are protected by our duties but have no part in the authority that makes them binding. but duties that protect animals in virtue of their content (i.e., the end or action they prescribe), without responding to any authority on the part of animals, are simply what kant (and kantian conservatives) would call duties regarding animals (see section 2). the very purpose of distinguishing between towards and regarding is to set apart the duties we have directly to others from those that merely pertain to their treatment as a matter of content. in kant’s terminology, korsgaard’s argument therefore does not so much add duties towards animals but merely another subclass of duties regarding animals (namely, duties to regard the good of animals as providing us with practical reasons). what is more, the only relations – 10.1 june 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ korsgaard’s duties towards animals 17 law-giving authority involved in korsgaard’s duties is the agent. so it appears that her “obligations to the other animals” are just what kant would have called duties towards oneself regarding animals. one could defend korsgaard by saying that on her account, animals count as ends in themselves, which is a fundamental step beyond kant. but just as there are two different senses of owing a duty to someone, for korsgaard “there are two slightly different senses of ‘end in itself ’” (korsgaard 2018, 141): i must regard you as an end in itself in the active sense if i regard you as capable of legislating for me, and so as capable of placing me under an obligation both to respect your choices, and to limit my own choices to things compatible with your value as an end in itself. […] i must regard you as an end in itself in the passive sense if i am obligated to treat your ends, or at least the things that are good-for you, as good absolutely. (korsgaard 2018, 141) again, the difference between korsgaard and kant is semantic. what korsgaard chooses to call an “end in itself in the passive sense” is what kant might have considered a special class of things or means (see ms 6:223.32-34; anth 8:127.08), namely, things whose treatment is restricted by certain duties we have towards ourselves or rational others. kant and kantian conservatives already view animals as such a special class of things. animals can experience joy and suffering and are thus objects of sympathy, and they appear to render us services and are thus objects of gratitude. our duties of cultivation therefore pertain to how we should treat animals. by calling animals “ends in themselves in the passive sense”, korsgaard does not fundamentally go beyond kantian conservatism but repackages it in new vocabulary. finally, one could argue that korsgaard assigns claims to animals, whereas kant and kantian conservatives do not. her idea is that animals do not merely happen to be covered as objects by the laws we make but that they are persons – sources of legitimate normative claims – under these laws (korsgaard 2004, 95, 118; korsgaard 2018, 125-126). to put it another way, animals “obligate” us (which korsgaard uses as a synonym for “having claims”; korsgaard 2018, 126). is this not a step beyond kant’s anthropocentrism? the question is in what sense animals already “have claims” in kant’s (or a kantian conservative’s) view and whether korsgaard goes beyond that view. it must be said that kant himself did not deal in the currency of “moral claims”, focusing instead on duties. we can think of moral claims simply as the moral subject’s correlate of the moral agent’s duty. since agents can only have duties towards each other in kant’s view if they relations – 10.1 june 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ nico müller 18 share the moral law, animals cannot “have claims” in this sense. but kant could agree that animals “have claims” in a more deflationary sense, in the sense of correlates to the duties regarding them. using the vocabulary in this specific, admittedly artificial way, kant could affirm that animals “have a claim” to being treated with sympathy and gratitude. kant could also affirm that animals are the “sources” of these claims in a deflationary sense. of course, they cannot be the source of the bindingness of our duties. but they do determine some of the content of our duties by means of their behaviour. in kant’s view, animals’ expressions of joy and suffering give rise to duties to react in a certain way, for the sake of cultivation. for example, we must respond to a cat’s hiss by indulging in our sympathetic feeling for her anxiety and by taking this feeling as a reason to help. so by hissing, the cat has unwittingly participated in specifying what we should do. in this sense, animals are sources of legitimate normative claims: by means of their behaviour, they determine a part of the content of our duties regarding them. in this restricted sense, we could also say that they “obligate” us, in the sense of unwittingly reminding us of our duties. to be sure, there is a world of difference between this sense in which animals could be said to have claims according to kant’s view (being able to determine part of the content of human beings’ duties regarding them) and the sense in which human beings have claims towards each other (making duties binding for each other, giving rise to duties towards each other). frankly, it is confusing to call both by the same name. but this appears to be korsgaard’s way of using the vocabulary: […]  we obligate each other by making claims on each other that are reasonable because in making them we allow that others may reasonably make similar claims on us. the other animals obligate us by reminding us of what we as individuals have in common with them – that we are creatures for whom things can be good or bad, and that like them, although in our own special way, we each take our own good to be good absolutely when we engage in practical activity. (korsgaard 2018, 147) animals are “sources of claims” and “obligate us” in korsgaard’s view only in a deflationary sense that kant could agree with: they unwittingly remind us of duties we have in virtue of our own moral authority, not theirs. once again, the difference between korsgaard and kant is semantic. we can see that korsgaard’s view does not meet the challenge for moderately progressive views in kantian animal ethics: to show that the added type of duties is truly directed towards animals, despite arising from another normative ground than duties towards human beings arise from. under the surface, korsgaard’s approach is more conservative than relations – 10.1 june 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ korsgaard’s duties towards animals 19 she presents it. it is a version of the view that kantian duties regarding animals take us further than kant stated – moderate conservatism wrapped in progressive vocabulary. this is unfortunate given korsgaard’s goal of accounting for direct duties towards animals, but it can still be a defensible view on its own terms. the question is how well korsgaard’s results fare by the standards of a conservative kantian strategy. can she show that her duties regarding animals are adequate in scope and weight? this is where the second issue arises. 5. korsgaard as a kantian conservative to repeat, the main challenge for conservative approaches is to show that animals are sufficiently protected by duties merely regarding them. this is a challenge because duties regarding someone have certain restrictions. first, there are built-in restrictions in the scope of individuals that are protected by these duties. if duties must always be directed towards human beings, duties regarding animals can only arise in virtue of some human-animal relation. this relation therefore determines which animals are covered by the content of human duties or normative commitments. we can see such a restriction in kant’s own view that indirect moral consideration is reserved for animals who gain our sympathy and gratitude. all animals we do not perceive (even if we contribute to grave harm to them) are therefore not protected by our duties of cultivation. kant’s view thus has prima facie an intuitively objectionable blind spot that kantian conservatives must work around. second, there can be restrictions in the strength or weight of duties regarding someone, depending on the type of duty. consider again kant’s view as an example. the point of duties of cultivation is to better enable us to observe our duties towards other human beings (ms 6:443.13-16), which is easier to do if we have intact capacities for sympathy and gratitude. but a duty whose purpose is to better enable us to observe our duties should clearly not get in the way of the actual observance of the duties that it should enable. for example, we should not deny a person in need the use of a piece of land on the grounds that its vegetation strikes us as sublime and we want to use it to cultivate our capacity for aesthetic appreciation. kant does ask us to cultivate aesthetic appreciation, but the point of this duty is to help us value other rational beings in a disinterested way (ms 6:443.2-9). to violate someone’s claims in the name of training one’s capacity to value that person disinterestedly would be completely wrong-headed. relations – 10.1 june 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ nico müller 20 at best, kant’s duties of cultivation demand that we destroy the sublime for the benefit of other people with appropriate pro tanto regret, steering clear of developing a lust for destruction. similarly, our duty to cultivate sympathy and gratitude is obviously less important than our duties towards other human beings 4. this duty can demand that we harm animals for the sake of other human beings with appropriate pro tanto regret but not that we frustrate even trivial claims of human beings for the sake of animals. kant’s duties regarding animals thus appear to be lightweight. kantian conservatives must either show this interpretation to be false, or they need to add more heavyweight duties regarding animals to the list. korsgaard fares much better than kant when it comes to the scope of individuals protected by our duties. she argues that animals are protected by our commitment to the end-in-itselfhood of all creatures for whom things can be good or bad. the relevant human-animal relation that places animals inside the scope of indirect moral consideration is the similarity that we are all such creatures. so korsgaard’s account of duties regarding animals is much more comprehensive in scope than kant’s. when it comes to weight, too, korsgaard aims for results that are much stronger than kant’s. in her view, we commit to the end-in-itselfhood of animals with the same stringency with which we commit to the end-in-itselfhood of other human beings. korsgaard frequently attacks the idea that human beings are morally more important than animals (korsgaard 2018, 9-15, 59-66, 69, 94-95, 169, 210). as she presents it, her view gives the same weight to the claims of animals and the claims of human beings. correspondingly, our duties towards animals should be just as significant as our duties towards human beings. but this conclusion cannot be reached from a conservative view quite as easily as korsgaard makes it seem. we have already seen that, according to korsgaard, animals only have claims in a more deflationary sense than human beings do. the claims of animals are correlates of human duties regarding them (in the sense that they are protected by these duties and unwittingly help to determine some of their content but are not the authority that makes them binding). the claims of human 4 some commentators emphasize that (perfect) duties to oneself are important in kant’s ethical system (baranzke 2005; camenzind 2018; herman 2018). that is correct in general but misleading in the present context. the duty to cultivate sympathy and gratitude is comparatively unimportant in that it should usually not be prioritized over other duties, even if the class of (perfect) duties to oneself is of fundamental importance overall. relations – 10.1 june 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ korsgaard’s duties towards animals 21 beings, by contrast, are correlates of duties towards them that their authority helps to make binding. once we strip away the progressive vocabulary and recognize that what korsgaard calls the claims of animals are correlates to kantian duties to oneself regarding animals, it appears strange to say that they have the same weight as duties to human beings. the reason why one’s specific duties are binding is quite different depending on whether they are duties to human beings or duties regarding animals. an agent’s duties towards other human beings are binding because of claims others make on the agent based on their authority as colegislators of the moral law. by contrast, an agent’s duties regarding animals are binding because observing them is the only way to consistently honour the agent’s commitment to their own status as an end in itself qua animal. but it is hard to explain why consistency in one’s commitments should be as important as observing one’s duties to others. usually, we are not so obsessed with consistency. imagine a person who begins a long-term project independently of other rational agents – take korsgaard’s example of growing vegetables (korsgaard 2018, 143). the person treats this project as providing practical reasons to take various actions. but she can only consistently treat the project as providing reasons if she commits to seeing the project through to its end (say, the first harvest). we might even construe this as the person’s duty towards herself: to take herself seriously enough to finish the projects she has started. if she is concerned with consistency in her own normative commitments, she should show perseverance. but if the project comes into conflict with legitimate claims other human beings make on her, the concern for consistency should be treated as less important. if consistently tending to the garden comes into conflict with helping someone in need, consistency should obviously draw the short straw. it would be a peculiar and reprehensible kind of egocentrism to treat consistency in one’s own normative commitments (at least those that do not affect rational others) as equally important as one’s duties towards others. similarly, treating one’s duties regarding animals as equal in weight to our duties towards other human beings seems excessive if they are just duties to oneself to honour one’s normative commitments consistently. we may commit a wrong against ourselves by not being consistent, but that wrong is lightweight compared to violating the legitimate claims others make on us. we may retain a duty to sacrifice our consistency with pro tanto regret, to acknowledge that something valuable had to be sacrificed, but this again puts korsgaard in kant’s immediate vicinity. so korsgaard’s argument does not take us as far as she hopes. relations – 10.1 june 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ nico müller 22 6. conclusion: in favour of a radically progressive strategy we have seen that korsgaard’s approach faces two difficulties. first, she presents her approach as a moderately progressive view, but it collapses into a moderately conservative view. what korsgaard adds to a kantian framework are duties “towards” animals in name only; in standard kantian vocabulary, they are duties to oneself regarding animals. second, korsgaard’s duties are not as heavyweight as she presents them. since our duties regarding animals boil down to duties to oneself to honour our normative commitments consistently, it seems excessive to treat them as equally important as our duties towards human beings. these difficulties are inherent to moderately progressive and conservative views in kantian animal ethics. that even the most detailed and highly developed kantian contributions to animal ethics have not managed to overcome them should move us to consider the remaining strategic alternative, a radically progressive approach. such an approach would tackle the problem of the exclusion of animals from moral concern at its root, specifically, by denying that mutual constraint is a necessary condition for the existence of duties towards others. like the other approaches, a radically progressive approach faces a specific challenge: it must show that its transformation of kantianism does not sacrifice too much of what makes kantianism worthwhile to begin with. one danger is that kantianism simply could become incoherent without the idea of mutual constraint. another is that the resulting ethical framework would no longer be recognizably kantian. in order to be a helpful and interesting addition to the discussion in animal ethics, kantianism needs to remain coherent and recognizable, even when it accounts for duties towards animals. developing such an approach to kantian animal ethics is beyond the scope of this paper (that is the project of müller 2022). allow me just to point out some reasons for general optimism here. first, in contrast to many of today’s kantians, including korsgaard, kant himself did not heavily rely on the idea of a mutually shared moral law to derive specific duties. his picture is not that duties arise directly from claims others make. they derive from two general “ends that are at the same time duties” (ms 6:382-388), which are the happiness of others and (what kant calls) one’s own moral perfection. this origin story of our duties to others is largely independent from the idea of mutual constraint. as timmermann has pointed out, “kant would have rejected the idea that obligation is essentially interpersonal; his theory of obligation is fundamenrelations – 10.1 june 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ korsgaard’s duties towards animals 23 tally and radically first-personal” (timmermann 2014, 131). so the task of a radical progressive in kantian animal ethics is not so much to replace kant’s theory of interpersonal duties with an entirely different one but to reinforce the first-personal characteristics that kant’s theory already exhibits. framed in this way, the project of coherently revising kant’s ethical system to make it recognize duties towards animals does not appear hopeless at all. second, there are many features besides the idea of mutual constraint that could make kant’s philosophy an independent voice in animal ethics. kant’s philosophy derives duties from autonomy rather than from an axiology of pleasure and pain or a conception of the good life (as in utilitarianism and virtue ethics). it views duties as primary over moral rights or claims (in contrast to rights theory). it also incorporates an intricate taxonomy of duties, distinguishing duties of right from those of virtue, duties towards oneself from those towards others, duties of love from those of respect, and perfect duties from imperfect ones. this provides a vocabulary and a body of thought that cannot be found in animal ethics. so there is ample potential for a kantian ethics, revised so that it does without the idea of mutual constraint, to provide an independent and worthwhile perspective on issues in animal ethics. references references to kant use the pagination of the akademie-ausgabe (in the german original). references contain an abbreviated title (ms = metaphysik der sitten; anth  = anthropologie in pragmatischer 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in kant on persons and agency, edited by eric watkins, 174-191. cambridge: cambridge university press. hoff, christina. 1983. “kant’s invidious humanism”. environmental ethics 5 (1): 63-70. https://doi.org/10.5840/enviroethics19835137 howe, alex. 2019. “why kant animals have rights?”. journal of animal ethics 9 (2): 137-142. https://doi.org/10.5406/janimalethics.9.2.0137 judd, david, and james rocha. 2017. “autonomous pigs”. ethics and the environment 22 (1): 1-18. https://doi.org/10.2979/ethicsenviro.22.1.01 kant, immanuel. 1996. practical philosophy, translated and edited by mary j. gregor. cambridge: cambridge university press. korsgaard, christine m. 1986. “kant’s formula of humanity”. kant-studien 77 (1-4): 183-202. https://doi.org/10.1515/kant.1986.77.1-4.183 korsgaard, christine m. 1996. the sources of normativity. cambridge: cambridge university press. korsgaard, christine m. 2004. “fellow creatures: kantian ethics and our duties to animals”. the tanner lectures on human values 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nico d. 2022. kantianism for animals: a radical kantian animal ethic. new york: palgrave macmillan. pybus, elizabeth m., and alexander broadie. 1978. “kant and the maltreatment of animals”. philosophy 53 (206): 560-561. https://doi.org/10.1017/ s0031819100026383 regan, tom. (1983) 2004. the case for animal rights. reprint, berkeley: university of california press. rocha, james. 2015. “kantian respect for minimally rational animals”. social theory and practice 41 (2): 309-327. https://doi.org/10.5840/soctheorpract201541217 skidmore, james. 2001. “duties to animals: the failure of kant’s moral theory”. journal of value inquiry 35 (4): 541-559. https://doi.org/ 10.1023/ a:1013708710493 sorabji, richard. 1993. animal minds and human morals: the origins of the western debate. ithaca: cornell university press. timmermann, jens. 2005. “when the tail wags the dog: animal welfare and indirect duty in kantian ethics”. kantian review 10: 127-149. https://doi. org/10.1017/s1369415400002168 timmermann, jens. 2014. “kant and the second-person standpoint”. grazer philosophische studien 90: 131-147. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004298767_009 wolf, ursula. 2012. ethik der mensch-tier-beziehung. frankfurt am main: vittorio klostermann. wood, allen w. 1998. “kant on duties regarding nonrational nature”. aristotelian society supplementary volume 72 (1): 189-210. https://doi.org/10.1111/14678349.00042 relations – 10.1 june 2022 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ a sea cow goes to court: extinction and animal agency in a struggle against militarism 5 is sn 2 2 8 0 -9 9 5 3 beyond anthropocentrism 1 • january 2013 inside the emotional lives of non-human animals a minding animals international utrecht 2012 pre-conference event special issue (genoa, italy, 12-13 may, 2012) edited by m. andreozzi, r. bennison, a. massaro, s. tonutti capabilities approach and animal bioethics • michele panzera animals and our emotions. how to approach the study of an interspecific community? • sabrina tonutti advocacy and animal rights • kim stallwood the emotional lives of animals: a christian perspective • alma massaro – gianfranco nicora animalia: ontology and ethics in weak antispeciesism • leonardo caffo the contemporary debate on experimentation • susanna penco – rosagemma ciliberti non-human animals and genetic engineering • arianna ferrari the relationship between humans and other animals in european animal welfare legislation • paola sobbrio human’s best friends? • matteo andreozzi elationsre l a t io n s . b e y o n d a n t h r o p o c e n t r is m 1 • 2 0 1 3 r 8.1-2 november 2020 finding agency in nonhumans special issue edited by anne aronsson, fynn holm, melissa kaul introduction finding agency in nonhumans 7 anne aronsson fynn holm melissa kaul studies and research contributions conceptualizing robotic agency: social robots in elder care 17 in contemporary japan anne aronsson fynn holm “its hand around my throat”: the social rendering of borrelia 37 ritti soncco distributed skills in camel herding: cooperation 57 in a human-animal relationship in somaliland raphael schwere a sea cow goes to court: extinction and animal agency 77 in a struggle against militarism marius palz is skrei a historical norwegian figure? the nomadic symbiosis 97 of fish and humans in the lofoten islands nafsika papacharalampous relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ relations. beyond anthropocentrism 6 “agents of description”: animals, affect, and care 115 in thalia field’s experimental animals: a reality fiction (2016) shannon lambert comments, debates, reports and interviews on midgley and scruton: some limits of a too moderate 137 animal ethics francesco allegri author guidelines 145 relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 77 a sea cow goes to court extinction and animal agency in a struggle against militarism marius palz universitetet i oslo doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2020-0102-palz marius.palz@ikos.uio.no abstract in japan’s southernmost prefecture, okinawa, the japanese government is constructing a new military base for the united states marine corps despite ongoing local opposition and protest. sea grass beds, which are potential feeding grounds of the critically endangered okinawa dugong, are situated within the construction area. because of its critical status close to regional extinction, the dugong was declared a natural monument of japan in 1972, arguably putting it under protection of the united states national historic preservation act in context of the base construction. based on this assumption, and the dugong’s cultural significance for the people of okinawa, the issue was brought to an american court, a rare case where an animal plays a central role in a lawsuit dealing with cultural property. based on eduardo kohn’s anthropology beyond the human and his thoughts on life as a semiotic process the article explores the entanglements between dugongs and people. i argue that in this process dugongs play an active role. through their interpretation of the generated indexical signs at the construction site and their resulting behaviour, these animals give humans the opportunity to convert their presence and absence into the sphere of symbolic human interaction. keywords: base; court case; dugong; eduardo kohn; environmental justice; extinction; multispecies ethnography; okinawa; semiotics; symbols. 1. introduction because i’m a woman from okinawa, i will shortly speak about okinawa. the sea of okinawa still looks beautiful. looking down onto it from a hill, named the ‘hill from where one can see the dugongs’ by people who have never seen a dugong, the sea still looks so beautiful. into that sea, the relocation of an american army heliport was decided and to start the conrelations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2020-0102-palz mailto:marius.palz@ikos.uio.no https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ marius palz 78 struction, the government has already installed machines measuring the sea floor […] but last month dugongs came back to that very sea. exactly at that sea, where the heliport will be moved to, right above the machines that were installed by the government to measure the sea floor, a video of two dugongs, swimming in that ridiculously beautiful sea, was taken and the news spread throughout okinawa […] i don’t know to what extend this news was broadcasted in mainland japan, but the dugongs were very beautiful […] i want to sing the following song only for those dugongs. (neko3_paradisez 2016: 01:35) 1 with these words, cocco, a pop singer from okinawa, introduced her song jugon no mieru oka (literally: hill from where one can see the dugongs) at the 2007 live earth event in makuhari messe convention center, located a convenient one-hour train ride away from tokyo’s governmental district. using the international platform of a benefit concert in the heart of japan’s megalopolis, she shed a light on a local struggle taking place in the waters of okinawa hontō, her home island, 1500 kilometers down south. the charismatic dugongs she referred to play an important role in a story of militarism and resistance, environmental destruction and protest, extinction and multispecies entanglements – a story that people and dugongs alike are still writing today. in this article, i give an example from japan’s archipelagic periphery in which the threat for the regional extinction of one form of life contributes to social action in powerful ways. by bringing together thoughts on extinction and eduardo kohn’s approach of an anthropology beyond the human, i will embed this social action in a wider semiotic process, a process that acknowledges humans as well as nonhumans to shape the world we live in. in this semiotic process, inherent to all life, it is not just humans reacting to and producing signs, but dugongs as well. the article will shed a light on the multispecies entanglements that cluster around these gentle creatures and the cultural, political and ecological significance of their possible extinction. 2. extinction, nonhuman agency and the semiotic process of life extinction is happening increasingly all over the globe to such an extent that many environmental scientists acknowledge humans to be the driving force behind what some call the sixth mass extinction (mccallum 1 translation by the author. relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ a sea cow goes to court 79 2015; wagler 2018, 9). the united nations estimates the ongoing disappearance of species to be 10 to 100 times higher than the natural occurring rate, with up to one million species currently threatened with extinction (united nations 2019). nevertheless, as much as humans influence the reduction of biodiversity, so does the disappearance of these species influence human life. especially when endangered animals and plants are ascribed with not only ecological, but also cultural significance, species extinction can mobilize various forms of action and by doing so have the potential to expose and counter structures of inequality, environmental destruction, and nationalism. as the anthropologist genese marie sodikoff puts it: “[…] extinction events have been experienced, recognized, interpreted, and deployed as catalysts for social change […]” (2012a, 3). extinction is not a singular event. it is not merely the passing of a last individual creature, an “endling” (jørgensen 2016), from this planet, but the vanishing of a particular “way of life” with all its “entanglements” as field philosopher thom van dooren points out (2014). thousands of these lifeforms have died before this last individual and by that, the species’ relations to other beings have already been altered (ibid., 8, 12). along with their gradual decline, surrounding phenomena (humans, nonhuman animals, plants, or even landscapes) may change their behavior, adapting or failing to adapt to the loss of a unique “way of life”. thus, we cannot deny that extinction events have impact on multiple other life forms including us. the gradually increasing absence of ways of life puts the last of a species more and more into the focus of human attention. becoming present by being absent, they spark social action of sympathetic humans on their behalf, but they also empower groups of people that hold special relations to these vanishing creatures. some of these groups are themselves entangled in wider nets of minority-state relations or interand intracommunity struggle, and also facing extinction of cultural forms of expression and ways of life. i refer especially to indigenous communities and different kinds of minorities from all around the globe struggling to secure their cultural heritage and traditional (ecological) knowledge. the specific relations between these groups and vanishing species are often historically explicit, manifesting themselves in mythology and prayer, hunting practices and taboos (coté 2010; sodikoff 2012b). how can we detect agency within these processes of loss and their impact on humans and other nonhuman life forms? does it lie merely with humans and in their interpretation of extinction events or also with nonhuman beings, such as the last of a species kind? relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ marius palz 80 human communities are never exclusively human. we share the world with countless of other beings and with each of them we hold particular relations. this does not mean that other life forms are merely marginal notes in human culture, but that they coproduce a network of relations in which humans are just one of many continuously evolving ways of life. we therefore live in a world where “being is always becoming, becoming is always becoming-with” (van dooren et al. 2016, 2). in other words, we live and die in a shared world (van dooren 2019). consequently, to fully understand what it means to be human, we need an approach that opens itself up to nonhumans and engages in interspecies connections. this is what eduardo kohn called an “anthropology beyond the human” (2013, 7). also known as “multispecies ethnography”, this approach “centers on how a multitude of organisms’ livelihoods shape and are shaped by political, economic, and cultural forces” (kirksey and helmreich 2010, 545). for kohn semiosis is at the core of human-nonhuman relations and therefore life itself is inherently semiotic (2013, 74). looking at ecuador’s rainforest, he explains how all its inhabitants, humans, animals and plants constantly interpret and react to surrounding signs. be it a monkey who reacts to the sound of a falling tree by jumping to another one as it interprets the branches’ movements as deriving from potential danger (ibid., 30), or a dog mistaking a brown-furred big animal in the bushes for a deer, and therefore prey, before realizing that it is actually a dangerous mountain lion (ibid., 71-73). all these (mis-)interpretations of signs show us that humans are not the only ones who make sense of their surrounding and therefore constitute selves. as all these selves stay in relation to each other when interpreting the world, they form an “ecology of selves” (ibid., 78). but why is this important in our search of nonhuman agency in a time of anthropogenic extinction? both humans and nonhumans, are in a constant process of interpreting the world, reacting to phenomena, to signs that surround us, including other forms of life, other selves. these forms of interpretations and the resulting actions do not necessarily have to be conscious, but they themselves cause others to react. as kohn puts it: “selves, human or nonhuman, simple or complex, are outcomes of semiosis as well as the starting points for new sign interpretation whose outcome will be a future self. they are waypoints in a semiotic process” (ibid., 34). this constant chain of interpreting each other’s signs and reacting to them means that nonhuman selves have an impact on human behavior, although the results of this impact might differ, depending on how their actions are interpreted. this is a crucial point, because it is relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ a sea cow goes to court 81 here that humans interweave this semiotic process with yet another layer, using a form of signs that is, according to kohn, exclusively human: symbols (ibid., 31). relying on peirce’s idea of signs being divided into three categories in relation to the object it refers to (iconic, indexical and symbolic), kohn acknowledges nonhuman selves to be able to react to and compose iconic and indexical signs, but not symbols (ibid., 55). whereas icons are a close representation of the original object of reference (e.g. a photograph of a tree represents an actual tree to a human; the indifference between mammals all just representing a body to feed on for a tick; ibid., 85), indices are pointing towards something else (e.g. a picture of a skull representing poison to a human; the sound and movements of a crashing tree representing danger to a monkey). symbols, on the other hand, are so abstract that they can only be understood and acted upon in a cultural context (e.g. lines and dots that together form letters, constituting written language). however, these symbolic references are based on the other two categories of signs, as symbols “emerge” out of them (ibid., 54). this also means that only humans can translate a specific semiotic process from the sphere of icons and indices into one of symbols. after translation, it evolves as a human semiotic process. these humans find themselves in their own cultural, spatial, and temporal context. in the case that follows, this context consists of an anti-base protest movement in okinawa evolving in a time of anthropogenic mass extinction and international militarism. taking kohn’s attempt seriously means that human symbols are only one part of a wider semiotic process, a process that humans constitute together with nonhuman selves, namely dugongs in this case study. it is in this sense that i will reflect on nonhuman agency on the pages to come. the dugongs’ embeddedness in the semiotic process of life enables humans to further translate the generated indexical signs into a symbolic context. it is this hierarchical relation between the indexical behavior of the dugongs and the symbolic context of human culture that kohn stresses when writing: “[s]ymbols are the product of higher-order relations among indices, also with novel emergent properties with respect to indices. this only goes in one direction. symbolic reference requires indices, but indexical reference does not need symbols” (ibid., 171). while the strong connection between humans and symbols acknowledges human agency, this approach also gives room to the fundamental importance of indices produced by nonhuman selves. it therefore finds a place for the dugongs’ agency in the story. to understand these thoughts relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ marius palz 82 on multispecies entanglements, let us now turn to a place humans call okinawa, its human and nonhuman selves and how their “ways of life” are interwoven into a specific semiotic process. 3. okinawa from the southern tip of kyushu, one of japan’s main islands, we could draw a slightly curved line from one small isle to the next until our pen reaches taiwan. this line roughly corresponds to the ryukyu archipelago of which the southern half encompasses the japanese prefecture of okinawa. once a semi-independent kingdom, built on a vast network of trading routes in east and southeast asia, it fell under direct japanese rule in 1872 and was reformed into a modern prefecture in 1887. once incorporated into the japanese empire, the inhabitants of the former ryukyu kingdom entered an ambivalent state, being assimilated into mainland japanese culture, while maintaining a status as outsiders resulting in severe discrimination (rabson 1996; meyer 2020). figure 1. – okinawa hontō (© fynn holm). relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ a sea cow goes to court 83 of the 160 islands that form the prefecture, okinawa hontō, the main island, houses not only the majority of the prefecture’s population, but also roughly 70 percent of american military personal within japan. the fact that the population of okinawa has to endure such a massive exposure to military (and all the accompanying problems like accidents, sexual violence, noise and environmental pollution), although it constitutes merely 0,6 percent of japan’s landmass, led to various forms of protest since the end of the pacific war 2 (tanji 2006). the reasons for this overwhelming presence are to be found in japan’s defeat, an u.s. occupation period (1945-1972) during which private landowners were stripped off their property for the construction of military facilities 3, and the importance of the united states-japan security treaty into which okinawa prefecture was included after its return to japan in 1972. during the korean and vietnam wars, the american bases on okinawa held high strategic importance as bombers and troops regularly departed from the island. to understand how this highly militarized prefecture is entangled in a web of multispecies relations, let us zoom into a specific site, cape henoko surrounded by the waters of henoko and oura bays, where antimilitary protest formed unexpected alliances with nonhuman actors, the dugongs. these alliances, i will argue, are especially fruitful, because they reveal multispecies entanglements with reference to cultural practices, while linking a local struggle to the field of international relations. 4. an unexpected ally dugongs (scientific name dugong dugon) are relatives of the manatee, together forming the only surviving species of the sirenia order. they are the only strictly herbivorous marine mammals on earth and depend on specific types of seagrass 4, which grow close to the shore (ikeda 2012, 2 the inhabitants of okinawa prefecture were the only civilians to experience ground warfare on japanese soil during ww ii, resulting in the death of one quarter to one third of the main islands civilian population and the destruction of up to 90 percent of all buildings. not only the fierce attacks by the americans (commonly known as the typhoon of steel) contributed to this tragedy, but also instructions by the japanese military to commit mass suicide instead of falling prisoner to the enemy. additionally to this, many were slaughtered in suspicion of being spies when they used their local dialect, reminding the okinawans of their ambivalent position within the japanese society. the experiences of the battle of okinawa told and retold over generations contribute significantly to the current local identity (allen 2002, 33-38). 3 about 15 percent of the island is currently under control of the u.s. military. 4 the local okinawan expression for seagrass beds is jan gusa numī, which literally translates to “dugong’s grass sea” (jugon hogo kyanpēn sentā 2002, 28). relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ marius palz 84 42-45). this specialized diet and its low reproduction rate make the species highly vulnerable to environmental change. its habitat stretches from the red sea and coastal areas of the indian ocean, to coasts of the southwest pacific (e.g. papua new guinea and australia) and south-east asia. the dugongs around okinawa make up the northern most population of this species. despite its broad habitat, overfishing (sometimes as bycatch), boat collisions, habitat fragmentation and destruction, as well as marine pollution and climate change are putting significant pressure on the populations, letting the dugong be categorized as “vulnerable” by the international union for conservation of nature (iucn) (marsh and sobtzick 2019). however, the situation of the okinawan dugong is even more severe. once a more common sight during the ryukyu kingdom (1429-1879), it played a vital role in myths and ritual practices, including festivals and songs. in stories from kouri island for example, it is affiliated with humans’ development, describing how humans became aware of their own sexuality and nakedness after witnessing two dugongs having sex (tōyama 2011, 175). in other myths it is perceived as a mermaid-like creature calling tsunamis or warning kind-hearted people of the big waves (manabe 2002, 51-54; tōyama 2011, 176). for some it even represented a divine existence, visiting from the world of the gods, niraikanai (jugon hogo kyanpēn sentā 2002, 74). during the ryukyu kingdom period the islanders of aragusuku-jima were the only ones who were officially allowed to hunt the dugong and pay their taxes with its meat, which developed into a delicacy at the court in the capital shuri, reserved for the nobility and foreign delegations (tōyama 2011, 186; ikeda 2012, 152). with the kingdom’s downfall hunting restrictions were abolished, leading to a decline in the population 5. this was exacerbated by povertydriven overfishing in post-war years as well as coastal development projects (tōyama 2011, 188). due to the shrinking population, the dugong was declared a natural monument (tennen kinenbutsu) under the okinawa law for the protection of cultural properties in 1955 and was then included into the corresponding japanese law after the prefecture’s reversion in 1972 (welch et al. 2010, 23-32). today the okinawan dugong stands on the verge of extinction. the population is estimated to be critically low, less than a dozen individuals, although due to the lack of observational data, no exact conclusions can be made. as sightings became rarer and rarer, scientist rely on indirect 5 hunting records show that at least 327 specimen were killed between 1894 and 1916 (uni 2003). relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ a sea cow goes to court 85 forms of presence detection such as so-called dugong trenches, trace lines in the seagrass bed left over from grazing. one of the presumably last three dugongs (referred to as individuals a, b, and c) in the waters of northern okinawa was found dead in march 2019 and the whereabouts of the remaining two are currently unknown. hence, the iucn declared the regional population to be “critically endangered” that same year (sirenia specialist group 2019, 2). the aforementioned henoko and oura bays play an important role in the extinction story of the okinawan dugong. seagrass beds, the dugong’s feeding grounds, are situated within the area, which was declared a construction site for a new military facility in 2005. after years of opposition land reclamation to fill up ca. 160 hectares of bay area started in 2014. this is the american army heliport singer cocco mentioned in her short speech at the 2007 live earth event. constructed by the japanese government for the american military, its official purpose is to replace marine corps air station futenma 6, although many protesters see the new facility as more than a mere replacement. with direct access to the sea 7, they perceive the futenma replacement facility (frf) as an upgrade of the old base and yet another example of american militarism and discrimination by the japanese government, which is not willing to move the base from the prefecture to mainland japan. moreover, the construction will not only affect the feeding grounds of the dugong, but the livelihoods of hundreds of other species too, including rare blue corals. in an official letter to the u.s. secretary of defense and high-ranking military personel the governor of okinawa denny tamaki, quotes numbers of 5,300 different species living in the bay areas, including 263 endangered species (tamaki 2020). some of them were only discovered recently such as uruma ourana and rayllianassa rudisulcus, two small crabs (diving team snack snufkin 2015, 113). an environmental impact assessment (eia), conducted by the okinawa defense bureau (a local branch bureau of the japanese ministry of defense) and completed in 2012, came to the conclusion that 6 labeled by former secretary of defense donald rumsfeld “the most dangerous base in the world”, this facility is located in the densely populated futenma area of ginowan city, lacking “clear zones” at each end of the runway where accidents are most likely to occur during take-off and landing procedures. this happened several times, including the 2004 crash of a helicopter into a building of adjoining okinawa international university and the drop of a helicopter window onto the playground of futenma daini elementary school in 2017 (lummis 2018). 7 the deep waters of oura bay would enable large vessels to approach the facility, making missile storage possible (fukumoto 2019). relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ marius palz 86 the construction of the new base will have “no adverse effects” on okinawa’s dugong population (yoshikawa and okinawa environmental justice project 2020, 2). shortly after survey drillings commenced in 2014, no dugong activities, neither direct sightings nor feeding trails, could be detected in oura bay and the construction site proper anymore. dugongs, however, had visited the area before (okinawa defense bureau and idea co. quoted in yoshikawa and okinawa environmental justice project 2020, 8). this is a crucial point. individuals a, b, and c had been sighted in the waters of oura bay in the past. especially individual a and c visited the area more frequently. figure 2. – construction site for the frf (© fynn holm). although the whereabouts of individuals a and c (with individual b being the one who was found dead) are unknown and there have been no direct sightings of dugongs in the area, an underwater recording device installed by the okinawa defense bureau in the middle of oura bay detected high pitched sounds in february and march 2020. according to experts, these sounds are most likely dugong calls (okinawa bōeikyoku 2020, 11). as yoshikawa and the okinawa environmental justice project pointed out, nearly all of the calls were recorded during times when relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ a sea cow goes to court 87 there was no construction work going on (2020, 9). taking the change in behavior of individuals a and c as well as the recordings seriously would mean that dugongs are most likely reacting to the environmental changes at henoko and oura bays. in other words, they are interpreting and reacting to signs of a changing surrounding. the drilling with big machinery, the dumping of massive concrete blocks into the ocean to construct barriers, land fillings of millions of cubic meters of soil and vessel traffic are just some of the changes the area has seen over the last years. i want to take kohn’s approach as life as a semiotic process to make sense of this situation. the signs of change are interpreted by the dugongs leading them to react: they decide to avoid the area during construction hours. whether this is a conscious decision or not is not relevant. the relevant point is that the dugongs as selves have the capacity to interpret the signs produced by humans in oura bay, signs that point to an undesirable environment. only when these indexical signs are missing, so it seems, do the dugongs approach the area. as a part of an ecology of selves, the dugongs are entangled with the bays’ seagrass beds and during the last couple of years, they became part of a new semiotic process, relating to the construction work in their own way. and so, without knowing, they also became part of a struggle against militarism. 5. crossing the pacific ocean in 2003 a network of okinawan individuals, japanese and american environmental groups brought the protest against the frf construction to yet another battleground: the u.s. district court in san francisco. the case was filed as “okinawa dugong vs. donald rumsfeld” 8 and went through various stages of trial. in 2008 the united states district court for the northern district of california dismissed the okinawa dugong as a plaintiff, reasoning that animals do not have legal standing in american courts. however, three (human) individuals living in okinawa and four of six organizations were granted standing (united states district court 2008, 16-20). the law-suit’s main focus lies on the fact that the dugong is enlisted as a natural monument under japan’s law for protection of cultural 8 named after the former secretary of defense, the case was renamed several times, depending on who was in office at that stage. after the dugong was dismissed as a plaintiff, the leading plaintiff became the center for biological diversity. relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ marius palz 88 properties which is argued to be the equivalent of the u.s. national historic preservation act of 1966 (nhpa). it was the first time nhpa was used in a court case dealing with a situation outside the u.s. and with an animal. it states under section 402 added in 1980 that [p]rior to the approval of any federal undertaking outside the united states which may directly and adversely affect a property which is on the world heritage list or on the applicable country’s equivalent of the national register, the head of a federal agency having direct or indirect jurisdiction over such undertaking shall take into account the effect of the undertaking on such property for purposes of avoiding or mitigating any adverse effects. (united states national historic preservation act of 1966 as amended through 1992) the national register that is mentioned here refers to the national register of historic places, america’s “list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects significant in american history, architecture, archeology, engineering, and culture” (national park service). whereas the plaintiffs pointed to the equivalency of america’s national register and japan’s law for protection of cultural properties and are convinced that the department of defense (dod) should not have approved japanese construction plans without taking its impact on the dugong as a natural monument into account, the defendants argued that the american list only refers to places, meaning that only properties that correspond to this definition have to be dealt with (united states court of appeals for the ninth circuit 2020). the dod commissioned a study on the dugong’s cultural significance to the people of okinawa after being obliged to conduct further research on the construction’s effects on the dugong (welsh et al. 2010). based on this report and the eai conducted by the okinawa defense bureau, the dod came to the conclusion that “the construction and operation of the frf will not have adverse effects on the local okinawa dugong population” (u.s. marine corps 2014, 17). the plaintiffs declared both studies to be insufficient: the dod’s researchers failed “to consult with plaintiffs as interested parties” and “seek public involvement” (united states district court for the northern district of california san francisco division 2014, 15) and the eia did not represent the importance of henoko and oura bays as dugong habitat adequately (yoshikawa and okinawa environmental justice project 2020, 10-13). despite these objections against the military’s findings the u.s. court of appeals for the ninth circuit eventually ruled in the dod’s favor in may 2020 bringing the okinawa dugong case to an end after seventeen years. this is a disappointing decision from the eyes of the protest movement, but the seventeen-year long trial arguably conrelations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ a sea cow goes to court 89 tributed to a significant delay of construction work in henoko, involving money, manpower, sweat and tears. let us now look at the court case from the proposed perspective as life as a semiotic process. a lawsuit is without a doubt a context bursting with symbols constantly generated and interpreted by human actors. arguments and counterarguments are made in human language, in which sounds are abstracted to convey meaning, behavior in the court room, from appropriate clothing to timekeeping, is shaped by culturally set rules and even the physical space is arranged in a highly symbolic manner, assigning each party, from judge to plaintiff, defendant and audience, a specific place at a specific time in the court room. even the listing of the okinawa dugong as a plaintiff in the first stage of the trial is a symbolic act conducted by humans, so is the dismissal of legal standing for an animal by the judges. the dugong is not physically present. it is only as a symbol in documents, speech and thought that it enters this specific sphere of human culture. at the utmost we could speak of a borrowed agency as humans represent the dugong in a context the dugong itself does not have access to. this lawsuit finds itself embedded in a wider highly symbolic interaction between humans: the conflict about the frf, involving parties like the protest movement, the japanese government and the u.s. military 9. concerning the protest movement, affiliated with the plaintiffs, the presence of the dugong in okinawan culture and its status as a natural monument are driving factors to include it into the struggle against the base. so is its state of being critically endangered, a species on the verge of regional extinction that is at the same time a cultural figure. however, including the dugong into this sphere of symbolic, and therefore human, conflict is only possible because of the dugongs’ presence as physical beings and the actions of those beings. if dugongs had not frequently visited the construction site, there would be no argumentative possibility to include it into the anti-base struggle. this is also why the dod contests the very presence of dugongs in the area. in other words, it is the dugongs’ interpretation of the seagrass beds as signs of a habitable environment that is translated into a symbolic context of human interaction. without that very interpretation of the seagrass (and maybe other factors, we are not aware of) as a place worth visiting, the semiotic process would 9 i am aware that even among human actors there are more parties involved: construction companies, riot police, media, etc. all of these groups are in themselves again highly diverse, each member being involved differently. other nonhuman selves have much at stake too, as the bays compose rich ecosystems. relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ marius palz 90 be a different one. maybe other highly endangered species living in the area would have been included into the court case, but if so, this would have happened on different grounds of argumentation, as they lack the cultural context the dugong is embedded in, especially the status as a natural monument. certainly, the high mobility of the dugong, moving in and out of the bays, results in signs that are interpreted by various humans very differently. this becomes clear if we compare the argumentation by the opposing conflict parties. to argue that the dugong and its mobility have no effect at all however would dismiss its entanglements with humans. according to kohn’s multispecies approach, dugongs play a significant role in the chain of interpretation of and action upon different kinds of signs present in the bays. being attracted to seagrass beds and repelled by construction, the dugongs react to signs, again leading humans to interpret these absences and presences in certain ways. only because of the dugong’s interpretation of the construction area, is it possible for the protest movement to translate the resulting behaviour into the symbolic sphere of a courtroom. the dugong’s action therefore constitutes, if not a starting point (as life itself is a continuous semiotic process), a precursor to human symbol-based interaction. 6. it is their very existence that matters in this article, i explored kohn’s thoughts on life as a semiotic process in a time of extinction. to grasp the full meaning and the limits of the dugong’s agency, we have to look at the wider picture the dugongs and humans of okinawa are embedded in. this means to turn to the dugong’s relevance for a distinct okinawan identity, which is highly intertwined with a struggle against neo-colonialist structures and militarism, but also to the specific condition the okinawan dugong population finds itself in: a state of emergency, on the edge of extinction. while agreeing with van dooren that “extinction is never a sharp, singular event” but rather “a slow unravelling of intimately entangled ways of life that begins long before the death of the last individual and continues to ripple forward long afterward” (2014, 12), we cannot deny that there lies a miraculous power with these last individuals and the uncertainty about their numbers. the discovery of dugong calls after the absence of any live signs for months illustrates how these last survivors show us the limits of our knowledge about their current state. being absent but present at the same time, they enabled the protesters to interpret the construction site relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ a sea cow goes to court 91 as a relevant dugong habitat under threat. by that, they gave the protesters the opportunity to push the movement forward into new directions and to such a degree that plaintiffs and attorneys were willing to fight for them in an american court. the symbolic power of these dugongs derives from a combination of their critical state close to extinction, their cultural significance, their charismatic character and the uncertainty that hovers around their very existence. regardless of what the actual numbers are, the court case contributed considerably to the protest movement, possibly delaying the base’s construction, as the dod was required to conduct research on its impact on the dugong population and its cultural relevance. the fact that the judges of the united states district court dismissed the okinawa dugong as a plaintiff tells us more about the anthropocentric legal system the court is embedded in and how it operates in the symbolic realm of human communication, than about animal agency. the fact that a species on the verge of extinction becomes part of a protest network against neo-colonialist structures and militarism may say something though. it shows that the impression these beings leave on humans is stronger than those of other species, which are equally endangered by the construction of the facility 10. this impression resulted in a renewed cultural significance, and combined with the species’ critical condition, let the dugong become a natural monument. only by virtue of their status as a natural monument did they qualify at all for the anthropocentric spheres of a legal court. what is more important, however, is their role in the semiotic process that eventually leads to the court case. here their back and forth between physical presence and absence at the construction site based on their own interpretation of the environment, enables a human engagement in the first place. in other words, the dugongs still possess agency, although they only enter the legal sphere as symbols. it is also noteworthy that the lawsuit is not filed in connection to biological diversity laws (as for example the endangered species act), but on grounds of a law explicitly referring to the protection of cultural properties. although the word “property” might be inappropriate in a paper dealing with nonhuman agency, the complex concept of culture in this case is connected to the dugongs as living entities, a way of life, embedded in a network of entanglements that stretches far wider than just playing a part in a local ecosystem. they matter to humans not only 10 i do not want to deny that other life forms are actors too and equally shape multispecies entanglements, but in connection to the court case example, the dugong plays an outstanding role. relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ marius palz 92 because songs are sung and myths retold, but because their very aliveness (not the memory of it) is relevant to members of the local community. although it is true that humans project symbolic power onto these animals, it is also true that the dugongs are more than just a canvas. they are moving, breathing, grazing, calve-raising beings, who coproduce connections through their behavior together with human counterparts. the relevance of their endangered existence has the power to send people to court, because with the extinction of those gentle creatures their impact on human culture changes and multispecies entanglements are unraveled. in the context of okinawa, this means that future generations will not be able to experience a presence that contributes to a unique identity, which sets them apart from a mainland society that for the last 150 years has tried to assimilate, yet rejected and sacrificed okinawans and their way of living at the same time 11. no matter from which angle one looks at it, in connection to ecological diversity, cultural diversity or environmental justice, it is always the dugong’s very existence that matters in the semiotic process of life. after the dugongs revealed themselves in 2007, cocco dedicated her song to them, expressing the deep impression those creatures left on her as an okinawan woman. her quote in the beginning of this article is yet another example how humans translate the physical presence of an animal into the semiotic sphere of symbols. thirteen years later, the court case orbiting around the dugongs’ regional extinction is over, but people are still protesting. as trucks dump soil into the sea of henoko and oura bays, still no dugongs have been sighted in the area. yet, the recorded dugong calls, audible on days construction pauses, point towards their presence, which will be interpreted in one way or the other by the diverse humans entangled with the bays. what kind of impact these new signs will have on the conflict has yet to be seen, but the agency of the dugongs in the semiotic process of life and their impact on human forms of cultural expression cannot be denied. 11 by this, i do not mean to reduce okinawan culture to questions of japan-ryukyu dichotomy. instead, i want to present one aspect of the ever changing, fragile, complex and sometimes contradictory concept of identity. allen (2002) showed that it does not make sense to reduce okinawan identity only to political issues and tanji (2006) explained in detail how diverse the protest movement in the prefecture is. on the other hand, it is important to acknowledge which role the treatment of okinawa by the japanese government played in the formation of individual and collective identity. relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ a sea cow goes to court 93 7. acknowledgements research for this article was conducted in the context of the project whales of power: aquatic mammals, devotional practices, and environmental change in maritime east asia. this project is funded by the european union’s horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement no. 803211 (erc starting grant 2018). references allen, matthew. 2002. identity and resistance in okinawa. lanham: rowman & littlefield publishers. coté, charlotte. 2010. spirits of our whaling ancestors: revitalizing makah and nuu-chah-nulth traditions. seattle london: university of washington press. diving team snack snufkin. 2015. ōura wan no ikimono tachi – ryūkyū ko seibutsu tayōsei no jūyō chiten, okinawa jima ōura wan. kagoshima: nanpou shinsya. fukumoto, daisuke. 2019. “kensetsu susumu henoko ha futenma hikōjō no ‘daitai shisetsu’? sore to mo ‘shinkichi’?”. okinawa times, february 21. https:// www.okinawatimes.co.jp/articles/-/387118 ikeda, kazuko. 2012. jugon – umi no kurashi, hito to no kakawari. tokyo: 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center for bio. diversity v. patrick shanahan”. youtube. last modified february 4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73t3rujhn1o&t=1033s united states national historic preservation act of 1966 as amended through 1992, public law 102-575. https://www.nps.gov/history/local-law/ nhpa1966.htm relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.nps.gov/subjects/nationalregister/what-is-the-nationalhttps://www.nps.gov/subjects/nationalregister/what-is-the-nationalhttps://www.ledonline.it/relations/ a sea cow goes to court 95 uni, yoshikazu. 2003. “okinawa jugon hokaku tōkei”. nago hakubutsukan kiyō ajimā: 1-14. u.s. marine corps. 2014. u.s. marine corps recommended findings april 2014. http://img03.ti-da.net/usr/o/k/i/okinawabd/findings_14sapril_revisedsfinalsk2k.pdf van dooren, thom. 2014. flight ways: life and loss at the edge of extinction. new york: columbia university press. van dooren, thom. 2019. the wake of crows: living and dying in shared worlds. new york: columbia university press. van dooren, thom, eben kirksey, and ursula münster. 2016. “multispecies studies: cultivating arts of attentiveness”. environmental humanities 8 (1): 1-23. wagler, ron. 2018. “6th mass extinction”. in encyclopedia of the anthropocene, 9-12. amsterdam: elsevier. yoshikawa, hideki, and okinawa environmental justice project. 2020. “the plight if the okinawa dugong”. the asia pacific journal – japan focus 18 (16): 2. https://apjjf.org/-yoshikawa-hideki--okinawa-environmental-justiceproject-/5451/article.pdf relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 http://img03.tihttps://apjjf.org/-yoshikawahttps://www.ledonline.it/relations/ learning about the emotional lives of kangaroos. cognitive justice and environmental sustainability learning about the emotional lives of kangaroos cognitive justice and environmental sustainability steve garlick 1 rosemary austen 2 1 conjoint professor, centre for urban and regional studies, university of newcastle 2 wildlife specialist, possumwood wildlife inc, nsw doi: 10.7358/rela-2014-001-garl steve.c.garlick@gmail.com rosemaryausten60@gmail.com abstract this paper reports on research into wildlife emotion, interpretation and usefulness as a means for broad-scale learning about environmental sustainability. part of the australian landscape for 16 million years, the iconic kangaroo has characteristics that make them suited, as wild animals, for humans to learn about environmental integrity. a “new way of knowing” about sustainability is proposed that seeks to learn directly from wildlife through their emotional states using a “being-for” (bauman 1995), relational (derrida 2002), ethic of care (donovan 1996; noddings 1984; kheel 2008). within the context of cognitive justice we propose wildlife knowledge systems that need to be respected. we incorporate recent research on affective neuroscience in mammals (panksepp 1998 and 2004) into our own work in rehabilitating large numbers of seriously injured kangaroos prior to their release/return to the wild (garlick and austen 2010). this work enables identifying and interpreting emotion markers in various environmental contexts and their consequent sustainability. progressing from a case example of learning through a particular transformational animal encounter, to where an entire community might be similarly transformed to address sustainability questions is possible to conceptualise through the “ecoversity”. keywords: relational ethics, affective neuroscience, ethic of care, environmental sustainability, kangaroos, ecoversity, cognitive justice; wildlife emotion; forms of togetherness, animal knowledge system. 1. introduction for far too long we have relied on human exceptionalism (plumwood 2007) in tackling the urgent questions of our planet’s environmental sustainhttp://www.ledonline.it/relations/ steve garlick rosemary austen 34 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ability. the tacit assumption of a transcendent animal/human boundary ensures our learning is predicated on lopsided anthropocentric perspectives. human exceptionalism and anthropocentrism has been the mainstay of western modernity, metaphysics, environmental science, ethics and humanism (derrida 2002). over the millennia this divisive and unbalanced way of acquiring knowledge has enabled western civilisation to inflict astoundingly barbarous and destructive results on the environment. debates, discussions, recommendations and reports addressing the problems of environmental, economic and social crises of unsustainability have proliferated over past decades. growing public and government awareness of climate change and the need to make dominant forms of practice sustainable is old news for many, as is the belief that solutions are to be found in scientific, technical and market fixes. the monetarist conservation and preservation practices of the past thirty years have done little to address escalating greenhouse gas emissions and biodiversity loss, and auditing and valuation practices have had limited impact. the argument that there is no limit to human creativity and knowledge may not always accord with a common planetary good and what a fair-minded society might expect. their creativity and new knowledge may not always accord with a common planetary good and what a fair-minded society might expect. rather than “educated” humans saying only what they are “good at” on matters to do with environmental sustainability, they should be reflecting more on the ethical contribution of what they are “good for”, as much of the environmental mismanagement we see today results from the decisions and actions of educated human “experts” (orr 1992). “good-for” is like “being-for” (bauman 1995), enabling activity, engagement and contribution without any reciprocal expectations. human exceptionalism, which mostly performs and exhibits “good at” characteristics, has proven dangerous for the environment. by excluding the knowledge held by the non-human animal inhabitants of the environment, that is, animal knowledge systems, science disciplines may be challenged as not fully meeting their own epistemological rules of empiricism – particularly the correspondence and comprehensiveness tests. ecology, prone to focus only on the collective biota, is one such discipline in which these rules of empiricism might be challenged. this paper reports on our research into wildlife emotion, and its interpretation and usefulness as a means for learning more about environmental sustainability. having been a part of the australian landscape for 16 million years, our belief is that the globally iconic kangaroo can tell us much about the environment. this would otherwise remain unseen and unheard unless we are able to have a direct means of communication with it. learning about the emotional lives of kangaroos 35 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the social, affectionate and gentle nature of kangaroos, their ability to range over large areas of the landscape, their vulnerability in limiting environments, the overtness in the expression of their emotions, and the strong anthropocentric instrumentalism and barbarism shown towards them by ecologists, conservationists and australian governments, supposedly concerned about environmental sustainability, make this wild animal highly relevant to human learning about matters of environmental integrity. we argue they have significant ethical agency to offer in our learning about questions of environmental sustainability. like an out-of-control grand panjandrum, this human world shows no bounds to its ingenuity in finding even more grotesque ways, based on ever more flaccid arguments, to make a misery of the lives of innocent non-human animals of all kinds and in all situations, when the answers too many of our environmental questions reside with their innate and intrinsic knowledge. it is unfortunate that by adopting a “mastery of nature” approach (plumwood 1993) and ignoring the knowledge of non-human animals, many aspects of wildlife science contribute to this misery. 2. literature themes a “new way of knowing” about sustainability is proposed that seeks to learn directly from wildlife through their emotional states, as individuals and in their social groups, through a “being-for” (bauman 1995), relational (derrida 2002), ethic of care (plumwood 1993; donovan 1996; kheel 2008). based on this ethic, we incorporate recent research on affective neuroscience in mammals (panksepp 1998 and 2004) into our own work in rehabilitating large numbers of seriously injured and traumatised kangaroos prior to their release/return to the wild (garlick and austen 2010). this work provides the building blocks for identifying and interpreting emotion markers in various contexts, including the wild environment and its sustainability. this approach to knowing about environmental sustainability seeks to go beyond knowing about animal biophysics and biota only from obtuse and remote scientific experimentation and simple observation. introducing learning into the mix of an encounter with a wild animal, underpinned by an ethic of care, has interesting implications, not only for a number of environmental science disciplines (particularly wildlife ecology) but also for institutional environment managers. such an approach to the acquisition of knowledge not only reflects agency but is consistent with the notion of cognitive justice and the democratisation of knowledge (visvanathan 1997) because it is concerned with extending steve garlick rosemary austen 36 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ our source of knowledge about environmental sustainability beyond the human and the scientific and into and beyond the realm of experience or tacit knowledge of those from non-human animal worlds that inhabit these environments. we can call these “animal knowledge systems” (aks). six neural emotional states (joy, separation, anger, relaxation, nurturance, and sexuality) are used and a range of kangaroo markers that reflect these states are identified in both in-care and the wild contexts. from these, reinforcing and restricting environments for wildlife are identified with respect to two key emotional states for mammals identified by panksepp (1998 and 2004). these are “seeking” to engage with opportunity in the wider world in terms of their capability (nussbaum 2003 and 2011), and “fear/escaping” from a limiting environment to places where capability can be exercised more fully. the classification of a wildlife environment as reinforcing or restricting is a clear indication of its health from the perspective of a wild animal – an inhabitant of millennia rather than that of an episodic human visitor. the task of progressing from a case example and a particular environmental context, in which there is learning through a particular transformational animal encounter, to one in which an entire community or numerous communities might be similarly transformed to address sustainability questions in other contexts can be conceptualised. to advance this notion of a “commons” we have elsewhere suggested the idea of the ecoversity as a learning framework for engagement between humans and the environment (garlick et al. 2009; garlick and matthews 2009; matthews et al. 2009; matthews and garlick 2012). the ecoversity, with its foundation in context-based relational ethics and learning provides a mechanism to help bridge the gap between human and non-human animals. it can facilitate a transformative encounter which can generate the knowledge to foster creative and ethical solutions to animal welfare and environmental sustainability. 3. derrida and transformative encounters with wildlife close and mutual encounters with wildlife can be special and transformative experiences that enable learning that can take us beyond typical biophysical and virtual understandings. learning from individual encounters with wildlife is unconstrained by the anthropocentric and automata constructs of much conservation and ecology, which are based on a hierarchical value of contribution to the good of the biota (leopold 1968; callicot 1987). such conservation and ecology, unfortunately, reason out (somelearning about the emotional lives of kangaroos 37 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ times advocating brutal methods) the energy, emotion, personality and individuality of wild animals. however, as with quantum physics and the tao, the whole will not exist without the energy of the interrelationship of the individual parts, and the parts are dependent on their interconnection with other parts in a holistic system (kheel 1985). it is the cartesian view of the wild animal as being unexceptional in anything other than its physicality that has resulted in ecology and conservation regarding wildlife individuality as unimportant in consideration of the environment, unless of course the species is considered to be on the verge of extinction (leopold 1968; callicot 1987). even then neoliberal “science” will question the cost (clements et al. 2011). this, it would seem, justifies the aggression of these sciences and their inherent cruelty toward individual wildlife as a socially acceptable method for maintaining a biota. leopold, in various publications, was a strong proponent of this practice and many in the ecology discipline have not progressed far beyond it. when it comes to wildlife, such disciplines not only promote animal cruelty but also seriously short-change us in our learning about things that are critical for our planet’s environmental sustainability. in the animal that therefore i am, derrida (2002) provides two important connected thoughts that can assist us in learning in transformative ways through an encounter with wildlife. the first of these is equality in suffering between humans and animals. this sees animals and humans as fellow creatures with a common finitude. it also sees animals as individuals and not the collective ordinarily portrayed as holders of certain rights and entitlements (regan 1983); or placed in some hierarchical order according to notions of consciousness or language (singer 1984); or as part of some living ecosystem (leopold 1968). as nussbaum reminds us: as for aggregation across lives: animals pursue not simply the avoidance of pain but lives with many distinct components, including movement, friendship, honor and dignity. it seems important to retain a sense of the separate importance of each of these elements. (2011, 160) the second thought is that once the boundary between human and nonhuman animals is erased, there can be transformative learning through engagement. this is the kind of human-animal engagement that derrida says can interrupt our being, challenge how we think about whom we are and call us into some kind of responsibility to take action (derrida 2002). human transformation in the presence of an animal is a process of learning about us as humans through our understanding of animal capabilities. it is not restricted to those animals which might head any hierarchy of anthropocentric cognition testing. whales, dolphins, great apes and chimpanzees steve garlick rosemary austen 38 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ are often cited in this regard, but derrida was never species-specific in relation to the transformative impact of human/non-human animal relations. when faced with acting on any learning from engagement with an animal we are limited by the unsatisfactory human tools on which we have to draw. the first of these is to respond to animal suffering with arguments and images that connote compassion and tolerance. however, these are anthropocentric concepts and while a moral onus is implied in them, no actual transformational emotional engagement with animal suffering of the “being-for” kind need necessarily occur because of them. viewing animals virtually, as is increasingly the case in modern society, is an example of a disengaged association. there is therefore no attempt to view the animal as an equal subject, of equal worth, to a human. in this there is, therefore, no attempt to connect this suffering to our own human finitude, and definitely no thought that there might be learning possible from animals. the second of these unsatisfactory tools is to make moral and ethical choices based on a hierarchy of utility and relative animal cognition and consciousness. the approach is speciesist, giving preference to some animals over others. the tests for cognition, consciousness, pleasure and pain are anthropocentric and ignore the complexity of animal diversity and emotion. 4. animal emotion as a marker for communication and human learning recent thinking in behavioural neuroscience suggests a neural basis for emotion and consciousness affect in mammals (human and non-human), birds and selected sea life (panksepp 1998 and 2004; low et al. 2012). this takes us beyond the human-animal dualism that previously separated animal emotion from notions of consciousness in neuroscience and psychology. previously held back by a lack of animal data, and human exceptionalism in brain function research, it is now argued that predictions can be made about animal emotion, despite limitations of language, from laboratory studies on human brain function (panksepp 2004, 2). such consciousness might assist in our learning about sustainability markers from animal emotion when there is a trusting relationship with wildlife. this is a different, more effective and more ethical way of gathering information about wild animal emotion than the usual laboratory rewardstimulation tests carried out on animals. in humans, emotion markers can be measured through skin conductance, endocrine response, heart rate, blood pressure and similar laboratory tests. in wildlife however, in order to interpret whether an environment is healthy, we need to depend on a relalearning about the emotional lives of kangaroos 39 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ tionship with the animal to allow us to determine emotion markers. with wildlife, in our view, emotion markers can be revealed through the relational ethic of care of the “being-for” kind. it is argued that emotions (affection, joy, sadness, anger, anxiety, aggression, fear, etc.) suggest a form of language and communication (panksepp 1998 and 2004) and can potentially provide intelligence to us on the well-being of a wild animal in its habitat. panksepp has identified two key emotional brain circuits in mammals. the first is “seeking/expecting”, where the animal has expectancy, an aspiration, and a wanting to engage with the wider world: “[…] the neuroscience evidence indicates that all mammalian brains do contain a general purpose seeking system designed to actively engage the world, especially in its life-sustaining resources” (2004, 17). this neural circuit seems consistent with the capability approach articulated for humans by sen (1985) and for animals by nussbaum (2003), based on opportunity achievement. in terms of the natural environment seeking/expecting emotional circuits appear to equate with a healthy, satisfying and reinforcing habitat. the second key emotional brain circuit in mammals is “fear/escape”, which seems consistent with responding emotionally to a harming or limiting habitat and environment. these notions of reinforcing and limiting environments for wildlife need to be considered in making an assessment of environmental sustainability. in addition, panksepp has identified at least five other basic emotional systems common to mammalian social affect, viz.: anger, sexuality, nurturance, distress and joy. panksepp suggests these emotions are important in influencing physical and mental conditions in humans, such as pain, depression and other psychiatric disorders. there are likely to be similar effects for animal conditions including recovery from illness and injury, although as panksepp notes (2004, 27-9) there are species differences in the relative significance of each emotion. the recent cambridge declaration (low et al. 2012) has stated: “[…] humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness. non-human animals, including all mammals and birds, and many other creatures, including octopuses, also possess these neurological substrates”. 5. a “being for” ethic of care and reciprocity neoliberal relations favour fragmentary, momentary and episodic encounters characterised by “values” of competition, efficiency and individualism. these are the same superficial connections that humans, in general, and some scientists in particular, have with animals – particularly those in the wild. action-oriented narratives of animals in the wild on film and televisteve garlick rosemary austen 40 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ sion, or in “wildlife” parks, are the closest most humans are prepared to be to the natural world of wild animals. other episodic connections with animals (and wildlife in particular) are more sinister and involve cruelty. institutions, companies and individuals that approach wildlife with the objective of making money view it as a “resource” or a “pest”. such people are unable to have a transformational experience with an animal and thereby unlock knowledge about sustainability. our concern with the discipline of wildlife ecology is that it draws conclusions about environmental sustainability and wildlife habitat through an objectified, episodic, collective perspective towards the animal, when so much more knowledge can be gained directly from the animal, individually and in groups through its various emotional states when there is a “beingfor” ethic of care. ecologists without a “being-for” ethic of care cannot have transformational engagement with wild animals. they tinker with and then discard the wild animal and draw conclusions based on partial knowledge and human exceptionalism. their focus is on the quantitative rather than the qualitative characteristics of wildlife. if the ecologist assesses there that there are “too many” wild animals of a particular species a programme of killing is usually advocated; if “too few”, a programme of captive breeding is advocated (leopold 1968). mathematical modelling of these gross physical relationships has recently become popular (clements et al. 2011). such “science” ensures we make little real progress on our broader knowledge of sustainability because it assumes humans have all the answers and all the world’s environmental problems can be “managed”, or even solved, by experimentation on animals by human scientists rather than by learning with them through relational transformation. wildlife carers, whatever the species they care for, can learn much when they employ a “being-for” ethic of care. in our view, ecology can and should learn from the methods and experiences of ethical wildlife carers on matters relating to environmental sustainability. bauman’s (1995) classification of forms of togetherness provides a useful tool for getting to the heart of what engaging with wildlife should be like if it is to stimulate transformational learning by humans in the way derrida argued, and be useful in expanding our knowledge about environmental sustainability using animal emotion markers. bauman describes “being-alongside” and “being-with” as fragmented and episodic encounters characterised by a lack of consequence. in a “being-alongside” modality the participants exist only in a co-presence with others. participants move from a “being-alongside” to a “being-with” modality where there is a mutual dependency – but only in so far as it relates to what the topic at hand requires (bauman 1995, 50). this is our concern with the disciplines learning about the emotional lives of kangaroos 41 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ of wildlife ecology and other sciences that draw conclusions about wildlife without a “being-for” engagement. derrida seeks much more in consciousness from an animal encounter than an episodic or non-consequential contact. using bauman’s (1995) ideal “forms of togetherness” the most complete form of togetherness with an “other” is “being-for”. being-for is a leap from isolation to unity; yet not towards a fusion, that mystics’ dream of shedding the burden of identity, but to an alloy whose precious qualities depend fully on the preservation of its ingredients’ alterity and identity. “being-for” is entered for the sake of safeguarding and defending the uniqueness of the other; and that guardianship by the self as its task and responsibility makes the self truly unique, in the sense of being irreplaceable; no matter how numerous the defenders of the other’s unique otherness may be, the self is not absolved of responsibility. bearing such a task without relief is what makes a unique self out of a cipher. being-for is the act of transcendence of being-with (bauman 1995, 51). according to noddings (1984 and 2002) a caring encounter will have three elements: first, a is consciously motivated to care for b. second, a performs some act of care that accords with the consciousness and motivation revealed in the first element. third, and significantly, b recognises that a cares for b. according to noddings, there is no contractual requirement in this last element for b to exhibit any mutuality or reciprocity. indeed, one might expect that in the case of a wild animal (b) that has had a carer  (a) there would be no reciprocity by b. however, we have found differently and the answer to this is found in the notion of animal agency. 6. engaging with the kangaroo at our wildlife recovery centre we have around 150 severely injured and sick macropods (mostly kangaroos) and wombats coming into care each year. these animals range in size from the tiny (several hundred grams) to the very large (70 kg). some are simply orphaned infants, some are old and in need of some recuperation, and many have a variety of injuries that include limb, pelvic and skull fractures, severe wounds or head injuries, as well as serious issues such as pneumonia and stress-induced illness. almost every day we witness and respond to the suffering and trauma that uncaring and sometimes cruel humans inflict on wild animals with their motor vehicles, fences, uncontrolled dogs, guns wielded by thugs, and the cruel practices of governments and farmers. recovery of an injured macropod may take 12 months or more depending on the extent of the injury or illness. once the veterinarian has carried steve garlick rosemary austen 42 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ out the initial clinical work there is much more to be done before an animal recovers enough to be returned back to its natural environment with its kin. tasks include regular feeding and, if necessary, nutritional support, antibiotic treatment, splint changes, wound dressings, physiotherapy and exercise, and, finally, translocation prior to release in a wild environment as safe from human intervention as possible. each year around 80 fully recovered animals are transported from our recovery centre and released to their natural environment in social groups of ten or more (garlick and austen 2010). our most recent translocation and release included 30 kangaroos ranging in size from 14 kg to 55 kg. trust, kindness, and appropriate auditory, olfactory, visual and tactile communication between the injured or sick wild animal and the human carer are vital over potentially long periods to enable a successful outcome. an attitude of respect, encouragement and persistence is as important for the injured or sick kangaroo as appropriate veterinary treatment. being with others of its kin is also important. understanding animal communication through close and sensitive observation and interaction and responding to animals in ways consistent with such communication form an important basis for having good relations with injured wild animals and for monitoring their emotional state. kangaroos have very long memories and while they naturally avoid human contact and correctly regard humans as predators, they can maintain a long-lasting relationship over many years with their human carer if the care has been of the “being-for” kind. there is no habituation with these wild animals, solely a special relationship with the particular care giver. this facilitates daily engagement and monitoring when they return to their wild environment. these visits to the wild environment allow observation of kangaroo emotional markers of stress and relaxation. these animals are extremely wary of humans and will not approach anyone except the carer who has exhibited the characteristics of a “beingfor” ethic toward them. when we visit the wild in a location where we know that within hearing distance there are kangaroos whom we have cared for, it is possible with about 20 minutes of calling to attract up to 36 kangaroos, as well as their offspring. these kangaroos recognise the carer’s voice and even, after a number of years, will allow physical contact. these two acts by wild animals: the act of recovery from severe injury or illness and the act of recurrent visits to their carer after return to the wild, provide evidence of the practical effectiveness of a “being-for” modality of togetherness in its application to wildlife. noddings (2002) suggests reciprocity from the wild animal to the human carer is one of the key requirelearning about the emotional lives of kangaroos 43 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ments of an ethic of care. of particular significance for this paper is the fact that this reciprocity can be as agency in the form of a transfer of knowledge from wild animal to human carer. table 1 brings together a number of neural emotions, outward manifestations of these emotions as they relate to the kangaroo, and what they mean in terms of the environment in which they live. the first column in table 1 lists the five social emotions for mammals, taken from panksepp (2004, 22), together with an additional emotional state, relaxation, based on our observation of macropods. these social emotions are within the context of a seeking/expectancy/wanting scenario or a “fear/escape” scenario. column two lists the outward indicators associated with each emotional state. these outward indicators have come from close observation over a long period. column three attributes an environmental context and whether the environment reinforces seeking emotions, or is limiting or restricting in that it generates fear and escape emotions. table 1. – connecting wildlife emotion to environmental health: the kangaroo. neural emotion state outward indicators environmental opportunity / context joy (play) hooning, kicking legs into the air, boxing with kin, chasing kin, eye expression. reinforcing separation, distress (panic) vocal, running into objects in panic, eye expression, erect and extended posture, licking forearms, rapid respiratory rate flared nostrils. restricting nurturance (care) preening, embracing kin, body contact, protective behaviour by dominant males. reinforcing sexuality (lust) courtship behaviour, pairing, long-term male/female friendships. reinforcing anger (rage) vocal, eye expression, posture. restricting relaxation lying on back asleep, mothers relaxing pouch muscle, mothers allowing small infants to exercise outside pouch. reinforcing steve garlick rosemary austen 44 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 7. cognitive justice the notion of cognitive justice and the democratisation of knowledge (visvanathan 1997, 2002 and 2009; santos 2007; odora hoppers 2009) is a humanist concept we can use to signify the importance of regarding the innate and experiential knowledge of animals, and the existence of animal knowledge systems, in helping understand questions of environmental sustainability. cognitive justice was coined by visvanathan to represent the need for a plurality of knowledge sources and processes to offset the straightjacket disciplinary culture of traditional human science analysis. it is an ethical principle that equally values diverse sources of knowledge (knowers) without drawing conclusions about relative knowledge superiority. we see this notion as balancing current episodic ecological views and their epistemological failure as science, about wildlife and the environment with knowledge from in-situ inhabitants because, as visvanathan (2009) suggests, it opens us up to the “invention of possibilities”. as visvanathan states: cognitive justice recognises the right of different forms of knowledge to coexist, but adds that this plurality needs to go beyond tolerance or liberalism to an active recognition of the need for diversity. it demands recognition of knowledges, not only as methods but as ways of life. this presupposes that knowledge is embedded in ecology of knowledges where each knowledge has its place, its claim to a cosmology, its sense as a form of life. in this sense knowledge is not something to be abstracted from a culture as a life form; it is connected to livelihood, a life cycle, a lifestyle; it determines life chances. (2009) 8. the ecoversity: a practical approach to community learning about sustainability from wildlife engagement the task of progressing from a case example in which there is learning through a particular transformational animal encounter to one where an entire community or a number of communities might be similarly transformed, to address sustainability questions, is possible to conceptualise. to advance this we have elsewhere suggested the idea of the ecoversity as a learning framework for engagement between humans and the environment (garlick et al. 2009; garlick and matthews 2009; matthews et al. 2009). the ecoversity, with its foundation in place-based relational ethics and learning provides more than a mechanism to help bridge the gap between human and non-human animals. it can facilitate a transformative encounter learning about the emotional lives of kangaroos 45 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ which can generate the knowledge to foster creative and ethical solutions to animal welfare and environmental sustainability. it therefore has the potential to assist in resolving the current conservation and animal welfare dichotomy (kheel 1985 and 2008). it can also open pathways between science and environmental sustainability knowledge generated through transformational animal encounters. the goal of the ecoversity approach is to find alternatives to the nonrelational education practices in sustainability learning “that got us into trouble in the first place” (orr 1992, 24). the ecoversity approach proposes lifelong learning and enterprising action within a spatial and ethical context (garlick and palmer 2008). just as neuroscientists propose that there are critical and sensitive periods in human life that generate multiplied returns from learning (cunha and heckman 2007); it can also be argued that there are critical and sensitive places or contexts for learning about environmental sustainability and which contribute to multiplied returns on learning investment (garlick 2011). the ecoversity can be such a context for learning. moreover, the ecoversity approach promotes a new and dynamic community-based form of eco-literacy which involves relational learning about environmental sustainability. we see parallels between the concept of the ecoversity and the concept of the “commons” used injunction with cognitive justice. in this sense the “commons” reflects a place-based notion of connectivity with what “has been”, “what is” and “what could be” – a connection between humans and nature, and a connection between dreaming and fact (sarchi retreat 2012). following sacks (2008), the goal of the ecoversity is to teach us about the environment we are already a part of. it does this by sharing knowledge, identifying local/global problems and solutions, stimulating ethical debates and challenging unsustainable development and the excesses of transnational capitalism (matthews et al. 2009). it is not therefore that sustainability should be integrated into learning institutions, but that these institutions need to transform themselves into the integrated holistic communities implied and required by sustainability perspectives (sterling 2004). 9. conclusions the purpose of this paper has been to show that our knowledge about the solutions that contribute to the environmental sustainability of the planet needs not be restricted to episodic investigations on animals based on human exceptionalism, incomplete science or an untrammelled belief in human rationality. we have endeavoured to suggest there is another steve garlick rosemary austen 46 relations – 2.1 june 2014 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ hitherto-untapped source of knowledge that can be gleaned from those wild animals that are resident in the environment and that the means of conveying this knowledge is by understanding the overt behavioural affects of wild animal emotion. this notion of animal knowledge systems is consistent with the humanistic concept of cognitive justice and the wider view of the democratisation of knowledge. in this paper, we have attempted to demonstrate that the kangaroo represents an ideal wild animal to learn more about environmental sustainability from through emotional markers that can be ascertained through a relational ethic of care. it was also suggested that such contextual understandings about wild animal knowledge could be generalised through the learning concept of the ecoversity. this approach puts wild animal carers, who employ a relational ethic of care, in a position of making contributions to aspects of science and the environment through their ability to elucidate knowledge from wild animals through emotional affect. such contributions should be formalised and would add significantly to the current inadequacies within wildlife ecology and other sciences where there are epistemological shortcomings of empiricism. we also propose the ecoversity as a means of applying this 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10.1016/ s0016-3287(01)00037-4. 2009. “the search for cognitive justice”. seminar. last modified may, 2009. accessed may 9, 2013. http://www.india-seminar.com/2009/597/597_shiv_ visvanathan.htm. the importance of wild-animal suffering the importance of wild-animal suffering brian tomasik research consultant, foundational research institute doi: 10.7358/rela-2015-002-toma brian.tomasik@gmail.com abstract wild animals are vastly more numerous than animals on factory farms, in laboratories, or kept as pets. most of these animals endure intense suffering during their lives, such as from disease, hunger, cold, injury, and chronic fear of predators. many wild animals give birth to tens or hundreds of offspring at a time, most of which die young, often in painful ways. this suggests that suffering plausibly dominates happiness in nature. humans are not helpless to reduce wild-animal suffering. indeed, humans already influence ecosystems in substantial ways, so the question is often not whether to intervene but how to intervene. because ecology is so complex, we should study carefully how to reduce wild-animal suffering, giving due consideration to unintended long-run consequences. we should also promote concern for wild animals and challenge environmentalist assumptions among activists, academics, and other sympathetic groups. finally, we should ensure that our descendants think twice before spreading ecosystems to areas where they do not yet exist. keywords: wild animal suffering, natural harms, population dynamics, predation, death, intervention in nature, sentience, ecology, terraforming, unforeseen consequences. in sober truth, nearly all the things which men are hanged or imprisoned for doing to one another, are nature’s every day performances. […] the phrases which ascribe perfection to the course of nature can only be considered as the exaggerations of poetic or devotional feeling, not intended to stand the test of a sober examination. no one, either religious or irreligious, believes that the hurtful agencies of nature, considered as a whole, promote good purposes, in any other way than by inciting human rational creatures to rise up and struggle against them. john stuart mill (mill [1874] 2005, 28-32) mailto:biran.tomasik@gmail.com http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 brian tomasik 134 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 1. introduction animal activists typically focus their efforts on areas where humans directly interact with members of other species, such as on “factory farms”, in laboratory experiments, in circuses, and so on. less often discussed is the topic of animal suffering in the wild, even in the academic literature, though there have been notable exceptions (for instance sapontzis 1984; naess 1991; ng 1995; kirkwood and sainsbury 1996; cowen 2003; fink 2005; clarke and ng 2006; nussbaum 2006; mcmahan 2010; sözmen 2013). however, the numbers of wild animals on which humans have an impact is simply too large for animal advocates to ignore. intense suffering is a regular feature of life in the wild that demands, perhaps not quick-fix intervention, but at least long-term research into the welfare of wild animals and technologies that might one day allow humans to improve it. the argument developed in this paper will unfold as follows. section 2 describes some of the ways in which animals suffer in nature. section 3 explains that the majority of animals are small ones whose lives are very short and who reproduce by having huge numbers of offspring. section 4 argues that due to this most animals probably have lives containing more suffering than happiness. section 5 addresses the question of the extent to which young animals are sentient, and presents evidence that many of them are already conscious when they emerge from their eggs. section 6 examines the question of whether we may intuitively misjudge the degree to which animals suffer in nature. section 7 presents arguments against the view that the lives of wild animals must be on balance positive because otherwise animals in nature would kill themselves. section 8 examines and rejects the view that humans cannot be successful in reducing the harms animals suffer in nature, and section 9 points out that humans already are intervening in nature, so our aim should be to do so in ways that are beneficial, instead of harmful, for other animals. section 10 explains that in light of all this, wild-animal suffering is a serious issue, but given the complexities of the problem, we need more research on how to reduce wild-animal suffering. section 11 argues that future technology will make successful intervention in nature easier, even though there are reasons why faster technological progress may not be desirable in general. section 12 points out that we should focus on avoiding the spread of natural suffering to other places where it does not yet exist. finally, section 13 concludes by arguing that animal advocates should focus their efforts to promote concern about wild-animal suffering among activists, academics, and others who would be sympathetic – both to encourage development of the research field and to http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 the importance of wild-animal suffering 135 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ensure that our descendants use their advanced technologies in ways that alleviate wild-animal suffering rather than inadvertently multiply it. 2. how wild animals suffer the scale of animal suffering at human hands is vast, and animal advocates are right to be appalled by its magnitude. however, the numbers of animals that live in the wild are staggeringly larger (tomasik [2009] 2014). and, like their domestic counterparts, animals in the wild have rich emotional lives (bekoff 2000; balcombe 2006). unfortunately, many of these emotions are intensely painful. and while “nature, red in tooth and claw” is widely known as a platitude, its visceral meaning can often be overlooked. below are some details of different ways in which wild-animal suffering occurs. 2.1. predation when people imagine suffering in nature, perhaps the first image that comes to mind is that of a lioness hunting her prey. christopher mcgowan (1997, 12-3), for instance, vividly describes the death of a zebra: the lioness sinks her scimitar talons into the zebra’s rump. they rip through the tough hide and anchor deep into the muscle. the startled animal lets out a loud bellow as its body hits the ground. an instant later the lioness releases her claws from its buttocks and sinks her teeth into the zebra’s throat, choking off the sound of terror. her canine teeth are long and sharp, but an animal as large as a zebra has a massive neck, with a thick layer of muscle beneath the skin, so although the teeth puncture the hide they are too short to reach any major blood vessels. she must therefore kill the zebra by asphyxiation, clamping her powerful jaws around its trachea (windpipe), cutting off the air to its lungs. it is a slow death. if this had been a small animal, say a thomson’s gazelle (gazella thomsoni) the size of a large dog, she would have bitten it through the nape of the neck; her canine teeth would then have probably crushed the vertebrae or the base of the skull, causing instant death. as it is, the zebra’s death throes will last five or six minutes. some predators kill rather quickly, such as constrictor snakes that cut off their victims’ air flow and induce unconsciousness within a minute or two, while others impose a more protracted death, such as hyenas that tear off chunks of ungulate flesh one bite at a time (kruuk 1972). wild dogs disembowel their prey, venomous snakes cause internal bleeding and paralysis over the course of several minutes, and crocodiles drown large animals in their jaws (mcgowan 1997, 22, 43 and 49). http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 brian tomasik 136 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ one snake owner’s guide explains that when rodents are fed to snakes they spend some time biting, kicking, scratching, and doing anything they can to survive (flank 1997). snake prey may not die immediately after being swallowed, as is illustrated by the fact that some poisonous newts, after ingestion by a snake, excrete toxins to kill their captor so that they can crawl back out of its mouth (mcgowan 1997, 59). prey suffer even in the claws of animals that are often considered cute and innocent. for instance, domesticated cats kill in painful ways hundreds of millions to billions of rabbits, mice, and birds (woods et al. 2003; loss 2013). fear of predators produces not only immediate distress, but it may also cause long-term psychological trauma. in one study of anxiolytics, researchers exposed mice to a cat for five minutes and observed subsequent reactions. they found “that this animal model of exposure of mice to unavoidable predatory stimuli produces early cognitive changes analogous to those seen in patients with acute stress disorder (asd)” (el hage et al. 2004, 123). a follow-up study found long-term impacts on the mice’s brains: “[…] predatory exposure induced significant learning disabilities in the radial maze (16 to 22 days poststressor) and in the spatial configuration of objects recognition test (26 to 28 days poststressor). these findings indicate that memory impairments may persist for extended periods beyond a predatory stress” (el hage et al. 2006, 45). similarly, phillip r. zoladz (2008) exposed rats to unavoidable predators and other anxiety-causing conditions. the result was alterations in bodily and behavioral variables resembling human cases of post-traumatic stress disorder (ptsd). even for those prey that have not had a traumatic run-in with a predator, the “landscape of fear” (laundré et al. 2001) that predators create can be distressing. when wolves enter an ecosystem, elk become increasingly vigilant against attack (wirsing and ripple 2010). one can advance some argument that evolution should avoid making animal lives excessively horrifying for extended periods prior to death because doing so might, at least in more complex species, induce ptsd, depression, or other debilitating side-effects. of course, we see empirically that evolution does induce such disorders when traumatic incidents happen, like exposure to a predator. but there is probably some kind of reasonable bound on how bad these can be most of the time if animals are to remain functional. death itself is a different matter because, once it reaches the point of inevitability, evolutionary pressures do not constrain the emotional experience. death can be as good as painless (for a few lucky animals) or as bad as torture (for many others). evolution has no reason to prevent death from feeling unbearably awful (dawkins 1995). http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 the importance of wild-animal suffering 137 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 2.2. death by other means of course, predation is not the only way in which organisms die painfully. animals are also stricken by diseases and parasites, which may induce listlessness, shivering, ulcers, pneumonia, starvation, violent behavior, or other gruesome symptoms over the course of days or weeks leading up to death. avian salmonellosis is just one example. animals infected by this disease may develop depression over 1 to 3 days, along with fluffed-up feathers, unsteadiness, shivering, loss of appetite, markedly increased or absence of thirst, rapid loss of weight, accelerated respiration and watery yellow, green or blood-tinged droppings. the vent feathers become matted with excreta, the eyes begin to close and, immediately before death, some birds show apparent blindness, incoordination, staggering, tremors, convulsions or other nervous signs. (michigan department of natural resources 2015) still other animals die of accidents, dehydration during a summer drought, or lack of food during the winter. even weather events can be fatal for many animals. for example, if birds can’t find shelter during an ice storm, their feet may become frozen to the branch on which they’re perching. some birds become buried in snow and suffocate (heidorn [1998] 2001). 2.3. a hard life while death may often constitute the peak of suffering during an animal’s life, day-to-day existence is not necessarily pleasant either. unlike most humans in the industrialized world, wild animals do not have immediate access to food whenever they become hungry. they must constantly seek out water and shelter while remaining on the lookout for predators. unlike us, most animals cannot go inside when it rains or turn on the heat when winter temperatures drop far below their usual levels. ucla (2015) explains: it is often assumed that wild animals live in a kind of natural paradise and that it is only the appearance and intervention of human agencies that bring about suffering. this essentially rousseauian view is at odds with the wealth of information derived from field studies of animal populations. scarcity of food and water, predation, disease and intraspecific aggression are some of the factors that are normal parts of a wild environment which cause suffering in wild animals on a regular basis. while many animals appear to endure such conditions rather calmly, this doesn’t necessarily mean they aren’t suffering [bourne et al. 2005]. sick and injured members of a prey species are the easiest to catch, so predators deliberately target these individuals. as a http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 brian tomasik 138 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ consequence, those prey that appear sick or injured will be the ones killed most often. thus, evolutionary pressure pushes prey species to avoid drawing attention to their suffering. (nuffield 2005, chap. 4.12, 66) in line with this, based on studies of stress-hormone levels in domestic and wild animals, christie wilcox (2011) concluded the following: [t]he real question becomes whether a domesticated or captive animal is more, less, or as happy in the moment as its wild counterpart. there are a few key conditions that are classically thought to lead to a “happy” animal by reducing undue stress. these are the basis for most animal cruelty regulations, including those in the us and uk. they include that animals have the “rights” to: enough food and water comfortable conditions (temperature, etc.) expression of normal behavior when it comes to wild animals, though, only the last is guaranteed. they have to struggle to survive on a daily basis, from finding food and water to another individual to mate with. they do not have the right to comfort, stability, or good health. […] by the standards our governments have set, the life of a wild animal is cruelty. in conclusion, even if we set aside the pain of their deaths, the lives of wild animals contain many other sources of suffering. 3. short lifespans in nature, the most populous animals are probably the ones that are generally worst off. small mammals and birds have adult lifespans of at most one or three years before they face a painful death. and many insects count their time on earth in weeks rather than years – for instance, just 2-4 weeks for the horn fly (cumming [1998] 2006). there are reasons to think that it would be better not to exist than to find oneself born as an insect, struggle to navigate the world for a few weeks, and then die of dehydration or be caught in a spider’s web. worse still might be being entangled in an amazonian-ant “torture rack” trap for 12 hours (bbc 2005) or being eaten alive over the course of weeks by an ichneumon wasp (gould 1994, 32-44). (that said, whether caterpillars eaten by ichneumon wasps feel pain during the experience is unclear.) the question remains unsettled as to whether insects experience conscious suffering (smith 1991). however, the existence of serious debate on the issue suggests that we should not rule out the possibility. and seeing as insects number 10 to the 18 power (i.e., 18 goes in superindex) (williams http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 the importance of wild-animal suffering 139 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 1964), with the number of copepods in the ocean of a similar magnitude (schubel and butman 1998), the mathematical “expected value” (probability times amount) of their suffering is vast, even though the force of this point would be lessened if, as may be the case, an animal’s “intensity” or “degree” of emotional experience depends to some rough extent on the size of its brain. 4. why suffering probably dominates happiness in light of what we have seen above, there are strong reasons in favor of the view that most animals (except maybe those that live a long time) probably have lives not worth living. wild animals endure cold, hunger, disease, fear of predators, and other stresses on a regular basis. moreover, even if animals enjoy net happiness during most of their lives, this may be outweighed by the painful intensity of their deaths. the claim of net expected suffering in nature appears to need only a weaker assertion: namely, that almost all of the expected happiness and suffering in nature come from animals that live very short lives. this is because most of the animals that live in nature are small (e.g., minnows and insects). the adults of these species live at most a few years, often just a few months or weeks, so it is hard in these cases for the happiness of life to outweigh the pain of death. moreover, almost all the babies of these species die (possibly painfully) after just a few days or weeks of being born. this reproductive strategy of birthing many offspring with short lives has traditionally been called “r-selection”. humans are not r-selected, since they can only produce one child per reproductive season (excepting twins and other unusual cases). by contrast, in one reproductive season, dogs (canis familiaris) may produce 1-22 offspring, the starling (sturmus vulgaris) may lay 4-6 eggs, the bullfrog (rana catesbeiana) may lay 6,000-20,000 eggs, and the scallop (argopecten irradians) may lay 2 million eggs. most small animals like minnows and insects are r-strategists. granted, it is unclear whether all of these species are sentient – and even more regarding that fraction of the eggs that fails to hatch (see the next section) – but again, in expected-value terms, the amount of expected suffering is enormous. prevalent reproductive strategies thus mean that the number of animal deaths per parent is often high. hapgood (1979, 34) explains how this happens: all species reproduce in excess, way past the carrying capacity of their niche. in her lifetime a lioness might have 20 cubs; a pigeon, 150 chicks; a mouse, http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 brian tomasik 140 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 1000 kits; a trout, 20,000 fry, a tuna or cod, a million fry or more; […] and an oyster, perhaps a hundred million spat. if one assumes that the population of each of these species is, from generation to generation, roughly equal, then on average only one offspring will survive to replace each parent. all the other thousands and millions will die, one way or another. if we consider this together with the claim made above that the lives of the animals who die shortly after starting to exist include more suffering than positive well-being, we can reach the conclusion that suffering prevails over happiness in nature. the strategy of “making lots of copies and hoping a few come out” may be perfectly sensible from the standpoint of evolution, but the cost to the individual organisms is tremendous. matthew clarke and yew-kwang ng (2006, section 4) conclude from an analysis of the welfare implications of population dynamics that “the number of offspring of a species that maximizes fitness may lead to suffering and is different from the number that maximizes welfare (average or total)”. and ng (1995, 272) concludes from the excess of offspring over adult survivors: “under the assumptions of concave and symmetrical functions relating costs to enjoyment and suffering, evolutionary economizing results in the excess of total suffering over total enjoyment”. 5. when do babies become sentient? the previous section explained that in r-selected species, parents may have hundreds or even tens of thousands of offspring, and almost all of these die shortly after birth. it also argued that this causes net suffering to prevail in nature. but in order to reach that conclusion, some questions remain. what fraction of these offspring are sentient at the time of death, and what fraction merely die as unconscious eggs or larvae? according to the european food safety authority (efsa 2005, 37-42) the age at which fetuses of various species begin to feel conscious pain varies depending on whether a species is precocial (well developed at birth, such as horses) or altricial (still developing at birth, such as marsupials). precocial animals are more likely to feel pain at earlier ages. also relevant is whether the species is viviparous (having live birth) or oviparous (giving birth through eggs). viviparous animals have greater need to inhibit fetal consciousness during development in order to prevent injury to the mother and siblings. oviparous animals that are constrained by shells have less need for inhibition of awareness before birth. in precocial birds, neural http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 the importance of wild-animal suffering 141 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ development takes place when several days remain before hatching, and controlled movements as well as responses to stimuli occur then (broom 1981). the european food safety (efsa 2005, 38) also points out: most amphibians and fish have larval forms which are not well developed at hatching but develop rapidly with experience of independent life[.] those fish and amphibians that are well developed at hatching or viviparous birth and all cephalopods, since these are small but well developed at hatching, will have had a functioning nervous system and the potential for awareness for some time before hatching. thus, it seems that many animals are able to suffer around the time of birth if not before. another consideration suggestive of pain before birth is the fact that many oviparous vertebrates can hatch early in response to environmental stimuli, including vibrations that feel like a predator. early hatching has also been documented for amphibians, fish, and invertebrates (doody and paull 2013). these points suggest that a nontrivial fraction of the large numbers of offspring born to r-selected species may very well be conscious during the pain of their deaths after a few short days, or even hours, of life. this means that the above conclusion regarding the prevalence of suffering stands. 6. misjudging levels of well-being? another objection that can be considered here is that there is a danger in extrapolating the welfare of wild animals from our own imagination of how we would feel in the situation. we can imagine immense discomfort were we to sleep through a cold winter night’s storm with only a sweatshirt to keep us warm, but many animals have better fur coats and can often find some sort of shelter. more generally, it seems unlikely that species would gain an adaptive advantage by feeling constant hardship, since stress does entail a metabolic cost (ng 1995). also, r-selected animals might suffer less from a given injury than long-lived animals would because r-selected creatures have less to lose by taking big short-term risks (tomasik [2013] 2015). on the other hand, we should also be wary of underestimating the extent and severity of wild-animal suffering due to our own biases. you, the reader, are probably in the comfort of a climate-controlled building or vehicle, with a relatively full stomach, and without fear of attack. many of us go through life in a relatively euthymic state, and it is easy to assume that the general pleasantness with which life greets us is shared by most http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 brian tomasik 142 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ other people and animals. when we think about nature, we may picture chirping songbirds or frolicking gazelles, rather than deer having their flesh chewed off while conscious or immobilized raccoons afflicted by roundworms. moreover, even these examples, insofar as they involve large land animals, reflect a human tendency toward the “availability heuristic”. in fact, the most prevalent wild animals of all are small organisms, many ocean-dwelling. when we think “wild animals”, we should (if we adopt the expected-value approach to uncertainty about sentience) picture ants, copepods, and tiny fish, rather than lions or gazelles. people may not accurately assess at a single instant how they’ll feel overall during a longer period of time (kahneman and sugden 2005). they often exhibit “rosy prospection” toward future events and “rosy retrospection” about the past, in which they assume that their previous and future levels of well-being were and will be better than what’s reported at the time of the experiences (mitchell and thompson 1994). moreover, even when organisms do correctly judge their hedonic levels, they often show a “will to live” quite apart from pleasure or pain. animals that, in the face of lives genuinely not worth living, decide to end their existence tend not to reproduce very successfully. ultimately, though, regardless of exactly how good or bad we assess life in the wild to be on balance, it remains undeniable that many animals in nature endure some dreadful experiences. 7. if life in nature is so bad, why don’t wild animals kill themselves? one objection against the idea that most animals endure more suffering than positive well-being would point out that if that were so, then most animals would have reason to kill themselves – something they appear not to do. there are several responses against this objection. most animals do not understand suicide – it may be that most animals (except the smartest mammals and birds?), while conscious emotionally, do not understand death. as an analogy, when we have nightmares, we feel bad, but we do not fully realize we are dreaming and are not sufficiently in control of the situation that we can end the nightmares at will. it is reasonable to think that non-dreaming animals do have more control over their physical states than we do when asleep, but the broader point is that an animal can have emotions without understanding life and death. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 the importance of wild-animal suffering 143 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ little to be gained when most suffering comes from death anyway – animals do not generally have painless ways to kill themselves, and most of the total pain of their short lives may come from dying. for example, many of the 1000 offspring of a beetle mother will die within a few days or weeks of hatching. their lives up to the point of death might hover around being neutral between pain and happiness, so there is not much to be gained by early suicide. temporal discounting – an animal often fails to act in its long-term hedonic interest due to short-sightedness. even if suicide were optimal, the animal might not kill itself because doing so would be painful in the short run. non-hedonic “will to live” – animals appear to have a “will to live” that is partly separate from their hedonic well-being. animal behaviors are integrations of huge numbers of signals and brain systems, so it is not surprising that some of these systems act contrary to the hedonic-welfaremaximization systems. if animals did not have a “will to live”, presumably they would not survive as effectively. few suicides on factory farms – perhaps animals such as battery-cage hens would be better off killing themselves. so, if animals do kill themselves when their lives are not worth living, why do not we see more suicides on factory farms? big animals may have decent lives – finally, we must note that the animals that potentially could contemplate suicide (such as, maybe, chimpanzees?) likely do have lives worth living a good amount of the time. those animals who do not, which are the majority, are those who cannot conceive the idea of taking their own lives to stop suffering. 8. are humans helpless to aid? why, then, is the suffering of wild animals not a top priority for animal advocates? one reason is philosophical. some feel that while humans have duties to treat well the animals that they use or live with, they have no responsibility to those outside their sphere of interaction (palmer 2010). this response is, however, unsatisfying. if we really care about animals because we do not want fellow organisms to suffer brutally – not just because we want to “keep our moral house clean” – then it should not matter whether we have a personal connection with wild animals or not. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 brian tomasik 144 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ other philosophers agree with this but do not oppose human inaction because they think that humans are ultimately helpless to change the situation. when asked whether we should stop lions from eating gazelles, peter singer (1973) replied: [f]or practical purposes i am fairly sure, judging from man’s past record of attempts to mold nature to his own aims, that we would be more likely to increase the net amount of animal suffering if we interfered with wildlife, than to decrease it. lions play a role in the ecology of their habitat, and we cannot be sure what the long-term consequences would be if we were to prevent them from killing gazelles. […] so, in practice, i would definitely say that wildlife should be left alone. i would point out in response to singer that most human interventions have not been designed to improve wild-animal welfare, and even so, many of them probably have decreased wild-animal suffering on balance by reducing habitats. in a similar vein as singer, jennifer everett (2001, 48) suggested that consequentialists may endorse evolutionary selection because it eliminates deleterious genetic traits: [i]f propagation of the “fittest” genes contributes to the integrity of both predator and prey species, which is good for the predator/prey balance in the ecosystem, which in turn is good for the organisms living in it, and so on, then the very ecological relationships that holistic environmentalists regard as intrinsically valuable will be valued by animal welfarists because they conduce ultimately, albeit indirectly and via complex causal chains, to the well-being of individual animals. these authors are right that consideration of long-range ecological sideeffects is important. however, it does not follow that humans have no obligations regarding wild animals or that animal supporters should remain silent about nature’s cruelty. the next few sections elaborate on ways in which humans can indeed do something about wild-animal suffering. 9. humans already impact nature we should be cautious about quick-fix intervention. ecology is extremely complicated, and humans have a long track record of underestimating the number of unanticipated consequences they will encounter in trying to engineer improvements to nature. on the other hand, there are many instances in which we are already interfering with wildlife in some manner. as tyler cowen (2003, 10) has observed: http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 the importance of wild-animal suffering 145 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ in other cases we are interfering with nature, whether we like it or not. it is not a question of uncertainty holding us back from policing, but rather how to compare one form of policing to another. humans change water levels, fertilize particular soils, influence climatic conditions, and do many other things that affect the balance of power in nature. these human activities will not go away any time soon, but in the meantime we need to evaluate their effects on carnivores and their victims. one such evaluation was actually carried out regarding an australian government decision to cull overpopulated and starving kangaroos at an australian defense force army base (clarke and ng 2006). while admittedly crude and theoretical, the analysis proves that the tools of welfare economics can be combined with the principles of population ecology to reach nontrivial conclusions about how human interference with wildlife affects aggregate animal well-being. consider another example. humans spray 3 billion tons of pesticides per year (pimentel 2009), and whether or not we think this causes more wild-animal suffering than it prevents, large-scale insecticide use is, to some extent, a fait accompli of modern society. if, hypothetically, scientists could develop ways to make these chemicals act more quickly or less painfully, enormous numbers of insects and larger organisms could be given slightly less agonizing deaths 1. human changes to the environment – through agriculture, urbanization, deforestation, pollution, climate change, and so on – have huge consequences, both negative and positive, for wild animals. for instance, “paving paradise [or, rather, hell?] to put up a parking lot” prevents the existence of animals that would otherwise have lived there. even where habitats are not destroyed, humans may change the composition of species living in them. if, say, an invasive species has a shorter lifespan and more non-surviving offspring than the native counterpart, the result would be more total suffering. of course, the opposite could just as easily be the case. caring about wild-animal suffering should not be mistaken as general support for environmental preservation; indeed, in some or even many cases, preventing existence may be the most humane option. consequentialist vegetarians ought not find this line of reasoning unusual: the utilitarian argument against factory farming is precisely that, e.g., a broiler hen would be better off not existing than suffering in cramped con 1 note that pesticides could actually prevent net insect suffering if they reduce insect populations enough, so encouraging humane insecticides is not equivalent to encouraging less pesticide use. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 brian tomasik 146 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ditions for 45 days before slaughter. of course, even in the calculation of whether to adopt a vegetarian diet, the impacts on animals in the wild can be important and sometimes dominant over the direct effects on farmed animals themselves. (matheny and chan 2005) that said, before we become too enthusiastic about eliminating natural ecosystems, we should also remember that many other humans value wilderness, and it is good to avoid making enemies or tarnishing the suffering-reduction cause by by pitting it in direct opposition to other things people care about. in addition, many forms of environmental preservation, especially reducing climate change, may be important to the far future, by improving prospects for compromise among the major world powers that develop artificial general intelligence. 10. a research agenda in light of what we have seen above, wild-animal suffering deserves a serious research program, devoted to questions like the following: (i) what animals are sentient? what reasonable subjective probabilities should we use for the sentience of reptiles, amphibians, fish, and various invertebrates? (ii) what sorts of affective states do animals experience during the course of everyday life in the wild? how often do they feel hunger, cold, fear, happiness, satisfaction, boredom, and intense agony, and to what degrees? in the future, perhaps it will become possible to answer this question with high precision through wearable continuous measurement devices recording neural correlates of hedonic experience. but until then, we can also benefit greatly by applying standard tools for assessing animal welfare (broom 1991). (iii) what is the overall balance of happiness versus suffering for various species? how does this depend on the animal’s lifespan and whether it dies before maturity? (iv) are certain species happier than others? do certain types of ecosystems contain less total suffering than others? which environmental-preservation efforts increase and which decrease aggregate animal welfare? are there long-term technologies that could eventually enable humans successfully to reduce wild-animal suffering in a serious way? http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 the importance of wild-animal suffering 147 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 11. advanced technologies? humans presently lack the knowledge and technical ability to seriously “solve” the problem of wild-animal suffering without potentially disastrous consequences. however, this may not be the case in the future, as people develop a deeper understanding of ecology and welfare assessment. if sentience is not rare in the universe, then the problem of wild-animal suffering extends beyond our planet. if it is improbable that life will evolve the type of intelligence that humans have, we might expect that most of the extraterrestrials in existence are at the level of the smallest, shortestlived creatures on earth. thus, if humans ever do send robotic probes into space, there might be great benefit in using them to help wild animals on other planets. (one hopes that objections by deep ecologists to intervening in extraterrestrial ecosystems would be overcome.) however, i should note that faster technological progress in general is not necessarily desirable. especially in fields like artificial intelligence and neuroscience, faster progress may accelerate risks of suffering of other kinds. as a general heuristic, it may be better to wait on developing technologies that unleash vast amounts of new power before humans have the social institutions and wisdom to constrain misuse of this power. 12. inadvertently multiplying suffering while advanced future technologies could offer promise for helping wild animals, they also carry risks of multiplying the cruelty of the natural world. for instance, it is conceivable that humans could one day spread earth-like environmental conditions to mars in the process of “terraforming” (burton 2004). more speculatively, others have proposed “directed panspermia”: dispatching probes into the galaxy to seed other planets with biological material (meot-ner and matloff 1979). post-human computer simulations may become sufficiently accurate that the wild-animal life they contain would consciously suffer. already we see many simulation models of natural selection, and it is just a matter of time before these are augmented with ai capabilities such that the organisms involved become sentient and literally feel the pain of being injured and killed. any of these possibilities would have prodigious ethical implications, and i do hope that before undertaking them, future humans consider seriously the consequences of such actions for the creatures involved. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 brian tomasik 148 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 13. activists should focus on outreach what does all of this imply for the animal-advocacy movement? there are reasons to think the best first step toward reducing wild-animal suffering that we can take now is to promote general concern for the issue. causing more people to think and care about wild-animal suffering will hasten developments in research on wild-animal welfare and associated humane technologies, while at the same time helping to ensure that our advanced descendants think cautiously about actions that would create vastly more suffering organisms. perhaps finding supporters within the animal-advocacy community would be a good starting point. while some activists oppose all human intervention with the affairs of animals, occasionally even preferring that humans did not exist, many people who feel humane sympathy for the suffering of members of other species should welcome efforts to prevent cruelty in the wild. it’s important to ensure that the animal-rights movement doesn’t end up increasing support for wilderness preservation and human non-interference of all kinds. another potential source of supporters could be people interested in evolution, who recognize what richard dawkins (1995, 133) has called the “blind, pitiless indifference” of natural selection. individuals can do much to raise the issue on their own, such as by (i)  posting on animal-rights forums and writing blog comments, (ii) participating in animal-rights meetups/events and asking attendees what they think, and (iii) writing conference papers, journal articles, or books on the topic (perhaps co-authored with ecologists, ethologists, or other scientists, to ensure that the work is not entirely armchair philosophy). there may be a danger here of raising the wild-animal issue before the general public is ready. indeed, the cruelty of nature is often used as a reductio by meat-eaters against consequentialist vegetarianism. suggesting that ethical consideration for animals could require us to expend resources toward long-term research aimed at helping wildlife might turn off entirely people who would otherwise have given some consideration to at least those animals that they affect through dietary choices (greger 2005). so wild-animal outreach should begin within communities that are most receptive, such as philosophers, animal activists, transhumanists, and scientists. we can plant the seeds of the idea so that it can grow into a component of the animal-rights movement. a “do not spread wild-animal suffering to space” message could even appear even in venues like ted or slate precisely because it is a controversial idea that people have not heard before. for those audiences, the message wouldn’t interfere with audience members’ daily lives and therefore could be entertained with less resistance. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 the importance of wild-animal suffering 149 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ it is crucial that at some point the animal-rights movement moves beyond farm, laboratory, and companion animals. the scale of brutality in nature is too vast to ignore, and humans have an obligation to exercise their cosmically rare position as both intelligent and empathetic creatures to reduce suffering in the wild as much as they can. references balcombe, jonathan. 2006. pleasurable kingdom: animals and the nature of feeling good. basingstoke: palgrave macmillan. bbc. 2005. “fierce ants build ‘torture rack’”. bbc news, april 23. http://news.bbc. co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4472521.stm. bekoff, marc, ed. 2000. the smile of a dolphin: remarkable accounts of animal emotions. new york: random house discovery books. bourne, debra c., penny cusdin, and suzanne i. boardman, eds. 2005. “pain management in ruminants”. wildlife information network. https://web.archive. org/web/20060821123033/http://www.wildlifeinformation.org/about/vol_ painmanagement.htm. broom, d.m. 1981. “behavioural plasticity in developing animals”. in development in the nervous system (british society for developmental biology symposia), edited by d.r. garrod and j.d. feldman, 361-78. cambridge: cambridge university press. 1991. “animal welfare: concepts and measurement”. journal of animal science 69 (10): 4167-75. burton, kathleen. 2004. “nasa presents star-studded mars debate”. nasa, march 25. http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/news/releases/2004/04_22ar.html. clarke, matthew, and yew-kwang ng. 2006. “population dynamics and animal welfare: issues raised by the culling of kangaroos in puckapunyal”. social choice and welfare 27 (2): 407-22. cowen, tyler. 2003. “policing nature”. environmental ethics 25 (2): 169-82. cumming, jeffrey m. 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http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2011/04/12/bambi-or-bessie-are-wild-animals-happier/ “its hand around my throat”: the social rendering of borrelia 5 is sn 2 2 8 0 -9 9 5 3 beyond anthropocentrism 1 • january 2013 inside the emotional lives of non-human animals a minding animals international utrecht 2012 pre-conference event special issue (genoa, italy, 12-13 may, 2012) edited by m. andreozzi, r. bennison, a. massaro, s. tonutti capabilities approach and animal bioethics • michele panzera animals and our emotions. how to approach the study of an interspecific community? • sabrina tonutti advocacy and animal rights • kim stallwood the emotional lives of animals: a christian perspective • alma massaro – gianfranco nicora animalia: ontology and ethics in weak antispeciesism • leonardo caffo the contemporary debate on experimentation • susanna penco – rosagemma ciliberti non-human animals and genetic engineering • arianna ferrari the relationship between humans and other animals in european animal welfare legislation • paola sobbrio human’s best friends? • matteo andreozzi elationsre l a t io n s . b e y o n d a n t h r o p o c e n t r is m 1 • 2 0 1 3 r 8.1-2 november 2020 finding agency in nonhumans special issue edited by anne aronsson, fynn holm, melissa kaul introduction finding agency in nonhumans 7 anne aronsson fynn holm melissa kaul studies and research contributions conceptualizing robotic agency: social robots in elder care 17 in contemporary japan anne aronsson fynn holm “its hand around my throat”: the social rendering of borrelia 37 ritti soncco distributed skills in camel herding: cooperation 57 in a human-animal relationship in somaliland raphael schwere a sea cow goes to court: extinction and animal agency 77 in a struggle against militarism marius palz is skrei a historical norwegian figure? the nomadic symbiosis 97 of fish and humans in the lofoten islands nafsika papacharalampous relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ relations. beyond anthropocentrism 6 “agents of description”: animals, affect, and care 115 in thalia field’s experimental animals: a reality fiction (2016) shannon lambert comments, debates, reports and interviews on midgley and scruton: some limits of a too moderate 137 animal ethics francesco allegri author guidelines 145 relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 37 “its hand around my throat” the social rendering of borrelia ritti soncco the university of edinburgh doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2020-0102-sonc ritti.soncco@ed.ac.uk abstract this paper builds on biomedical and anthropological discourses of microbial agency to explore the important opportunities this discourse offers medicine, politics, anthropology, and patients. “borrelia burgdorferi”, often termed “the great imitator”, is an ideal candidate for this discussion as it reveals how difficult it is to speak about lyme disease without engaging with microbial agency. based on 12-months research with lyme disease patients and clinicians in scotland, this paper offers a social rendering of the bacteria that reveals epistemologies of illness not available in medical accounts: the impact of social and psychological symptoms such as body dysmorphia, depression, shame, post-traumatic stress disorder, and suicide-related deaths on patients’ illness narratives. divorcing agency from the bacteria silences these important patient narratives with the consequence of a limited medical and social understanding of the signification of lyme disease and the holistic methods needed for treatment. this paper furthermore argues that the inclusion of patient worldings of borrelia acting in the medical renderings offers a democratic determination of what the illness is. finally, building on giraldo herrera and cadena, i argue for a decolonization of borrelia, exploring how the pluriverse both takes the epistemologies of patients seriously and reveals medical equivocation. keywords: agency; bacteria; borrelia; chronic illness; decolonizing medicine; lyme disease; nonhuman; patient advocates; scotland; signification. 1. introduction it’s winter 2019 in the scottish highlands and she’s saying: “when you first get it, it doesn’t seem like something dangerous. and then it gets darker and twisted and more manipulative. i feel it’s a predator constantly lurking inside me. i was talking to someone a while ago and i said i view it as an abusive spouse who beats you and who abuses you psyrelations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2020-0102-sonc mailto:ritti.soncco@ed.ac.uk https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ritti soncco 38 chologically and physically. the only difference is that i am trapped with it for the rest of my life. i live with its hand around my throat”. while she was speaking to me, morven-may maccallum had begun anxiously picking at the paint on her teacup. these were clearly not memories she wanted to relive and indeed her words give a harrowing insight into the emotional lives of people living with lyme disease. they also signpost an important linguistic phenomenon i noticed repeat throughout my research: patients and clinicians imagining the bacteria acting. this article is based on my 12-month doctoral research on lyme disease in scotland, where changing ecological conditions are expanding tick habitats and the presence of the illness is furiously moving through scottish political, social, and medical spaces. my research follows the various stakeholders producing medical knowledge on lyme disease, ranging from patient-advocates, politicians, clinicians, epidemiologists, to entomologists. while using military metaphors to discuss disease is not uncommon (hodgkin 1985; martin 1990; sontag 1990; baehr 2006; fuks 2009; bleakey et al. 2014; brives 2020; walker 2020), attributing acting to borrelia burgdorferi, the bacteria responsible for lyme disease, is so deeply ingrained in lyme disease discourse that it becomes difficult to speak about the illness without engaging with agency. among clinicians, the bacteria has been given the catchy moniker “the great imitator” (nakhla et al. 2010; logan 2017) and is routinely described in scientific publications as playing “hide-and-seek” (kraiczy 2016; pfeiffer 2018) with antibiotics and the body’s immune system. during my research i worked closely with patients who are members of support group forums and, participating in their meetings, i noticed a curious linguistic rupture. in the company of fellow patients, the language they used imagined the bacteria as acting: borrelia is a being they are in battle with, tormented by, and pushed to the brink of suicide. when i asked patients how they spoke about the bacteria to their doctors, most replied that they had “given up” telling their doctors the full extent of their problems or did not see their doctors anymore because they had lost faith in the national health service (nhs). the patients i worked with told me that when they had shared their narratives of borrelia with doctors in the past, they were called “attention-seeking”, “making it up in their heads”, “addicted to antibiotics”, or needed to be “sent to a psychologist”. as a patient told me: “i feel angry and resentful at their lack of knowledge and dismissal and their arrogant attitude to me, and i’ll do everything i can to avoid having to go to the gp 1”. in return, the 1 general practitioner. relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ “its hand around my throat” 39 patients i work with describe the doctors as “criminals” for not taking their illness narratives seriously and opt to pay for treatment at private clinics abroad where they will be prescribed long-term antibiotics. when speaking to researchers and politicians, patient-advocates are careful not to speak in the emotive way in which patients speak amongst themselves, but instead monitor that their statements are rooted in publications. this thereby translates their illness narratives to adhere to a medical imaginary and excludes their own social imaginary of borrelia. in the tension that has ensued, medical discussions of lyme disease do not include the social life of borrelia and a whole patient ontology remains secret. what epistemologies of illness is the medical world not aware of when patients speak amongst themselves? if clinicians and patients both describe borrelia as acting, why does this linguistic rupture occur? 2. the messy play of agency the question of how to speak about acting microbes has unsettled me for some time. throughout my training as a medical anthropologist, the concept of microbial agency was tiptoed around on a scale between playfulness and wariness. across our literature microbes are routinely described as “buddies” (lorimer 2016, 59) “responsible” (crawford 2007, ix) for human history including “uniting the community” (nading, 2014, 14) in nicaragua, “pushing india closer to independence (and) south africa to apartheid” (spinney 2017, 8), while in the same breath disclaiming: “none of these tiny life forms have brains (so) they have no facilities to think or plan” (crawford 2007, x). during my research on lyme disease, multiple opportunities presented themselves to explore this uncanny linguistic play. the discrepancy came to light when i observed how clinicians described borrelia and asked: “are you saying that the bacteria has agency?”. the reply was usually: “no. i’m just saying it’s very clever”. this linguistic tension makes the microbe importantly difficult for anthropologists to think with. i therefore argue that our caution concerning microbial agency is unhelpful because it neither solves our linguistic mess nor offers an alternative. instead, it becomes a tidy disclaimer to continue a messy game. when we attempt discussions on microbial agency, we are very quickly stumped by the division of nonhumans into “good” and “bad” categories. in our history living with disease, humans have repeatedly relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ritti soncco 40 portrayed disease vectors as divine (nicholas 1981; rosenberg 1989) or villainous (yong 2016; lynteris 2019). today this tidy organization of microbes along an anthropocentric spectrum of morality is considered an unsuitable portrayal of microbes’ “messy, fractious, contextual relationships of the natural world” (yong 2016, 80). rather than having fixed moral identities, microbes have been shown to change roles even within the same host, depending on where they find themselves in the body (yong 2016). instead, microbes slide along a parasite-mutualist spectrum meaning that sometimes “our allies can disappoint and our enemies can rally to our side” (ibid., 82). the fallacy of microbes as either “good” or “bad” has become a key argument hindering discussions of microbial agency and is most likely a key reason why social narratives of borrelia are so readily dismissed by the medical community and by patients themselves. the irony is that microbial agency is an important linguistic tool in healthcare messaging. in their research, bell et al. argued that assigning agency “to the threat rather than to humans” (bell et al. 2014, 350) – i.e., translating viruses into villains and bacteria into bullies – significantly strengthened the message to recipients that “they were susceptible to a threat that needs to be taken seriously” (ibid., 353). this will seem familiar: we will all remember posters pop up in our countries during the covid-19 pandemic, depicting a larger-than-life virus – sometimes green, sometimes purple – with an open laughing mouth, cruel eyes glaring mockingly. this familiar example of visual agency served to heighten the perception of the severity of the pandemic and underlines how important assigning linguistic agency to microbes is for healthcare messaging. i therefore argue that beyond ideas of good and bad microbes, linguistic agency is an important tool to understanding how patients make sense of their illness and narrate its severity to others. from the vast anthropological catalogue of agency, i found it helpful to think with the discussion on guns by latour (1994) and anderson (2020). the question they sought to answer – do guns or people kill people? – led to latour’s conclusion of the nonhuman as neutral, “playing the role of an electrical conductor, good and evil flowing through it effortlessly” (latour 1994, 31). this is reminiscent of microbes “sliding from one end of the parasite-mutualist spectrum to the other” (yong 2016, 80). building on the gun as a neutral conductor, anderson argues that the nonhuman “does not exist but occurs. it is caught in constantly changing material and ideological currents” (2020, 172). rather than place the gun in the focus of scrutiny, it is the hybridity formed between the human and the gun that is its own kind of object, “a conceptually bounded thing that relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ “its hand around my throat” 41 is writing the story of a moment” (ibid.). this is especially helpful as it allows us to follow and explore the stories that are written in the moments when borrelia acts. ingold follows this idea, placing nonhumans in flux as “active constituents of a world-in-formation” (2007, 11). to ingold, nonhumans can be seen as a happening, an occurrence: “things are in life rather than that life is in things” (ibid., 12). making the distinction of borrelia as both “in flux” and “in life” helps us explore it as a bounded “process” (dupré and guttinger 2016) in the experiences created with the human bodies it moves in. i would like to take this one step further. building on giraldo herrera’s (2018) discussion of the overlaps between spirits, shamans, and microbiology, i argue for a decolonization of our knowledge of borrelia, the bacteria. i agree with giraldo herrera’s argument that while the construction of microbes as shamanic beings may challenge our eurocentric ideas of how science and universally deterministic laws are made, this method offers the possibility for “exploring further alliances” (giraldo herrera 2018, 224). i am not arguing for borrelia as a shamanic being; rather, i argue that this perspective takes the epistemologies of patients seriously in a way that science does not. it helpfully considers borrelia a social being patients are entangled with in tension, conversations, negotiations, and stories. in this article, i will demonstrate that this method enables us to significantly magnify our understanding of lyme disease. finally, by taking seriously the stories of bacteria acting, i hope to offer a courteous platform to my participants to explore the intimacies they shared with me about their illness. this platform follows the question: what would happen if the patient stories of borrelia acting left the private spaces and escaped into the open? 3. the social rendering of borrelia a medical description of lyme disease would be required now; a rendering (koch 2011) of borrelia by classifying, diagnosing, and giving it medical meaning. this time let’s do that last. instead, let’s render the bacteria socially first: let’s hear the epistemological stories that give the bacteria social meaning. imagine a microscopic corkscrew twisting onto itself. it is thin, spiral-shaped, and uses the lashes on its outer body to swim across your view. it moves among a few dozen spirochetes, all twisting like they’re itching to unfold. this is the bacteria with the large social life, this is the great imitator. relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ritti soncco 42 3.1. grotesque morven-may maccallum is a scottish author and patient-advocate dedicated to raising awareness on lyme disease through frequent public appearances around the country and on social media, radio, and television, most notably in the bbc one documentary under the skin (2019). in 2017 morven-may published her first book, finding joy, a semi-autobiographical novel based on her 13 years experience growing up with lyme disease. the book follows joy on her journey of prolonged illness, repeated misdiagnoses, and eventual journey towards healing. one chapter, however, stands out due to a chilling monologue: chapter 22 is dedicated to what morven-may believed the bacteria would say to her if it could speak. what begins as a simple narration descends rapidly into a sadistic voice drunk on power, vicious and merciless: i’d like to introduce myself. i feel it’s only fair. i know they promised you they’d find me but i’m a hundred illnesses in one, the master of disguise. just think of what i’ll do to you if you try to start a fight. i’ll claw at your bones and i’ll break your joints, i’ll drag you through the darkness and i’ll torture you so that you never see the light. your organs may start failing while i continue my jolly jaunt. now we’re bound for life. (maccallum 2017, 175) morven-may’s bacteria displays an agency that is remarkably selfconscious and threatening: by addressing her directly, it demonstrates awareness of its being-in-the-world and of whose body it is inhabiting. it is also awareness of its own power and of the violence it can inflict on her. it is in flux not only with morven-may but with medical spaces she moves in and out of: it occurs in the promises clinicians give her, in medical procedures, and in the creation of stories of hope and despair. it is a happening that participates beyond the microbial world to be in flux with her emotional world, a spy circulating in every conversation. finally, and perhaps most importantly, it describes their cohabitation as “for life”. this brings images of imprisonment to mind, but also highlights a subliminal intentionality: the bacteria does not want to kill. rather, its victory lies in keeping morven-may alive for as long as possible so the bacteria can continue to tell the story of itself. borrelia’s agency is to remain in life. speaking to morven-may about her intention in writing this monologue, she replied, “that’s when i saw it as a jekyll and hyde, because when you first get it, it seems quite innocent. but it’s very dark and very heavy and very poisonous”. morven-may’s use of borrelia’s monologue is an excellent example of sentient volitional agency: “the attribution of relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ “its hand around my throat” 43 an intent to hurt” (bell et al. 2014, 352). in healthcare messaging, this linguistic tool would be expected to arouse high levels of fear and strong compliance in adopting healthcare recommendations. analyzing beyond its content, borrelia’s monologue is therefore a way in which morvenmay narrates the severity of her illness to others. i want to linger on a further subliminal aspect of the monologue. while morven-may succeeds in translating the bacteria into a sadistic villain, she also reveals how the bacteria is corrupting her relationship with her body. as the bacteria claims more organs and more tissues inside the body, these body parts change ownership from morven-may to borrelia. “because there’s something so grotesque inside you, you always feel dirty and defective and deformed”, morven-may described to me. her body is thereby in a state of flux itself: it becomes a place onto which morven-may and the bacteria inscribe their stories and over which both wrestle to keep ownership over. as her body deforms and defects under its new owner, it becomes a collaborator with the bacteria and turns against her. she elaborated: “you hate your body, then you have to do all these things in order to support your body in order to fight the disease. it makes it very, very hard to have much confidence in yourself or have much respect for yourself”. lyme disease is not registered as a mental illness, but taking borrelia’s speech seriously and the impact it has on patient’s self-perception of vulnerability and risk, we discover signs of loss of self-confidence, depression, and body dysmorphia. none of these psychological impacts are listed as symptoms of lyme disease. 3.2. drilling in its medical rendering, borrelia is understood to affect different parts of the human body at different times, multiplying in one place before moving on to colonize another. the physical locations of infection can be diverse, ranging from the joints to the cardiac tissue, from the skin to the nervous system. further complicating diagnosis is that the affected anatomical locations vary from patient to patient. the moniker “the great imitator” stems from this complication: the bacteria does not behave in the same way in every body, so each body presents symptoms differently. the social rendering that is not included in this, however, is if patients are aware of borrelia’s movements and if so, how they experience this movement. the patients i worked with all insisted they could feel borrelia moving, and the most common visualization to describe borrelia relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ritti soncco 44 in motion was that of a corkscrew (its biological shape) drilling through the body. in its occurrence in movement, borrelia becomes a powerfully visceral bounded thing. alice is a regular attendee of the scottish gatherings for lyme disease patients. an organized, pragmatic, and kind scottish woman, i liked to sit beside her at the gatherings because she caught me up on all the latest developments. i always started our conversations asking how she was feeling and when answering, alice would always point to individual parts of her body: commonly her skull, eyes, and ears, but when she was especially ill, her heart as well. during one of our conversations, she placed her hand on the furthest side of her head. she spoke thoughtfully but purposefully. for 16 years the pain has been constant. i started getting headaches at the back of my head, here. and over the next 2 years it felt like something was drilling its way through my brain. i just imagine this little thing going nnn nnn, drill drill drill drill through your tissues. just drilling through my head, like someone driving a kitchen knife into the side of my head and constantly grinding it round. until it reached my eye and then my eye felt like it was going to explode. in this story, borrelia is socially rendered as both a material current, expressed physically in the pain she feels in her skull, and an epistemological current: she imagines a little thing drilling and moving. to alice, borrelia has no clear sentient volitional agency, but it does demonstrate intention and direction: rather than continue multiplying where it is or be swept to body parts at random through her bloodstream, borrelia demonstrates threat agency by drilling through her tissue with intention. borrelia’s movement through her head and subsequent arrival at its new destination are deeply entangled with the violence of physical pain, either in the form of sharp headaches during the drilling, or in the visual and hearing problems when it reaches her eyes and ears. the pain it causes helps alice pinpoint the bacteria in her body: sitting “in clumps” near her brain or congested in her sinuses between her right cheek, right eye and at the base of her skull. interestingly, whenever the congestion occurs, alice is able to blow some of it out of her nose in what she describes as “long strings”. this stringy phlegm becomes alice’s evidence that she had both located the bacteria correctly and managed to pull some of it out of her body. but no matter how much she pulls, days or weeks later the sharp headaches resume followed by more drilling and a repeated congestion of her sinuses. borrelia is thereby imagined as a divisible body: extracting some of it does not extract all of it, and when she removes some of the bacteria out of the circulation of her body, there is always bacteria left that remains in circulation and in life. relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ “its hand around my throat” 45 morven-may rendered borrelia as a “dark thing” that changed from dormant to active: “when it’s becoming more active you can feel the bacteria growing inside you. you can feel it going to different points of your body”, she described. this social rendering follows the medicallycontested idea that borrelia can change its shape from a corkscrew to a round body, and revert back into its corkscrew form at a later time to produce a second generation of bacteria “without a re-infection from a tick bite” (raxlen 2019, 101). so not only can morven-may feel the bacteria move and predict an impending flare-up of pain, she can also feel it change its body. like alice, morven-may can locate borrelia in individual parts of her body, but unlike alice, locating borrelia in morven-may’s body is primarily entangled with the emotional violence of loss of ownership over these body parts: “there’ll be certain points it goes to and i’m just, ‘no, please not there’. and then in a few days you’ll start to feel more weakness in that part of your body”. by monitoring her body, morven-may can locate the bacteria but this location is bound with stories of emotional loss and grief. borrelia’s drilling creates a relationship with alice, morven-may, and many other patients i worked with, that is based on high vigilance. regular monitoring of symptoms and carefully prepared social plans, diets, sleep patterns, and stress factors in accordance with borrelia’s occurrences is a required method of survival for people suffering from lyme disease. the fact that, despite all this meticulous vigilance, the bacteria continues to evade both them and their clinicians, leads patients to describe borrelia as “hiding”. while the medical rendering of borrelia does include the analogy “hiding”, it is important to emphasize what this word insinuates: a change in lifestyle based on monitoring, vigilance, discipline, and emotional and physical pain. 3.3. fatigue “tiredness and loss of energy” (nhs 2018) are symptoms of lyme disease and are experienced as ongoing for several years to the extent that lyme disease is frequently misdiagnosed as chronic fatigue syndrome. what this brief and simple description does not chronicle is the extensive impact the bacteria’s cause of fatigue has on patients’ lives. socially, borrelia is rendered as a debilitating presence, as morven-may’s monologue attests: “i exhaust you during the day and then i keep you up all night” (maccallum 2017, 175). fatigue is a dominant theme throughout morven-may’s novel, so this singular line in borrelia’s monologue must relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ritti soncco 46 be understood as a reflection of an ongoing, encompassing wider narrative. for the patients i worked with, fatigue is one of the most important aspects of lyme disease. talking about how exhausted the bacteria made them feel featured repeatedly in every conversation i had with patients, wherein they recounted the activities they were unable to do at length. “i couldn’t manage to keep awake long enough to eat a meal”, alice described. “if i tried to go down the stairs for a cup of tea, it was such an effort that by the time i managed to bring the cup of tea back to bed, i would lie down in bed and fall asleep and wake up with a cold cup of tea next to me”. interestingly, this fatigue is not rendered as the result of specific actions borrelia undertook, e.g., drilling, but is associated with its overall being in life. arlene is a carer for her child who was bitten by a tick in scotland as a teenager. in an open letter to the scottish parliament in support of petition pe01662 demanding improvement of testing, treatment, and awareness of lyme disease, arlene described the early years of her child’s symptoms: “constantly tired during senior school years (but) excited about going off to university, they found after three weeks it was impossible to get out of bed”. within two months they were unable to attend classes or social events, and meals had to be brought to their student accommodation. two months after enrolling in their undergraduate university degree, arlene’s child returned home, “their body – and their life – falling apart”. this was eight years ago and the fatigue has not yet improved to the state where arlene’s child can move out of their parent’s house, much less have a social or professional life. unable to manage simple tasks such as walking, eating, sitting, or even staying awake, the fatigue prompted by borrelia’s occurrence becomes a story of vulnerability, helplessness, and shame. pauline is a scottish schoolteacher and has suffered from lyme disease for over a decade. speaking to me over the phone, she describes masking her shame to perform a sense of normality to colleagues: “if someone asks me ‘how are you’, i smile and say ‘oh i’m fine, i’m great, i’m great’. i don’t say, ‘i had to hold onto the wall to get here’ or ‘i can’t feel my left foot’. i’m now at that stage again of the shame”. the patients i worked with seemed to agree that while all the accompanying physical symptoms of living with borrelia were painful, fatigue played the largest role in their suffering. “it was the fatigue in the end that really, really got me”, alice concluded. the medical rendering of “tiredness” and “loss of energy” as symptomatic of lyme disease does not adequately reflect the extent of the relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ “its hand around my throat” 47 fatigue, nor its implication of vulnerability, shame, or the inability to live a fulfilled social or professional life. 3.4. suicide returning to the social rendering of living with the bacteria as a form of imprisonment, i share another scene from morven-may’s book. immediately after borrelia’s monologue, the protagonist joy is confronted with her reflection. i look up at the kitchen mirror to see the person who holds no resemblance to me watching me. ‘why won’t you die? why won’t you die!’ i scream. (maccallum 2017, 177) there is, of course, a way in which patients have in the past chosen to escape borrelia’s imprisonment. every patient i spoke to during my research confided they had contemplated or attempted suicide multiple times 2. at the start of the covid-19 pandemic, i discovered that patients in scotland were discussing using the coronavirus as a means for committing suicide: readily “available”, “seemingly accidental”, and a “preference to living with lyme disease”. when i asked alice about this in march 2020, she replied frankly, “after 13 years of so much pain, i can see the point. dying quickly of covid-19 seems infinitely preferable to the long drawn-out process of dealing with a life where you barely exist”. i was shocked to hear such an analytical reflection of choosing to die from one disease to avoid living with another. her statement highlights that not only does the bacteria have ownership over a physical body and a social life, it does this at the cost of extinguishing a social existence. patients describe borrelia’s ownership over their lives as “feeling dying”, and the covid-19 pandemic offered them a way to escape this ownership by reinforcing their existence through their choice of death. rather than let their long-term abuser kill them and thereby win an imagined war, they sought to find autonomy in death. if we return to my previous discussion on the body as 2 in her book lyme: the first epidemic of climate change, investigative journalist mary beth pfeiffer discusses the lack of research on suicide-related deaths due to lyme disease in the united states. unfortunately there are no published statistics on how many people opt for this death over living with lyme disease; my research in scotland could not locate reliable statistics, but it did verify that suicide thoughts and attempts are shockingly common in the illness narrative. to anyone interested in pursuing this topic further, i recommend pfeiffer’s book. relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ritti soncco 48 in flux, suicide becomes a triumphant way of removing the bacteria from its being in-life and in-flux, and inscribes the patient’s story victoriously onto their body. to date, living with borrelia is not considered fatal. at the time of writing, i don’t know if or how many lyme disease patients in scotland used the coronavirus to commit suicide, but i know from my work that there is little to no research on suicide-related deaths in lyme disease. as alice told me: “a lot of the scientists who’re working in this area in britain have no idea what patients are going through. a lot of us are fearing for our lives”. in the united states lyme disease patients have been found to display “symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder because they’ve been ignored so long” (zubcevic in pfeiffer 2018, 80). based on patient discussions of suicide before and during covid-19, it is clear that ptsd research into people living with borrelia is long overdue. 3.5. stories discussing microbial agency reveals patient narratives which are rarely heard in medical spaces: stories of depression, body dysmorphia, vulnerability, shame, and suicide, but also stories of discipline, vigilance, endurance, and survival. by divorcing agency from borrelia – saying that borrelia is not really drilling, deforming, or killing – we risk silencing these important patient narratives. this has the consequence that we continue to misunderstand the extent of lyme disease and the holistic methods needed for healing. 4. the medical rendering of borrelia bearing the social rendering of lyme disease in mind, let’s now finally discuss its medical rendering. in doing so, it is important to remember that how borrelia is medically rendered goes beyond linguistic play: the question of what the bacteria does and does not do has transformed lyme disease into an internationally contested illness (dumes 2020) that is a fierce political, economic and medical controversy. lyme disease is a complex multi-organ illness caused by the bacteria borrelia burgdorferi and spread in scotland by the tick vector ixodes ricinus. lyme disease can manifest itself in diverse ways: the most common symptom is the erythema migrans, a skin lesion that looks like a bull’s eye relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ “its hand around my throat” 49 rash which begins at the site of the tick bite, and can later move to other parts of the body. as the bacteria enters the bloodstream, various other organ systems become affected: “heart problems” (nhs 2018) which may include lyme carditis and further cardiac manifestations (silver 2017); the nervous system, causing “trouble with memory or concentration” (nhs 2018); and the joints, causing “pain and swelling in joints” (ibid.) and inflammatory arthritis (dattwyler and sperber 2011). affecting such a diversity of organs results in a myriad of symptoms that range from skin rashes, photosensitivity, swollen joints, headaches, and fatigue to “endocrine and neurological systems and experience musculoskeletal, cardiac, dermatological and neuropsychiatric problems” (lymediseaseuk 2020a). as i mentioned previously, the linguistic production of borrelia acting is not unique to patient circles: speaking about lyme disease, medical researchers equally use linguistic agency. the most famous example of this is its medical nickname “the great imitator” (nakhla et al. 2010; logan 2017). the catchy moniker refers to the bacteria’s complexity of symptoms which seem to mimic the many diseases it is commonly misdiagnosed as: “me/chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, multiple sclerosis, dementia, depression, and anxiety disorders” (lymediseaseuk 2020b). in my research, i repeatedly encountered this popular moniker in international medical spaces, publications, conferences, and in conversation with medical researchers and clinicians. a further example of linguistic agency is present in an internationally political and economic tug-of-war between patient-advocates and clinicians debating medically contested ideas about borrelia’s ability to persist in the body after antibiotic treatment. here there is a division into two camps: clinicians and patients who agree that the bacteria can persist in the body and thereby cause chronic lyme disease, are known by their community as “lyme-literate;” and those who do not agree that borrelia can persist in the body. lyme-literate researchers describe borrelia’s persistence in publications using linguistic agency: the bacteria is described as having various “strategies to sense and survive” (rudenko et al. 2019, 2) antibiotics, such as by “tolerating” (hodzic in pfeiffer 2018, 136) or by playing a game of “hide-and-seek” (kraiczy 2016) with the antibiotics and the body’s immune system. as scottish herbalist monica wilde told me: “these aren’t called ‘stealth infections’ for nothing. they’re stealth infections because they evade and hide from the immune system”. for this strategy of persistence, medical researchers compliment borrelia as “resourceful, if not extremely clever” (raxlen 2019, 100). in the cases of lyme-literate relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ritti soncco 50 clinicians, microbial agency is used to describe an action the bacteria is agreed to possess: persistence. the researchers i worked with who disagree with borrelia’s ability to persist equally use linguistic agency, but argue that they do so for other reasons. professor dominic mellor is an veterinary epidemiologist and co-chair of the scottish health protection network (shpn) subgroup for tick-borne illnesses. an open-minded and gentle person, mellor is keen to demystify borrelia and support patient-advocacy work for improvement of treatment and awareness, but is not convinced of borrelia’s ability to persist. when i asked for his thoughts on the common employment of linguistic agency to describe borrelia, he replied, “i think it’s great to do that. i use analogy all the time to help people understand what are quite complicated technical descriptions”. following mellor’s approach, giving the bacteria a catchy moniker renders it visible and understandable in layman’s terms. it serves as an educational tool to “rationally order” (paxson 2008, 17) a complicated bacteria. this brings me to the second use of agency: much of the bacteria remains under-researched, so researchers who disagree with borrelia’s ability to persist use analogies of agency as a way to describe the unknown. as mellor told me: “i say to my vet students, ‘part of the reason you get paid is to make decisions based on incomplete knowledge information’”. mellor’s statement demonstrates that agency is a linguistic site to work with a microbe that is messy, incomplete, and breaking the rules of medical ordering. while this medical rendering admits it doesn’t know everything about the bacteria, the rational response to date has been to exclude patient narratives and wait for the science to fill in the gaps. in medical rendering the bacteria, microbial agency is a playful educational tool to help researchers, patients, and the public communicate while also leaving room for the knowledge that is unknown. as bell et al. demonstrate, this form of linguistic agency is an effective and important method of communication, however this article has hoped to argue that by dismissing microbial agency as nothing more than a linguistic tool, we risk having an incomplete understanding of lyme disease and patients’ illness narratives. following the standardized medical ontology, researchers stay in their laboratories and away from the social life of the bacteria they research, and patients share stories in support groups that clinicians never hear and speak a language that clinicians never learn. lyme disease is rationally ordered with a tidy disclaimer to continue a messy game. the question remains how can we integrate stories of borrelia acting into the medical rendering? relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ “its hand around my throat” 51 5. decolonizing borrelia to consider how the social and medical rendering of borrelia can be brought together, i argue that the first essential step is to decolonize how we talk about bacteria. to do this, i build on giraldo herrera’s discourse on microbes as shamanic beings (2018), and cadena and blaser’s (2018) concepts of the pluriverse. throughout anthropological discourse on medical pluralism, western biomedicine has firmly remained a colonized space: it has arguably not moved far beyond its ontology constructed in enlightenment that separates humans from nonhumans (latour 2011) and produced a colonization of thought constructed out of “anthropocentric prejudices associated with human exceptionalism” (giraldo herrera 2018, 223) that placed medical rendering above all other forms of understanding illness. in this colonization process, nonhumans such as spirits, shamans, witches, and demons, were considered misplaced in medical spaces. instead, they were categorized as “alternative”, “folk”, and “traditional” ethnopluralisms. needless to say, these terms are exceedingly frustrating as they construct a medical story of linear evolution with biomedicine as the desired global norm, and all other healing practices, regardless how standardized within a region, as non-normative culture-specific alternatives. by disempowering and decontextualizing pre-colonial medical knowledge, an unbalanced world of “double translation-betrayal” (latour 2011, 158) was created: separated from the nonhuman world and therefore unable to speak about it, scientific work became a translation at best and a betrayal at worst. western biomedicine remains constructed in a colonial “one-world” world: a world that “has granted itself the right to assimilate all other worlds and, by presenting itself as exclusive, cancels possibilities for what lies beyond its limits” (cadena and blaser 2018, 3). in this “one-world” world, the medical rendering of borrelia tells us everything we need to know about the bacteria, but as i hope to have shown, the social rendering of borrelia offers a significantly magnified understanding of what being ill with lyme disease means. the violence created by the “one-world” world thereby highlights that the very medical system set in place to help patients actually renders the social lives of patients mute. rather than keeping these epistemological renderings apart, we need a reconciliation of science with nature, of humans with nonhumans. this could offer a better translation (latour 2011; giraldo herrera 2018) between medical and social worlds and bring microbes into the same reality for both. relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ritti soncco 52 decolonizing borrelia means moving beyond the western “oneworld” world and to the pluriverse. described by cadena and blaser as “heterogenous worldings coming together negotiating their difficult being together in heterogeneity” (cadena and blaser 2018, 4), the pluriverse does not state that one world is interpreted in different ways. instead, the pluriverse is an analytic ethnographic tool capable of “conceiving ecologies of practices across heterogeneous(ly) entangled worlds” (ibid.). to the patients i worked with, borrelia is not like a predator; it is a predator, it is grotesque, and it is drilling. an important point in the making of heterogeneous worlds is equivocation. as a feature becoming increasingly important to anthropology, equivocation states that while people may use the same “concepts, grammars and practices” (cadena 2015, 27), they do not always mean the same things and do not know this. in cadena’s work in andean peru, the mountain ausangate means different things to different people: some will mean a natural feature in the andean mountain range, others an earthbeing who in times of political unrest was a lawyer or a president (ibid., 96) in the decision-making. therefore, the epistemological argument that “ausangate” means the same things across worlds risks equivocation. i raise this point because it makes a pluriverse worlding of borrelia possible: it produces one world in which the bacteria is a spirochete that may or may not persist, and another world in which the bacteria is a strategic, resourceful predator that makes grotesque, exhausted, and suicidal. here i suggest the term “medical equivocation”, as a helpful way of mapping the issue: a non-understanding that the social worlds rendered by patients are real worlds. this has an important second dimension. as long as these worldings are kept apart, patients and medical narratives remain disunited. this is currently the case: in my research, patients share their narratives in patient spaces and clinicians share their narratives in clinical spaces. following the nhs and nice guidelines, lyme disease as only a physical illness is a medical equivocation as long as it does not include the off-road pluriverse borrelia takes patients into. ironically, both medics and patients complain that the other party “doesn’t listen” and i have struggled to think through how both parties can harbor the exact same complaint of the other. medical equivocation could be a way to dismantle this conundrum: perhaps both parties are listening but what they’re hearing is a medical equivocation. relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ “its hand around my throat” 53 6. conclusion to conclude, engaging with microbial agency offers an important opportunity for medicine, politics, and anthropology to explore the linguistic messmates we make out of microbes. conceptualizing microbial agency importantly reveals the worlds that become possible when we take this engagement seriously. firstly, by offering a better translation of borrelia, a platform is created on which we can rethink illness as a negotiation of social and psychological symptoms that are currently not included in the international medical rendering. when lyme disease patients relate their narratives to clinicians, they are routinely told that they are “attention-seeking”, “making it up in their heads”, “addicted to antibiotics”, or will be “sent to a psychologist”. as such, patients keep their narratives from the medical community. consequently, the medical and wider social community continue to have a poor understanding of how devastating lyme disease can be. secondly, the repeated lack of understanding of lyme disease has brought more psychological harm to patients to the extent of reported symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. this highlights that the medical systems set in place to help patients are inadvertently causing additional harm. furthermore, this has fueled a bitter divide between patients and the nhs, wherein patients describe the nhs as “criminals” who offer no help. to find help, patients are currently designating who is “lyme-literate” and who is not, and then engage solely with these networks in economies of blood, money, trust, and long-term antibiotics. this reimagines patient-doctor hierarchies, and importantly, deconstructs national health systems from being medical experts. finally, maintaining a colonized social epistemology of borrelia renders lyme disease as less psychologically and socially devastating and thereby less politically necessary to tackle forcefully. petition pe01662 launched in june 2017 by patient-advocates demands the scottish parliament improve awareness, treatment, and testing, but the petition has seen little movement since that time. the covid-19 pandemic is now adding a further layer: as the clinicians i work with confirmed, human and economic resources are being redirected to focus on the coronavirus, and illnesses deemed less critical are neglected. medical equivocation is therefore an important obstacle in raising awareness of how devastating an illness lyme disease actually is. i therefore argue that patient worldings of borrelia acting should be included in the lyme disease symptomatic list: the bacteria as a cause of depression, body dysmorphia, vulnerrelations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ritti soncco 54 ability, shame, vigiliance, fatigue, suicide, and more. these two worlds, i argue, can be mutually beneficial in offering a new stage for conversation and democratic determination of what borrelia is. microbial agency thereby offers itself as a powerful tool in the socio-political epidemic of signification (treichler 1999) of lyme disease which could have real-life consequences for patients and clinicians. acknowledgements for their generous contributions to my research, enduring gratitude to: alice, morven-may maccallum, janey cringean, pauline, arlene, dominic mellor, monica wilde, and the many anonymous lyme disease patients and clinicians; the university of edinburgh pgr seminar participants; ian harper, rebecca marsland, alice street, lukas engelmann, and cristina moreno. special thanks to the carnegie trust for the universities of scotland for funding this research and the zurich workshop participants and our mentors anne aronsson, fynn holm, and melissa ann kaul, for believing in this paper from seedling to conclusion. references anderson, joseph j. 2020. armed 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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-40973709 sontag, susan. 1990. illness as metaphor and aids and its metaphors. new york: anchor. spinney, laura. 2017. pale rider: the spanish flu of 1918 and how it changed the world. london: vintage. treichler, paula a. 1999. how to have a theory in an epidemic: cultural chronicles of aids. london: duke university press. walker, iona francesca. 2020. “beyond the military metaphor: comparing antimicrobial resistance and the covid-19 pandemic in the united kingdom”. medicine anthropology theory 7 (2). http://journals.ed.ac.uk/index.php/ mat/article/view/5026 yong, ed. 2016. i contain multitudes: the microbes within us and a grander view of life. london: vintage. relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng95/chapter/recommendations#management https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng95/chapter/recommendations#management https://doi.org/10.1186/s13071-019-3495-7 https://doi.org/10.1186/s13071-019-3495-7 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-40973709 http://journals.ed.ac.uk/index.php/mat/article/view/5026 http://journals.ed.ac.uk/index.php/mat/article/view/5026 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ “agents of description”: animals, affect, and care in thalia field’s “experimental animals: a reality fiction” (2016) 5 is sn 2 2 8 0 -9 9 5 3 beyond anthropocentrism 1 • january 2013 inside the emotional lives of non-human animals a minding animals international utrecht 2012 pre-conference event special issue (genoa, italy, 12-13 may, 2012) edited by m. andreozzi, r. bennison, a. massaro, s. tonutti capabilities approach and animal bioethics • michele panzera animals and our emotions. how to approach the study of an interspecific community? • sabrina tonutti advocacy and animal rights • kim stallwood the emotional lives of animals: a christian perspective • alma massaro – gianfranco nicora animalia: ontology and ethics in weak antispeciesism • leonardo caffo the contemporary debate on experimentation • susanna penco – rosagemma ciliberti non-human animals and genetic engineering • arianna ferrari the relationship between humans and other animals in european animal welfare legislation • paola sobbrio human’s best friends? • matteo andreozzi elationsre l a t io n s . b e y o n d a n t h r o p o c e n t r is m 1 • 2 0 1 3 r 8.1-2 november 2020 finding agency in nonhumans special issue edited by anne aronsson, fynn holm, melissa kaul introduction finding agency in nonhumans 7 anne aronsson fynn holm melissa kaul studies and research contributions conceptualizing robotic agency: social robots in elder care 17 in contemporary japan anne aronsson fynn holm “its hand around my throat”: the social rendering of borrelia 37 ritti soncco distributed skills in camel herding: cooperation 57 in a human-animal relationship in somaliland raphael schwere a sea cow goes to court: extinction and animal agency 77 in a struggle against militarism marius palz is skrei a historical norwegian figure? the nomadic symbiosis 97 of fish and humans in the lofoten islands nafsika papacharalampous relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ relations. beyond anthropocentrism 6 “agents of description”: animals, affect, and care 115 in thalia field’s experimental animals: a reality fiction (2016) shannon lambert comments, debates, reports and interviews on midgley and scruton: some limits of a too moderate 137 animal ethics francesco allegri author guidelines 145 relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 115 “agents of description” animals, affect, and care in thalia field’s experimental animals: a reality fiction (2016) shannon lambert universiteit gent doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2020-0102-lamb shannon.lambert@ugent.be abstract in this article, i explore questions of laboratory animal agency in dialogue with thalia field’s literary text “experimental animals: a reality fiction” (2016). using the framework of “care” (understood, following maría puig de la bellacasa 2017, as a multi-dimensional concept comprising affect, ethics, and practice), i consider how field’s synaesthetic descriptions of animal suffering create an affective response in readers, alerting them to a shared carnal vulnerability. indeed, rather than anthropomorphizing animals through narration or focalization, field “stays with the body” to consider how animals call to us not as experimental objects, but as ethical subjects, how they become – in other words – agents of the description (stewart 2016). to develop this idea, i introduce the “practiced” dimension of care. more specifically, i explore how field uses narrative strategies like first-person narration and second-person address, “bridge characters” (james 2019), and juxtaposition to morally structure the text and encourage “transspecies alliances” between readers and represented animals. i argue that such devices direct and train affect, allowing us to better appreciate how conceptions of nonhuman animal agency are always contextualized within particular sets of social, cultural, historical, and disciplinary frames and practices. keywords: agency; care; critical animal studies; description; ethics; lab lit; laboratory animals; narratology; practice; thalia field. 1. introduction in february 2019, researchers from zhejiang university published an article titled: “human mind control of rat cyborg’s continuous locomotion with wireless brain-to-brain interface” (zhang et al. 2019). by implanting microelectrodes into the brain of a living rat and mediating the motor imagery “instructions” of the human operator through a comrelations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2020-0102-lamb mailto:shannon.lambert@ugent.be https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ shannon lambert 116 puter which decoded electroencephalogram (eeg), humans took “brain control” of the rat, moving it through a maze (zhang et al. 2019, 3). in the process of directing the rat, researchers argued that “a tacit understanding [formed] between the human and the rat cyborg” (ibid., 7, n. 2). yet, contra the researchers’ claim, the relationship outlined here is completely antithetical to the formation of such an understanding. instead, what we have is a relationship which is unidirectional and wholly nonreciprocal in terms of flows of information. the animal becomes a shell through which the ghost of human consciousness passes. this highly sensational and ethically problematic 1 example exaggerates a tendency within scientific experimentation to strip animals of their agency to respond. as ronald bogue puts it, “the ideal of pure objectivity in […] experimentation misconstrues the relationship between researchers and their animal subjects in which both parties affect and are affected by, one another, even in the laboratory” (2015, 170; despret 2004). while the animal here is linguistically present, it has become what ethnographer michael lynch calls an “analytic” animal – that is, “data” to be interpreted, “a creature in generalized mathematical space”, which is “a product of human intervention” and invention (1988, 267, 269). the kind of bodily puppetry we find in zhejiang’s rat cyborg experiment has a long history. indeed, the perceived malleability of animal bodies was central to the vivisectionist practices that helped shape the field we today recognize today as biomedicine. writing in the nineteenthcentury, claude bernard (1813-1878), arguably france’s most famous physiologist, would state that “[t]he scientific principle of vivisection is easy to grasp. it is always a question of separating or altering parts of the living machine, so as to study them and thus to decide how they function and for what” (field 2016, kindle location 174) 2. in an experiment that shares uncomfortable resonance with zhang et al.’s rat cyborg research, bernard and his colleagues intervened in animal locomotion by “altering parts” of the animals’ bodies: by “damag[ing] the brain of a pigeon or 1 to justify research on ethical grounds, researchers need to demonstrate that “the ethical cost of the research (the pain of the animals, the ultimate death of the animals) [is] either balanced or outweighed by the potential value of the research to human or animal health, the advancement of knowledge, or the good of society” (uconn health, “scientific and ethical justification”, https://ovpr.uchc.edu/services/rics/animal/iacuc/ ethics/scientific-ethical-justification/). while research exploring methods of brain control might be able to be scientifically justified (in that it is “generalizable to other species”), it hardly seems to meet any of the categories required for ethical justification. see also apa guidelines: https://www.apa.org/science/leadership/care/guidelines. 2 references to field’s text will henceforth appear as field, kl xx, or simply kl xx. relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://ovpr.uchc.edu/services/rics/animal/iacuc/ethics/scientific-ethical-justification/ https://ovpr.uchc.edu/services/rics/animal/iacuc/ethics/scientific-ethical-justification/ https://www.apa.org/science/leadership/care/guidelines https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ “agents of description” 117 cat” the vivisectionists made the animal turn “around and around” so that it was “no longer able to walk straight” (field, kl 174). in this paper, i consider laboratory animal agency in dialogue with thalia field’s experimental animals: a reality fiction (2016), a literary text set during this foundational period in biomedical history. constructed as a quasi-witness testimony, field’s “reality fiction” unfolds as a collective statement made in a trans-historical trial that transports present-day readers hundreds of years into the past. as the title suggests, this work takes as its focus animal experimentation, critically engaging with the origins of contemporary biomedicine. the fiction is made up of a collage of historical fragments from nineteenth-century france – though, also occasionally supplemented by historical snippets from england, europe, and “the american republic”. collecting and collating literary, philosophical, and scientific quotations, diary entries, letters, newspaper clippings, photos, diagrams, and political and historical information, field weaves together an alternative narrative of “accidental activist” marie-françoise (“fanny”) bernard. fanny, claude bernard’s wife, has been historically characterized as greedy, stupid, and hostile – an “executioner-woman” who fought “the freedoms of modern science” (de monzie in field, kl 56). her husband, claude, is hailed by many as the father of modern medicine and is renowned for replacing theory, philosophy, and speculation in science with “verifiable” practices like experiments on living animals. in addition, his work on “blind experimentation” – which, in the case of animal experiments involves withholding from observers the hypothesis being tested in order to avoid bias – is widely agreed to be important in the development of “scientific objectivity”. yet, in field’s “fiction”, it is fanny bernard who takes center stage, and she emerges as a sympathetic spectre-protagonist who is intuitive, intelligent, determined, and angry. throughout, fanny and claude’s unhappy marriage microcosmically enacts a broader struggle between the ethical agenda of animal activists and the experimentalists’ pursuit of scientific knowledge. given its hybrid status as an assemblage of historical fact woven together through the fictionalized characterization of (the historical figure) fanny, field’s text is uniquely situated at the intersection of science and literature and, as such, offers an opportunity to explore notions of nonhuman animal agency through both of these lenses. indeed, through its nuanced and cross-disciplinary exploration of vivisection, field’s fiction navigates a myriad of ethical complexities pertinent to – but currently unaddressed – in contemporary biomedical experiments like zhejiang’s rat cyborg research. where scientific writing has, as we relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ shannon lambert 118 will see, a tendency to downplay both the participation and presence of animals, field’s fiction uses attentive, visceral descriptions of animals to suggest that rather than “analytic”, animals are “affective” beings – with “affective” here understood as an “actant […] which has efficacy, can do things, has sufficient coherence to make a difference, produce effects, alter the course of events” (bennett 2010, viii) 3. in what follows, i explore some of the narrative strategies field uses to portray animals as lively and agential without rendering them anthropomorphized extensions of the human 4. by coupling affectively engaging descriptions, and positioning techniques like an attentive “bridge character” (a concept i will expand on), field situates her readers in a web of care where they are encouraged to turn a critical eye to science’s frequent obfuscation of the agency of nonhuman animals. as i will argue, readers engage with animals in field’s text not through a single strategy of “narrative engagement”; for example, amy coplan’s (2004) categories of “emotional contagion”, “empathy”, or “sympathy”, but instead through a form of careful engagement which traverses empathy’s feeling for with sympathy’s feeling with. according to maría puig de la bellacasa, care is a multi-dimensional and multi-species concept comprising affect, ethics, and practice 5. in his elegant summary of puig de la bellacasa’s work for the journal environmental humanities’ “living lexicon”, thom van dooren describes care as “an entry point into a grounded form of embodied and practical ethics” (2014, 292): as an affective state, caring is an embodied phenomenon, the product of intellectual and emotional competencies […]. as an ethical obligation, to care is to become subject to another, to recognize an obligation to look after another. finally, as a practical labour, caring requires more from us than abstract well wishing, it requires that we get involved in some concrete way, that we do. (ibid.) taking my cue from bellacasa’s tripartite approach to care, in the sections which follow i explore care’s affective, practical, and ethical 3 for more on the absence of animals in scientific reports, see birke and smith 1995 and migeon 2014. 4 see also lambert 2021, forthcoming. 5 as she writes in matters of care, puig de la bellacasa’s conception of the triptych of care is inspired by joan tronto and work where care is described as including, “everything we do to maintain, continue and repair ‘our world’ so that we can live in it as well as possible. that world includes our bodies, our selves, and our environment, all of which we seek to interweave in a complex, life-sustaining web” (tronto 1993, 103; emphasis added by puig de la bellacasa). relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ “agents of description” 119 dimensions, considering how field’s represented animals call to us not as experimental objects but as ethical subjects. after situating my approach within the field of literary animal studies, i introduce some of the tensions between detached, observational description (often favored by nineteenth-century scientists and authors like émile zola) and the viscerally-affecting descriptions fanny offers us, paying particular attention to the affective exchanges that occur when description is reframed as a haptic, rather than visual, practice. prompted by van dooren’s contention that “while we may all ultimately be connected to one another, the specificity and proximity of connections matters” (2016, 60), the final section of the essay considers the practical dimension of care by beginning to attend to some of the narrative strategies used to create human-nonhuman “alignment” and moral “allegiance” (smith 1999, 220). while scholars within animal studies have drawn attention to instances of animal affect and “emotional contagion” (see baker 2000; weik von mossner 2017, 2018), more work is needed in exploring the practiced dimension of interspecies engagement in literature. by better accounting for the deliberate, moral structuring devices used by authors to encourage “transspecies alliances”, we can better understand how conceptions of nonhuman animal agency are contextualized within particular sets of social, cultural, historical, and disciplinary frames and practices. before coming to this point, however, i dwell a little longer on literary animals. 2. literary animals while we should be careful in drawing connections between living and textual bodies, the tendency to use and disappear animals as extensions of and surrogates for human thought, or to view them as bodies to be interpreted, is also common in literature. in their function as symbols, metaphors, and moralizing examples, animals as animals disappear into systems of human meaning-making. here, too, we see a relationship which is unidirectional – we can think, for example, of animals as conduits for moral lessons in aesop’s fables. while these instances of symbolic surrogacy sometimes evoke humor, they are far from harmless. as josephine donovan has argued, literary devices like metaphor frequently aestheticize animal pain and suffering to explore human feelings (2016, 46). and, even when not depicting animal suffering, the use of animals as stand-ins for humans reinforces anthropocentric modes of thought which gravitate around humans as sole sites of “mattering”. yet, at the same time, literrelations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ shannon lambert 120 ary narratives have the potential to problematize these anthropocentric tendencies. for instance, david herman’s (2011, 2018) work on animal narration has demonstrated that along with human-centred approaches to literary animals, it is possible to find literary examples which reverse this directionality and destabilize taken-for-granted assumptions about what it means to be human. in contrast to human-centered strategies for representing nonhuman animals like animal allegory and “anthropomorphic projection”, herman explores strategies of “zoomorphic projection” and, further along the representational continuum he posits, “umwelt exploration”. where zoomorphic projection defamiliarizes the human through transformations where humans take on nonhuman characteristics (we can think of transformational narratives like franz kafka’s the metamorphosis and julio cortázar’s “axolotl”), umwelt explorations attempt to represent the experiential or phenomenological world of a nonhuman animal (found, for example, in a narrative like rat by andrzej zaniewski). yet, while both of these strategies perform important work in demonstrating how “nonhuman ways of encountering the world can reshape humans’ own modes of encounter”, neither fully capture the representation of humans and animals in field’s fiction. rather than the exploring strategies for representing individual humans and other animals, experimental animals focuses on relations, demonstrating how narratives featuring a human protagonist are capable of raising “important questions about the scope and limits of selfhood in a wider world of selves, nonhuman as well as human” (herman 2014, 133). according to herman, a focus on transspecies relationality “opens space for biocentric becoming” and situates the human “self within wider webs of creatural life” (ibid., 133, 139). in its focus on relationality, herman’s work on “narratology beyond the human” chimes with theoretical approaches like feminist care ethics – one of the main methodological strands woven into this article. instead of privileging an autonomous “self”, proponents of this perspective argue that the world is constituted by a myriad of relationships, a “thick mesh of relational obligation”, or “care” (puig de la bellacasa 2017, 3). in emphasizing relationality, the feminist ethics of care perspective “denies the possibility of an impartial moral standpoint” and instead “sees moral judgements as dependent on situative or relational contexts” (biller-andorno 2002, 42). recently, narratological work exploring transspecies encounters in literature has focused on care. in “nonhuman fictional characters and the empathy-altruism hypothesis” (2019), erin james asks, relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ “agents of description” 121 “[can] novels that refuse to anthropomorphize nonhuman characters inspire care for real-world nonhuman subjects while also avoiding the illusion that readers have direct access to the minds and emotions of nonhuman characters?” (ibid., 582). in other words, can readers feel with and relate to literary animals whose depiction is not built around a recognizable human or human-like consciousness? in an attempt to answer these questions, i argue that, unlike allan burns, for whom “[w] ithout an interest in the minds of other animals, empathy cannot exist” (2002, 348), care is rooted in the body. it is important to note here that in focusing on the body, i do not seek to reinscribe cartesian dualisms like mind/body; rather, as brian massumi writes, “body” and “corporeality” should always be understood as part of “a relation of reciprocal presupposition as modalities of action differentially belonging to the same process; in a word, dynamisms” (2014, 45) 6. rather than taking up in a general sense jeremy bentham’s famous question of “can they [animals] suffer?” here i focus specifically on the perceptible manifestations of physical suffering – manifestations we might describe (using the common, if contested, metaphor) as appearing on the “skin” or “surface” of animal experience 7. in what follows, i turn to field’s fiction to explore textually-mediated encounters with laboratory animals as both “affective” and “practiced”. 6 see also stephanie erev’s lucid synthesis of this idea in “what is it like to become a bat?” (2018). here she argues that the body and consciousness exist on a continuum and “[t]he materialities of our bodies harbor experiences of their own, which, although inaccessible to conscious experience, nevertheless help to compose it” (ibid., 136). 7 for more on the relationship between suffering and pain, see oliver massin (2020). in my focus on the body, i follow the work of scholars like anat pick (2011) and ralph acampora (2006, 2012). for pick, while scholars like cary wolfe critique the “discourse of species” internally through “‘inside’ of the site of what used to be called the ‘self’ and the ‘subject’”, she works in the opposite direction, “externally, by considering the corporeal reality of living bodies” (2011, 2-3). like pick, acampora turns to corporeality, seeing a focus on the body as a means through which to redress the tendency in trans-human moral theories of extensionism to “‘elevate’ nonhuman beings into our still all-too-humanist sphere of moral concern, often by drawing attention to the ‘higher’ (i.e. humanoid) mental capacities of other organisms”. in contrast, for acampora, the “live body is the primary locus of existential commonality between human animals and other organisms, and the appreciation of commonality undergirding differentiation enables the growth of moral relationships” (2012, 236). for more on “extensionism”, see cary wolfe 2008. relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ shannon lambert 122 3. affect: bodies described sew the two ears of a rabbit together, then having fused them, cut one below in order to watch the reestablishment of sensibility, and see if the action of the sympathetic might then pass from one ear to another. (field, kl 400-405) drawn from claude’s “red notebook”, the excerpt above typifies a scientific gaze that is “distancing and objectifying”, transforming “being into phenomenon” (panofsky in donovan 2016, 16). the style of claude’s laboratory shorthand is such that “one often forgets there’s any animal involved: the lung did such, the vagus nerve such” (kl 181). indeed, not only does claude’s writing remove the holistic animal body from view through its jargon-heavy partitioning (“on cutting the spinal accessories the voice will be seen to stop while breathing nevertheless continues”, kl 225), but it also removes his own. throughout experimental animals, claude’s writing serves as a counterpoint to fanny’s situated and graphic descriptions of nonhuman animals. through their affective power, her descriptions attune readers to animal bodies, encouraging them to see glimmers of animals’ affective power even in scientific excerpts like claude’s above. in an interview with field, lauren choplin from the nonhuman rights project observes how “experimental animals seems to have great faith in the rhetorical power of straightforward, visceral description of animal experimentation and animal suffering” (field 2017, n.p.). she asks, “how did you want description to function in the book?”. in response, field explains how experimental animals explores “different aesthetic choices toward suffering and description” and how she is particularly interested in description’s capacity to tangibly evoke suffering bodies. throughout the fiction, field portrays the sensory environment of the nineteenth century where individuals were able to see, feel, smell, and hear animal suffering. for example, fanny notes how she thinks more about animals this past year than in all the years combined: howls and barks echoing down the narrow streets, and the animals claude lodges in the kitchen – bleeding or half-conscious – crawling with highpitched yells into the corners, or lying in a tight ball licking their fur. (kl 219-233) as field’s work articulates, this sensory exposure led to many antivivisectionist protests, forcing the proponents of the practice to close the doors to their laboratories indefinitely. yet, by foregrounding descriptions which shift readers from the visual to the haptic – a shift which means relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ “agents of description” 123 that, even from behind a closed door, fanny “sees feelingly” the “horrific agonies of a dog just outside” – field draws (textual) animal and human reader together through the locus of the body (kl 253). unlike animal narration and focalization which offer access to the “mind” or approximate the experience of animal consciousness 8, the descriptions here evoke a type of corporeal compassion (acampora 2006) which engages a full spectrum of the body’s sensory modalities. in place of description which operates purely through the visual, fanny’s gaze is what barbara ettinger has called “matrixial”: the matrixial gaze […] enters visuality, disturbs it and change[s] the tableau, because it penetrates and alters the scopic field, which by definition is impure – inseparable from other unconscious dimensions of the psyche (oral, anal), informed by different sources of the sensibilities (like changes in pressure, movement, touch, etc.) and also connected to the unconscious of others in intersubjective and trans-subjective spheres. (2001, 90) 9 fanny’s matrixial gaze positions her as “wit(h)ness” – “a means of being with and remembering for the other through the artistic act and through an aesthetic encounter” (pollock 2010, 831). the graphic descriptions within field’s text are vivid enough (particularly in the quantity of action verbs they contain) to “cue a strong embodied response in the […] reader” (weik von mossner 2017, 80). as animals “howl”, “bark”, “yell”, and “crawl”, they break the fiction’s diegetic frame, demonstrating the proximity of a haptic, matrixial, gaze where it is unavoidable to be “touched by what we touch” (puig de la bellacasa 2017, 20). as well as these synaesthetic descriptions, field problematizes the “distance” of the visual sensory modality by creating a degree of proximity and continuity between fanny’s own body and those she describes 10. 8 focalization describes “the selection or restriction of narrative information in relation to the experience and knowledge of the narrator, the characters or other, more hypothetical entities in the storyworld” and is loosely related to “perspective” or “point of view” (niederhoff 2009, 115). while scholars working at the intersection of narratology and animal studies have explored the potential of narration and focalization to explore and approximate nonhuman consciousness and experience, less attention has been given to the ways in which description might enable or limit our engagements with literary animals. for more, see lambert 2021, forthcoming. 9 while there are important differences (particularly in relation to the ethical status of art), the synaesthetic quality of the matrixial gaze shares space with eva hayward’s concept of “fingeryeyes” (2010): a “haptic-optic” involving the “overlay of sensoriums and the interand intrachange of sensations” as well as “expressivity in the simultaneity of touching and feeling” (ibid., 581). 10 for more on the ‘distance’ of vision, see haraway (1991) 2018 and puig de la bellacasa 2017, 97-98. relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ shannon lambert 124 in the fiction’s opening, fanny claims that while she and claude both did their “deeds”, it is, she says with a personification that evokes a haptic intrusion into the visual, “only [her] eye into which history jabs its finger” (kl 39). fanny seeks to clear her own name from historical smudging at the same time that she attempts to defame her husband. significantly, her “testimony” is heavily reliant on descriptions that foreground and challenge science’s and – more specifically here – her husband claude’s laboratory shorthand. in contrast to claude’s “disembodied objectivity”, fanny thrusts herself – and her body – into the limelight, using it to create proximity with the animals she describes and to demonstrate, very self-consciously, that all bodies are situated and all stories are told from a certain perspective, place, time, and affective disposition. fanny’s descriptions of the affective impact of animal encounters on her own body play a crucial role in ensuring the readerly gaze is neither detached nor mastering – nor even sympathetic in a smithian sense 11 – but is instead attentive, entangled, and responsive. with her first-person narration, fanny draws us into her world, bringing us close to her body as she engages with animals: she “limp[s]” and her “feet burn” as she walks the street trying to find stray animals before her husband – who will use them for vivisections – does; she “slip[s] across wet stone, fall[s] forward, and injure[s] her leg badly” (kl 530), she notes how she is constantly “tired” and “exhausted” (kl 463), and how her “throat and nose burn” (kl 466). out on the streets, looking for animals: shit mixes in our shoes […] the rain makes the mud slick, and our boots suck it as we tumble into each other, hands down in the sticky mess, the cold breaking our skin. (kl 644) with these descriptions, fanny draws her body onto the stage, seeking to create a “conversation” with pain’s “inarticulate” utterances (kl 199204). in her article on “bridge characters” 12, or a human character who feels compassionately towards the nonhuman characters represented, james argues that one of the ways in which human characters can bridge readerly engagement with a nonhuman animal is through a “symbolic twinning” (2019, 590) – that is, by describing the human character’s emotional and cognitive responses to situations that are similar to the 11 in adam smith’s model, sympathy involves an external spectator observing, evaluating, and forming judgements about the other, making imaginative leaps across an interpersonal distance (burgess 2011; fairclough 2013). 12 james draws the concept of “bridge character” from suzanne keen’s empathy and the novel (2007). relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ “agents of description” 125 animal character’s (2019, 590-591). however, in experimental animals, we are encouraged to be cautious (and critical) about these kinds of symbolic substitutions and the attached experiential conflation. on multiple occasions, despite creating proximity between herself and animals, fanny draws attention to strained and irresponsible analogical mappings. pushing on correspondences between vivisectors and authors and husbands, she quotes, for example, balzac’s physiology of marriage: “27. marriage is a science. / 28. a man cannot marry before he has studied anatomy and dissected at least one woman” (kl 193-198). and, as well as spending a great deal of time with émile zola and his attempts to extrapolate the scientific method to literature (kl 2838), fanny introduces author george lewes into the mix, quoting his contention that within the “department” of literature, “criticism […] is also vivisection. there is a great deal of real torture inflicted upon authors by critics” – a comparison which is questioned explicitly within the text by a “commission chairman”: “but i suppose you would scarcely compare that […] with the fact of a living animal being cut up?” (kl 2481, 2486). “why not?” lewes responds. instead of acting as a symbolic surrogate, fanny seeks to make her body available for a response (despret 2013), to cultivate a corporeal presence and openness, where she – and, possibly by extension, readers – attends to and is affected by animal pain: “[n]oise penetrates the body, shaking it awake because ears haven’t lids to close, though we can often choose deafness” (kl 118). rather than “coherence”, fanny seeks conversation, “possibilities of an embodied communication” (hayward 2010, 584; despret 2013, 51). instead of standing-in for animal experience, fanny’s descriptions of her own body encourage readers to bear witness and care about similar (but not identical) instances of nonhuman suffering. by drawing her body into proximity with those of animals, she allows for the circulation of affects, or a “symphysical” relationship which, according to acampora, “designate[s] the felt sense of sharing with somebody else a live nexus as experienced in a somatic setting of direct or systematic (inter)relationship” (2012, 283). it is to these more “systematic” relations that i now turn. 4. practice: bodies situated by coupling visceral descriptions with narrative strategies like secondperson address and juxtaposition, field begins to train affect, encouraging readers to align themselves ethically with fanny’s antivivisectionist stance. in this way affects are “accumulative” and “the iteration of relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ shannon lambert 126 similar experiences and […] affects […] accumulate[s]” into “dispositions that predispose one to act and react in particular ways” (watkins 2010, 278). through such accumulations, field encourages readers to both align themselves with fanny’s perspective as well as feel a sense of moral allegiance. according to murray smith, “alignment” is a result of “our access to the actions, thoughts, and feelings of a character” (1999, 220) and is therefore, as alexa weik von mossner writes, “a matter of narrative perspective” (2016, 83). what makes this alignment – and its entrainment of affect – particularly effective, though, is the way in which it works in concert with murray’s other category of positioning: “allegiance”. distinct from alignment, allegiance “refers to the way in which narrative ‘elicits responses of sympathy’ toward a character. such responses are ‘triggered – if not wholly determined – by the moral structure’ of the narrative” (smith in weik von mossner 2016, 83). through its series of micro and macro conflicts, experimental animals continually asks readers to assess their alignments and allegiances – a challenge which may, in turn, lead readers to critically reflect why they have adopted particular perspectival and ethical positions. throughout the fiction, readers participate in a process of “side-taking” in what fritz breithaupt has called a three-person model of empathy where one person (in this case, the reader) “observes the conflict of two others [fanny and claude]” (2012, 84). to use lori gruen’s succinct phrasing, “[w]e live in a world of conflicts and need guidance about how to resolve at least some of that conflict, some of the time” – here i look at how narrative strategies and depictions of animal agency guide readers’ alignment and moral allegiance (2012, 226). one of the key strategies experimental animals employs to draw readers into the action of the text is second-person address: “did you hear him [claude] say that to understand a watch isn’t to watch it but to break it?” (kl 26). like a finger that jabs itself into potentially passive eyes, fanny’s frequent use of second-person address works with the visceral descriptions to draw readers out of detached, and passive observation. as well as this, it works with fanny’s use of first-person plural to call out across textual and historical boundaries, drawing readers into her growing antivivisectionist community: is it “what we hear that determines what we’ll do?” (kl 995). beyond the micro-level grammatical alignments, juxtaposition plays an important role in encouraging our alignment with fanny. as alluded to in the previous section, across the novel, visceral descriptions of animal pain always occur in a “set-piece” alongside a “clinical” and disembodied excerpt from “claude’s red notebook”. where fanny recounts how relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ “agents of description” 127 a raspy whine pulls me to a rabbit in a box in the kitchen. she is cut practically in half, and relaxes into death when touched on the head. what kind of greeting is this? i think, holding her paw. (kl 301) claude writes, “rabbits lose their sugar when they are varnished. would it be the same if their spinal cords were cut at the same time?” (kl 301). here, the shifts in register are played out across two characters, creating oppositional modes of relation: one of the embodied activist and one of the disembodied scientist 13. juxtapositions like these work in conjunction with three other interrelated strategies which morally structure the text, syncing up readerly alignment and allegiance. firstly, it is possible to read the fiction’s judicial framing (“she goes safely to trial whose father is a judge”, kl 45) as a strategy to force readers to take a side in the conflicts. according to breithaupt, in a three-person model of empathy, “a judicative decision can be made when it is calculated which of the two opponents is morally or legally right” (2012, 89). again, by positioning an evocative description like “of course the animal feels every poke and jolt without a way to cry” alongside claude’s “what morality says we can’t do to those like us, science authorizes us to do to animals”, field pits two competing perceptions of animals (as either affective or analytic) against one another (kl 298). while this alone may not create a sense of allegiance with fanny and the animals, the judicial framing of the fiction works with more localized strategies for directing allegiance. as breithaupt writes, individuals may base their decision to take a particular side on the basis of “self-reflexivity” (2012, 89). in these instances, “[o]ne may side with the more passive party in a conflict because as on observer open is also in a more passive, receptive position” – a position which may “predispose” the observer to take sides “with the tendentially more passive of the observed persons, the victims, the sufferers, the weaker, or simply those to whom the action happens” (ibid.) 14. while fanny’s vivid descriptions make a case for animals as affective agents, in claude’s passages, readers who are separated from the action by textual and historical boundaries and unable to intervene will likely 13 in narratology beyond the human, herman compares the action-oriented register (associated with subjectivity and agency) with event-oriented register (associated with objectivity and passivity) (2018, 241). these categories can be read alongside lynch’s categories of the “naturalistic” and “analytic” animal, respectively (1988). 14 breithaupt is, of course, careful to remind readers that “the privileging of the weak and the passivity of observation as a form of sympathy is culturally coded” (2012, 89). for more on narrative empathy with those similar to us (keen 2006, 212). relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ shannon lambert 128 feel a greater sense of allegiance with “voiceless” animals who, after being poisoned with curare (a substance which acts on the connection between brain and motor nerves), endure “sufferings more atrocious than the imagination can invent” – deprived not of “sensation or intelligence, but only of the means of expressing these through movement” (kl 293). lastly, these juxtapositions work with causality. as anna lindhé notes, “when we are able to detect a clear causal connection – ‘this pain was caused by that person or event’ – empathy is ‘generally stronger’ than when such connection is absent” (cook 2011, 82 in lindhé 2016, 31). by placing the descriptions of animals in set-pieces, field ensures that readers connect the suffering animals we find in fanny’s descriptions with the “analytic animals” we find in claude’s writing: “the animals claude lodges in the kitchen – bleeding or half-conscious” (kl 222; my emphasis). where fanny attunes her senses to, especially, sounds of animal suffering, claude discovers “the trick of cutting dogs’ vocal cords” (kl  258). coupled with her first-person narration and linguistic strategies for community-building, it is possible to argue that through the fiction’s judicial framing, readerly reflexivity, and the mapping of causality, we are gradually, accumulatively, trained to respond to animal affect in a manner similar to fanny: not by “cutting” but by attending. as donald nathanson articulates, “affect is motivating but never localizing; the experience of affect tells us only that something needs our attention. other systems must be engaged in order to decide what must be done and how” (2008, xiii). in field’s text, visceral descriptions are deliberately framed, creating an “affective accumulation” that encourages us to bear witness and care about nonhuman suffering. rather than observing animal suffering “from above” we “wit(h)ness” the suffering of animals in an encounter which “acknowledges the gap between different beings, times and places, while ethically making each partner vulnerable to the other’s trauma” (pollock 2010, 838). the mediation of visceral descriptions through fanny creates an transspecies encounter where we engage with animals care-fully across an ethically-attuned, but necessary distance. where field’s protagonist asks, “doesn’t writing always hide the bodies?” the text itself answers with, “well, that depends on how you describe them” (kl 2958). relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ “agents of description” 129 5. conclusion: ethics i can’t help asking: what is care? is it simply where you put your attention? is it a feeling of fellowship, or can you care about unknown things? if i say i care about you, is it because i acknowledge we share something in common? what is pain for, i also wonder: it speaks in a thousand inarticulate ways, yet seeks a conversation. (kl 199-204) asked early in experimental animals, fanny’s series of questions about the operations of care probe some of the key issues explored throughout this essay: attention, commonality, and fellowship. in part two, i explored the ways in which detached observation is troubled by haptic descriptions of animal bodies. in evoking a range of sensory modalities, these descriptions “touch” the bodies of fanny and her readers, encouraging a greater recognition of the agency of animals to affect the world and bodies around them. field further enables this kind of exchange by bringing fanny’s body into proximity with those of animals, creating a sense of corporeal conversation in place of anthropocentric monologues like that of the zhejiang rat cyborg experiment. rather than creating or reinforcing distance, the descriptions i have explored encourage us to “see feelingly”, to locate points of connection and moments of reciprocity in which animals are no longer the objects of our gaze, but, instead, also agents of the description (stewart 2016, 33). in the final part of this paper, i considered the “practiced” dimension of care by exploring how these affective descriptions work in concert with structuring devices like grammatical alignments and juxtapositions. by employing these devices, field trains our affective responses so that fanny’s textual attitudes and practices become the ghostly preludes (and possibilities) to our own. in both description and bridging, field keeps fanny and readers on the surface of animal experience and at a slight remove – she avoids anthropomorphizing animals by depicting their minds, and she also resists the conflation of human and animal experience favouring instead a careful mode of relation which cuts across empathy’s feeling with and sympathy’s feeling for. while a number of scholars have explored the potential for the “emotional contagion” of affecting textual encounters to encourage transspecies empathy, in looking at specific devices that direct affect, we might develop a more nuanced understanding of how literary texts influence readers’ attitudes on issues like animal agency 15. as vera nünning writes (summarizing recent neurological research), “the plasticity of the brain ensures that 15 see for example weik von mossner 2017, 2018. relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ shannon lambert 130 extended and repeated practice will have biological as well as mental consequences” (2015, 40). by attending to devices that repeatedly direct our affective responses, we might begin to consider reading itself as an “affective practice” (wetherell 2013, 2015) – a move which brings affect into dialogue with deliberation, reminding us that “[c]ontext, past and current practice, and complex acts of meaning-making and representation are involved in the spreading of affect, no matter how random or viral it appears” (wetherell 2015, 154). by exploring the ways in which language can “hide the bodies”, field’s fiction seems to intimate that what is lost in a scientific view (at least on the level of discourse) is a crucial recognition of messy, reciprocal entanglement where “scientists and animals are fleshy creatures which are enacted and enacting through their embodied choreography” (despret 2013, 69). this recognition is not about becoming more “emotional” in scientific practice, but about becoming more “accurate”. as puig de la bellacasa notes, “the term ‘accurate’ derives from care, ‘prepared with care, exact’” (2017, 91) – an etymological relation, which opens onto an ethics or a politics concerned with the “thick, impure, involvement in a work where the question of how to care needs to be posed” (puig de la bellacasa 2017, 6). this kind of question is dynamic and processual and in scientific contexts should, to use vinciane despret’s words, engage with “interesting questions that give animals a chance to demonstrate their interests” since such questions have important implications for the accuracy and ethics of scientific practice (2015, 121). for, as despret claims, “the question of response is a question whose answer changes everything” (ibid., 122). literature like field’s articulates and reflects on the ethical complexity of animal experimentation, bringing into sharp relief the problematic quality of work – like zhang et al.’s mind controlled rat – that fails to acknowledge and carefully attend to such considerations. field’s fiction also offers a space for thinking through and critically engaging with laboratories as sites of reciprocity and considers how affective encounters translate in writing. through haptic description and the situated practice of “wit(h)nessing”, readers of experimental animals enter into webs of care where they are forced to (re)hear the cries which, to repurpose george eliot’s words, “lie on the other side of silence” ([1871-2] 2000, 162). or, 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from affect as excess to affective/discursive practice”. subjectivity 6 (4): 349368. doi: 10.1057/sub.2013.13. wetherell, margaret. 2015. “trends in the turn to affect”. body & society 21 (2): 139-166. wolfe, cary. 2008. animal rites: american culture, the discourse of species, and posthumanist theory. chicago: university of chicago press. zhang, shaomin, sheng yuan, lipeng huang, xiaoxiang zheng, zhaohui wy, kedi xu, and gang pan. 2019. “human mind control of rat cyborg’s continuous locomotion with wireless brain-to-brain interface”. scientific reports 9 (1321): 1-12. doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-36885-0. relations – 8.1-2 november 2020 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ online issn 2280-9643 print issn 2283-3196 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90332-3 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90332-3 https://www.ledonline.it/relations/ threatening animals? threatening animals? heather i. sullivan professor of german, trinity university, san antonio, texas doi: 10.7358/rela-2016-001-sull hsulliva@trinity.edu abstract threatening predators and pernicious beasts continue to play significant roles in the human imaginary even as human threats to other species increase exponentially in the age of anthropocene. while posthumanist animal studies and material ecocriticism sync human and other animals within the biosphere’s living interactions, our shared material reciprocity is currently skewing ever more towards the human threat to other species – and so to ourselves as co-dependents. this essay explores the meaning of “threatening” and “threatened”. five german texts presenting human-animal interactions in the anthropocene’s span by goethe, kafka, stifter, duve, and trojanow unsettle expectations of threats. in goethe’s “novella”, an escaped lion and tiger enter german forests and are subdued, whereas stifter’s “brigitta” depicts a pastoral peace threatened by wolves. kafka’s “metamorphosis” re-shapes david abram’s idea of “becoming animal”, and karen duve’s “rain novel” and ilija trojanow’s “melting ice”, recent climate change novels, juxtapose the human threat to the world’s climate with the onslaught of endless slugs and a biting penguin. finally, the resurgence of wild boars in berlin’s urban space in the past few years renegotiates human, nonhuman, and posthuman boundaries in an urban ecology. keywords: anthropocene, animals, plumwood, goethe, stifter, kafka, duve, trojanow, climate change, material ecocriticism. the crocodile’s terrifying death roll pulled val plumwood repeatedly into the murky water, as she describes in her now famous crocodile survival tale, being prey. yet her primary concern after living to tell this story was that the crocodile should not be hunted down and killed in response to the attack since she had ventured into its space in the main tributary of the river in kakadu, in the australian northern territory. indeed, the most dangerous and threatening animal/predator on the planet in large numbers is not the ancient crocodile, nor the iconic white shark, nor even the fetishized large cats, but rather humanity en masse even though many literary works continue to portray human-animal conflicts in terms of hunter-prey relations. the impact of human beings as a vast population is now that http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 heather i. sullivan 40 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ of a geological force, as experts across the disciplines discuss when debating whether to call our era the “anthropocene” or age of humankind (the international commission on stratigraphy will vote in 2016 whether to adopt, officially, the term). erased in this understanding is the appreciation of different groups with different carbon footprints, energy uses, and dietary habits; diminished are gender, ethnic, continental, and regional differences. though it is dangerously universalizing to think of human impact as one singular vast entity, humanity now faces the fact that we as a species are altering the climate, the composition of the atmosphere in which we reside, the surface soil layers across the entire planet, and, as per the focus of this essay, annihilating vast numbers of other species, so much so that scientists describe it this as the earth’s sixth major extinction event. elizabeth kolbert describes the five previous events in the sixth extinction, noting: “the most recent – and famous – mass extinction came at the close of the cretaceous period; it wiped out, in addition to the dinosaurs, the plesiosaurs, the mosasaurs, the ammonites, and the pterosaurs. [d.b.] wake and [v.t.] vredenburg argued that, based on extinction rates among amphibians, an event of a similarly catastrophic nature was currently under way” (kolbert 2014, 6). the anthropocene is a catastrophe of animal losses. nevertheless, threatening predators, parasites and plagues of insects, and pernicious beasts continue to play significant role in the human imaginary even as human threats to the well-being of innumerable other species have increased exponentially in the age of anthropocene. while posthumanist animal studies and material ecocriticism sync human and other animals within the biosphere’s living interactions, our shared material reciprocity is currently skewing ever more towards the human threat to other species – and so to ourselves since we are also ecological beings dependent upon an entire network or, in timothy morton’s term, a “mesh” of relations without which we cannot survive. our co-bacteria make up most of the dna in our bodies and enable our digestive abilities. this human threat emerges with our expanding population and industrial use as a species necessitating ever more land and resources. this essay follows the animal studies projects such as ursula heise’s nach der natur (after nature), donna haraway’s a companion species manifesto, and david abram’s becoming animal that view human beings as a species interrelated and co-reliant upon other species, yet i have here an emphasis on conflicts. the confrontations often reveal just as much about our shared heritage and cohabitation as analyses of symbiosis. abram emphasizes the intertwined being of human and nonhuman so that “becoming animal” connotes becoming aware of how we have always been a part of this world and its many species. he notes: http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 threatening animals? 41 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ by implying that each mountain, each cloud, each wolf or oak or hive of bees, is a distant variant of our own texture and pulse, and conversely, that our own sentient organism is itself a variant of these things – and intensification of fluctuation within the sensitive flesh of the world – such a way of speaking situates the human intellect back within the sensuous cosmos. (abram 2010, 71) placing us in the sensuous cosmos, we find ourselves as we have always been: linked, enmeshed, co-embodied, and yet in conflict with our cohumans, our co-species, and ourselves. in this essay, i trace our circumstances within the sensuous cosmos, briefly evaluating five well-known german texts that present human-animal interactions in the anthropocene’s span, including works from johann wolfgang goethe (1749-1832), adalbert stifter (1805-1868), franz kafka (1883-1924), karen duve (1961), and ilija trojanow (1965). these authors’ animal portrayals, when read anew in light of the anthropocene, unsettle our expectations of human and nonhuman threats. in goethe’s novella, an escaped lion and tiger enter german forests and are subdued, whereas stifter’s brigitta depicts a pastoral peace threatened by wolves. kafka’s metamorphosis re-shapes david abram’s idea of “becoming animal”, and karen duve’s rain novel and ilija trojanow’s melting ice, recent climate change novels, juxtapose the human threat to the world’s climate with the onslaught of endless slugs and a biting penguin. finally, the resurgence of wild boars in berlin’s urban space in the past few years renegotiates human, nonhuman, and posthuman boundaries in an urban ecology. indeed, animals are now being recognized as our co-species with a new deep posthumanism based on ecological insights and the scientific knowledge of dna and evolution simultaneous to the realization that we are in the middle of the earth’s sixth mass extinction event brought about by our activities. with this crisis in mind, we enter into the cultural imaginary in the anthropocene with five literary examples depicting various engagements with human-animal conflicts. goethe writes at the beginning of the anthropocene, at least as it is defined by the coiners of the terms, paul crutzen and eugene stoermer. central to his 1828 novella is the escape of a circus tiger and lion into the mountainous german forestland. as the princess rides up the mountain with her new husband’s uncle friedrich and the besotted honorio as her guard, she must flee from the apparent attack of the tiger: “[…] the provoked beast pursued his course straight towards the princess” (goethe 1828, 272). yet “the uneven ground, the sharp stones, seemed to hinder his progress. honorio rode immediately behind him, and slowed down as he came alongside the beast” (273). honorio shoots and kills the large cat, http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 heather i. sullivan 42 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ kneeling down on the corpse and offering, to the princess’s horror, the pelt as a sign of his adoration. but the crisis is not over; for one thing, the circus family arrives on the mountain and declares that both the tiger and lion were old and tame members of their family who posed no threat, but the lion is still loose. additionally, the fire in the town below, the reason for the escape of the big cats, continues to burn. uncle friedrich, who had just been rather coincidentally recalling his dismay when facing a previous fire, must return below to battle this anthropogenic danger in the built environment of a newly market-driven economy. in fact, the danger in goethe’s tale appears to be not the escaped animals but rather the impending changes of modernity bringing new life to markets and the shifting of power away from the aristocracy. while goethe was a wealthy middle-class citizen given his noble “von” only for his excellent writings, he expressed concern about the rapidity of change and the violence of revolutionary europe; hence the lion and tiger are the aesthetic challenge to a world gone awry. as the prince and his entourage return early from their hunt, drawn by the signs of smoke, they join the princess on the mountain, put honorio on guard, and wait while the young circus boy charms the lion with music: “at last the flute could be heard again, the child, his eyes bright and pleased, emerged from the dark cavern, and behind him the lion, walking slowly and, as it seemed, with some difficulty” (goethe 1828, 279). the boy sits down in the waning sunlight and removes a thorn from the lion’s paw. in other words, goethe’s famous novella – known for its ambiguity, its shifting protagonists (who is the protagonist is one of the most frequently asked questions in the scholarship, as noted by jane brown), and its poetic, musical finale with biblical allusions to daniel and the lions and st. jerome removing the thorn from the lion’s paw – symbolically addresses the political and economic upheavals of the french revolution, the napoleonic wars, the german “restoration” or return to the rule of the aristocracy but in encoded terms of chaotic violence ending aesthetically with harmony. yet i suggest here that we read this novella in light of its overt attention to the animals in addition to its hidden politics. hence the return of the prince and the barely contained violence of the aristocratic hunters awaiting a chance to slaughter “large game” draw our attention to the fact that goethe distracts from the human power struggles with animal interactions. thus the threat of the lion and tiger pale in the face of the more disturbingly unresolved dangers in the story: the fire as a symbol in goethe’s works for revolution and violent social change burns on, the bustling town so overfull as to make the princess quite wary denotes the increased monetary power of capitalism bringing radical change fed by war and profit http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 threatening animals? 43 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ seeking, the prince’s interrupted hunt brings implications of masculine violence and aristocratic traditions continuing despite emerging modernity, the crumbling ruin of the old castle is being taken over by trees (and the power of uncontained nature), and honorio’s undeclared yet obvious love for the newly married princess is left open-ended. of all these dangers, only the situation with the lion and tiger is contained. the circus family arrives on the scene as if transported directly out of the old testament, embodying goethe’s orientalist bent for ancient judaic texts as original and “natural” sources of creative inspiration (albeit with troubling orientalism and a complex relation to judaism as described by herman meyer and karin schutjer). as the keepers of the animals who treat them as part of the family, they also have the last word here, so that the middle-class capitalist conflict with the aristocracy and the burning town are overwritten by the boy singing to his lion: “the child fluted and sang on […]” (goethe 1928, 280). nearly all the scholarly attention is to the aesthetic, biblical, political, economic, and biographical questions rather than the human-animal relationships here. yet goethe’s novella, written at the early phases of the anthropocene, presents us with an important reversal: the threat is to the animals whose agencies are highlighted and framed by the human yet the looming social eruptions only seemingly disappear. the flames still burn and the aristocratic hunt is only interrupted. the lion and tiger stand in for goethe’s somewhat romantic sense of nature as a place of aesthetic beauty and natural systems in which even the wildest elements and uncontained energies follow specific laws, whereas, rather presciently, the impending drama of modernity is open-ended, urban, fiery, and pitted with unresolved power struggles of shifting economic structures. while goethe exoticizes the animals with orientalist and ancient harmonies in conflict with modern european cultural transformations, stifter’s 1847 brigitta does the opposite presenting a conflict between the working dogs (as tools) and the wild and threatening wolves (as uncontained and dangerous nature). this novella follows the travels of a young german narrator visiting the hungarian steppes where his old friend, the major, rules over a large estate with farms, forests, and “animal husbandry”. this traditional term applies since stifter’s tale portrays animals in a dichotomy: they either are part of the cultivated landscape tamed for human use, or else are threatening predators representing nature’s explosive energies. as sean ireton notes, these explosions are always eventually subdued and the “soft law” of the world reasserts itself. “as to be expected in a tale by stifter […], nature undergoes a period of disarray before returning to its original wholesome condition” (ireton 2011, 165). indeed, the dark energies in stifter mirror the human soul that occasionally erupts out of its bounds and http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 heather i. sullivan 44 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ must be brought back into the fold, which in the case of brigitta is a kind of “natureculture”. stifter’s narrator tours the impressive estate and lands of the major and soon meets the equally impressive neighbor, the titular brigitta, who turns out to be the major’s wife whom he abandoned years ago. they now live alongside each other, jointly cultivating the lands, and slowly growing reattached. much of the text is dedicated to describing the land: undeveloped, it is “a barren level heath” (stifter 1844, 94), a “gloomy waste” (95), and an “arid waste of stones” (98). that is, until the narrator reaches the major’s lands, which are lushly and systematically organized: the higher we went up the hill the more the valley opened up behind us and i saw that the wood beyond the white house was very large and stretched away to the mountains. great avenues of trees came right down to the fields and one cultivated area after the other was revealed with crops which all seemed in excellent heart. i had never seen such long, plump and healthylooking maize before and it was obviously most carefully attended, for there was no grass or weeds growing between its strong stems. (100) the vineyards are as rich as the rhineland and full of “luscious berries” (100). natureculture is thoroughly cultivated here. there is little action in the novella; the lengthy quote above is but one of many long descriptions of the two estates’ farms, fields, and domesticated animals as well as of the labor to make the soil fertile, the trees grow in avenues, and the sheep to be ever woolier. they also have high walled parks to keep the deer in and the wolves out, paid for by the profits of the maize crops and cattle breeding – all actions with profound ecological consequences. finally, though, all of this harmony is disrupted by an animal attack: in the cold of approaching winter, the famished wolves attack gustave, who is brigitta’s, and it turns out, the major’s, son. this is a typical strategy of stifter: harmony reigns until briefly interrupted by a natural disaster whether storms, earthquakes, ice, floods, or wolves, and then a peaceful reconciliation recurs. in brigitta, this event involves wolves. while out on a late autumn ride, the major and the narrator hear pistols. they race their horses to the spot and witness a terrible scene: gustave was under attack and seeking to “defend himself against a pack of fierce wolves” but was tiring (146). “he had killed two wolves with his pistols and slashed open a third with his blade as the beast sprang at his horse’s head” (146-47). in a brief stand-off, the major sees the wolves “licking their slavering chops” while they “waited their opportunity. a slight movement, anything or nothing, and they would have sprung at him all together and the boy would have been lost” (147). luckily the major arrives and shoots as many of the wolves as possible, firing “as though he were a wild animal himself” (147). it is not over, though, and they grab gustave to rush home http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 threatening animals? 45 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ to send out the wolfhounds to hunt down the remaining wolves since, as the narrator states, “at any moment they would attack again” (147). barely rescued from the fangs of death, gustave recovers, his parent reconcile, and the young german narrator decides to return home in the spring to begin a family of his own. with modern ecological knowledge, this text has implications that conflict with stifter’s clear message about wolves, dogs, and cultivation. the narrator comments on the fact that the cold winter approaching has led the wolves south, but neglects to mention that the vast enclosed parks where the deer are kept for human consumption exclude normal predation. the expansion of the estate swallowing land for agriculture is also relevant, as is the re-shaping of the forest, the draining of swamps to build roads, and the expansion of domesticated species across the lands. such human impact alters the way that the “wild” animals behave, as christina eisenberg notes in the wolf’s tooth: deer usually live in a “landscape of fear, where your ability to survive depends on your ability to detect and escape predators as well as obtain food. the resulting stealth and fear dynamics – and the relationship between top predators and their prey – have profound ecological implications” (eisenberg 2010, 38). eisenberg, a wolf ecologist, demonstrates that deer living without wolves wreak serious havoc among trees by eating away all the bark at their head level since they must no longer be alert and constantly moving when the “landscape of fear” is gone, a point very similar to aldo leopold’s discussion of wolves in a sand county almanac. hence the wolves’ presence alters deer behavior and the longterm health of the trees. stifter’s brigitta documents the relationship of wolves and deer but not of trees (which instead rely on human caretaking). stifter, as is so typical with portrayals of top predators, posits wolves as an outside threat and a disruption of the system. yet an ecological reading of brigitta highlights how stifter’s text nevertheless even if inadvertently intertwines the wolves, the deer enclosed in high walls, and the vast estates of human beings as agents connected in complex ecological interactions. kafka’s infamous 1916 story, the metamorphosis, shifts the ecological setting from the outdoor lands to the interior space of an apartment. the human-nonhuman entanglements are much closer and more bodily here, when: “gregor samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin” (kafka 1916, 3). the description of his transformed body indicates that he is a large dung beetle; this situation requires vigorous new navigations of physical space and body. “he was lying on his back as he saw his vaulted brown belly, sectioned by arch-shaped ribs, to whose dome the cover, about to slide off completely, could barely cling. his many legs, pitifully thin compared http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 heather i. sullivan 46 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ with the size of the rest of him, were waving helplessly before his eyes” (3). as one of the most famous authors of twentieth-century modernity, kafka preempts abram’s theme of “becoming animal”, albeit in a less idealistic and ecological form. his metamorphosis has been read as a portrayal of the modern human alienated by the marketplace and inhuman bureaucracy, or as a documentation of the oppressive patriarchal society that damages individual subjectivity, warping it into grotesque forms of anguish as ronald gray’s volume of essays attests. this essay reconsiders gregor’s fate through the lens of the anthropocene: his metamorphosis is monstrous and he fails to thrive yet this process contains ironic possibilities for posthuman survival. if all of kafka’s figures suffer from a paralyzing powerlessness in the face of modern bureaucratic, patriarchal, oppressive society, gregor as insect or hybrid finally has some space for freedom and power to climb the walls and abandon his hated career. insects, in fact, are survivors even in the anthropocene; they are not endangered. beetles are notoriously plentiful and successful in all kinds of environments and changing circumstances. this is not to imply that gregor’s fate is positive but rather that it is apt for the twentieth century in surprising ways beyond its highly acclaimed expression of damaged modern subjectivities. the ecological supremacy of insects in the biosphere means that poor gregor is connected to significant power (of a kind unlikely to have been part of kafka’s vision) yet that evokes an ecological perspective of modern society traveling via capitalism towards increasingly insect-like population numbers, physical association with waste and debris (in disposable consumerism), and a new sense of our bodily materiality. kafka’s metamorphosis, like many of his works, is undeniably associated with a horror of the body. i juxtapose this discomfort with the insights of the new materialisms which celebrate our bodily interconnections and immersions in ecological relations with the nonhuman as described in jane bennett’s vibrant matter, stacy alaimo’s concept of trans-corporeality in bodily natures, and serpil oppermann’s and serenella iovino’s delineation of material ecocriticism: “seen in this light, every living creature, from humans to fungi, tells evolutionary stories of coexistence, interdependence, adaptation and hybridization, extinctions and survivals” (iovino and oppermann 2014, 7). material ecocriticism’s celebration of our bodily participation in ecological enlivenment may sharply contrast with kafka’s disturbingly gritty body in the metamorphosis yet when these two materialities are bridged, the hybrid futures of the posthuman emerge. the ecological, in other words, can be disturbing. alaimo analyses its toxic forms such as when the industrial waste products permeating our surroundings also infiltrate our bodies. as material ecocriticism also explains, our ecological http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 threatening animals? 47 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ mesh is vibrantly agentic in both beautiful and disturbing possibilities, the latter of which dominates when gregor samsa’s carcass is swept away by the maid at the end of the metamorphosis and his parent’s turn their gaze, in the final line of the story, to the “young body” of their daughter (kafka 1916, 58). kafka points towards an ominous materiality of insect(-like) futures in which the human and nonhuman blend in a war with ourselves and our bodies. in karen duve’s 1999 novel rain, translated in 2002, the nonhuman and bodily also dominate, though this time in the form of an invading mass of slugs. when the protagonist martina and her new husband leon buy a rundown house in the former east (germany) so that he can focus on his writing, things quickly go awry in the ceaseless rain. the house sits alongside a swamp that expands as the rain turns everything to mud and erodes the house’s walls, paint, and finally even its foundation. after the house collapses into the mud, leon runs out into the wetness wearing only his bathrobe until he falls face down and breathes in the mud, filling himself with it and expiring. in this, leon’s ultimate fate shares its horror with gregor samsa’s fading into the dust and debris. leon does try to overcome the forces of weather and mud up until the end of the novel, engaging in violent battle against the encroaching swamp’s forces, particularly the onslaught of slugs. he picks buckets of them from the garden and drives them away from the house, trying to destroy them by smashing them under the tires, strewing them with salt, and digging ditches between the house and garden. yet to no avail. his buckets of slugs spill in the house, and hordes more appear from the garden. he counts them as they slime towards him: ten at first sight, then: “[…] fifteen, eighteen. no, nature was not charming. nature was malevolent, undisciplined and dirty, and hostile on principle […]. there were over twenty of them. two were nibbling a mouldy mushroom with their fluted semicircular upper jaws, but they didn’t fool leon” (duve 2002, 99). he knows they are coming for him. “he picked them up. he collected all of them within a radius of three meters around his garden. there weren’t too many. two handfuls. leon threw them into the main ditch and went back to the house” (100). yet this battle is not over. when leon starts to enter the house, he sees another slug. it was sitting on top of the folded plastic table. it was not brick-red or brown like the slugs he had just collected. it was yellowish-white and exuding milky slime. it had crawled up the side of the table and was now trying to reach the wall, which was not easy, since its wrinkled and much-elongated lower body seemed to be full of eggs. the white slug reared up like a performing animal in a circus, waved the front of its body about in the air, and spread its feelers in a “v” shape. “v” for victory. (100) http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 heather i. sullivan 48 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ slugs, rain, and the swamp are as much the protagonists of this novel as are martina and leon. martina defies the world, fruitlessly, by burning her father’s mercedes in the end of the novel, and poor leon joins the swamp, thus enacting yet another possible variation of “becoming animal”. as in kafka, the nonhuman-human hybridity takes on an ominously bodily character. yet the slugs’ “victory” seems almost a relief in face of the inept and unlovable figures lost and alienated by the modern world to which they fail to adapt and which they fail to change. duve’s slugs, one could say, embody aspects of what the canadian marine biologist daniel pauly terms the age of the “myxocene”, an alternative name for the anthropocene derived “from the greek word for ‘slime’” (kolbert 2014, 107). in duve’s rain world, humans navigate rather badly, and without gaining much enlightenment, the slime emerging from the collusion of anthropogenic activities and wild weather. in the final literary example, ilija trojanow’s 2011climate-change novel, melting ice (eistau), traces the life and death of zeno hintermeier, glaciologist who loses his heart to a melted glacier and his mind to the thought of the ongoing global ice melt. the novel has three story lines: first, the medley of voices documenting zeno’s final escape with an empty cruise ship through the antarctic sea while the tourists are left behind to participate in a creative piece of performance art spelling out with their bodies an enormous human-based sos on the ice (which thus begins as art and then becomes a real call for help); second, his final stint on the ship, now not just climate and ice lecturer but as the cruise director, a position which eventually inspires him to escape into the sea and to dive into the icy waters with a somewhat more poetic demise than both leon’s immersion into the swamp and gregor’s wasting away as a neglected dung beetle; and third, his life story beginning with his first visit as a boy into the alps to see a glacier and leading to his dismay when his own glacier of choice, his partner, melts into a mere heap of rocks. so distraught is zeno by climate change that he quits his job as a professor and retreats into a form of madness before joining the crew of the cruise ship in order to lecture tourists on the importance and pleasure of ice in an era of glacial melt. during his final summer journey, zeno attempts to guide the passengers in their encounters with glaciers, whales, and, most threateningly, penguins. as they visit the penguins’ nesting ground, a penguin clashes with a certain stately old lady with the ominous name of frau morgentau (which translates as mrs. morning dew, or more relevantly for the novel’s title of melting ice, as mrs. morning melt). she tries to save an egg but is bitten by an angry penguin mother who fails to see her behavior as altruistic. we learn that penguin bites can result in significant infections, and, indeed, http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 threatening animals? 49 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ mrs. morgentau remains on board in a feverish coma when zeno makes his grand escape. this moment of bird biting is the turning point in the novel for zeno, who is held responsible. the threat of penguins must be read in two relevant contexts; first, as a satire of the many popular films depicting them as adorably anthropomorphized creatures; but also in relation to the human threat to the climate and concomitant melting. the penguins in the south, like the polar bears in the north, provide the alluring pictures of animals facing their demise in this sixth extinction event; in trojanow’s novel, though, the penguin bites back. zeno’s final jump into the ocean immerses him in the water where he might theoretically be reunited with his beloved, melted glacier. yet this act also adds nuance to the implications of the penguin attack. in short, trojanow’s climate change novel puts zeno – and thus all of us as his fellow humans – literally with the penguins in the same melted ice water, or, as one says, in the “same boat”, at the end. the creative act of forming an sos turns into a crisis with the tourists stranded by zeno in a harsh environment and desperately awaiting rescue. this scenario serves as a metaphor for the people of earth who engage in a seemingly lighthearted gesture that promises solutions without much effort or sacrifice, but then, as it turns out, are left facing much more profoundly difficult circumstances, helplessly calling for rescue by someone else. trojanow thus puts the human beings and bodies into circulation with the penguins, fish, and glaciers, much like duve puts leon and martina into the rain and swamp only to be reduced to despair by slugs. kafka’s gregor samsa literally becomes an animal and is freed from responsibility but remains trapped in his room in an insect body that fails to thrive. stifter’s wolves embody the explosive violence of nature reflecting the darkness in the heart of “men” but also evoking ecological systems in which we co-exist however unaware we are of our interconnectedness. finally, goethe’s novella brings an exotic lion and tiger into the german forest thereby re-contextualizing the role of the returned hunters in contrast to the lion’s biblical peacefulness, but also distracting from the real threat of the rapid, fiery changes of modernity that goethe abhorred. while animalhuman interactions are coded in these texts as nature’s peace or nature’s horror, the hybrid blends move us towards posthuman materialities. as a final example of such hybrid forms, i mention the wild boars who have returned to the city of berlin. overrun by tuskers, this urban collective is seeking a wide variety of solutions including trapping and removing them, building fences (which they almost always overcome), immunizing them, celebrating and feeding them, and shooting them (see articles by nelson 2012; somaskanda 2014; steinschek and sauerbier 2015; and http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 heather i. sullivan 50 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ walker 2008). the threat of wild boars is primarily to lawns, though the mothers will attack people who approach their babies and several boars have attacked when chased by dogs or trapped in gardens. there are now so many wild boars in the city limits that berlin is calling on volunteers to hunt them, as nelson reported for the national public radio in 2012, and so we return, in terms of strategy, to goethe’s text with the hunters in novella and stifter’s wolf hunt. the city of berlin also offers more friendly advice to people encountering boars, including to “speak with them”, as does abram in becoming animal, and goethe’s circus family when they sing to the lion. some berliners, though, are siding with the boars (walker 2008); some feed them, and some shoot them. one berliner stated that, “even if they send me to prison instead, i won’t stop [feeding them]”. his loyalty to boars stems from an epiphany he had years ago, when he opened his car door and a large tusker he’d been feeding hopped in. “i thought he was going to bite my leg off”, says mr. gericke. instead, the boar put his head in mr. gericke’s lap. “it was as if he was saying, ‘thank you’”, mr. gericke says. mr. eggert, the hunter, thinks it’s time berlin’s authorities got tough. he says: “we should just gather hunters at the these feeding sites, make the civilians stand aside, and feed the swine with lead”. (walker 2008) in sum, this berlin situation mirrors the ecological question of “threatening animals”; having altered or eradicated much of the world’s forests, we are shocked when the occasional resilient and adaptive species enter into “our space”. what does one do with such clever agents as the wild boars who “occupy the cities” in defiant acts of cohabitation, ignoring expectations for smooth green lawns by snuffling them into muddy turmoil? according to berlin city wildlife officer and biologist derk ehlert as reported in the washington times in may 2011, “the boars have stopped following the rules” (somaskanda 2011). perhaps we might read this defiance of the boars (and the penguins) as an indication that our rules that have led us into the anthropocene have become obsolete. the boars make clear, for example, that we might rethink our green lawns, churning them up as a space for food instead of having them serve as decorative water-gorging and pesticide-flavored turf. furthermore, acknowledging both our bodily materiality and our inevitable cohabitation with urban animals might bringer greater attention to our joint occupation with other species of all places. to return to the title of this essay, the most significant threat lies not in our liaisons and conflicts with our fellow species but rather in our systems of rules, as the boars seem to imply, that ignore our enmeshed ecological circumstances with other beings and agencies in the earth’s biosphere composed of nonhuman and human alike. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 threatening animals? 51 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ references abram, david. 2010. becoming animal: an earthly cosmology. new york: pantheon books. alaimo, stacy. 2010. bodily natures: science, environment, and the material self. bloomington: indiana university press. brown, jane. 1980. “the tyranny of the ideal: the dialectics of art in goethe’s ‘novelle’”. studies in romanticism 19: 217-31. crutzen, paul. 2002. “geology of mankind”. nature 415: 23. crutzen, paul, and eugene f. stoermer. 2000. “the ‘anthropocene’”. global change newsletter 41: 17-8. duve, karen. 1999 (english 2002). rain novel, translated by anthea bell. london: bloomsbury. eisenberg, christina. 2010. the wolf’s tooth: keystone predators, trophic cascades, and biodiversity. washington: island press. garrard, greg. 2012. ecocriticism. london: routledge. goethe, johann wolfgang. 1828 (english 1988). “novella”, translated by victor lange. in the sorrows of young werther. elective affinities. novella, edited by david wellbery, 265-80. new york: suhrkamp. gray, ronald, ed. 1962. kafka: a collection of critical essays. englewood cliffs, nj: prentice-hall. haraway, donna. 2003. companion species manifesto: dogs, people, and significant otherness. chicago: prickly paradigm press. heise, ursula. 2010. nach der natur: das artensterben und die moderne kultur. berlin: suhrkamp. iovino, serenella, and serpil oppermann. 2014. “introduction: stories come to matter”. in material ecocriticism, edited by serenella iovino and serpil oppermann, 1-17. bloomington: indiana university press. ireton, sean. 2011. “between dirty and disruptive nature: adalbert stifter in the context of nineteenth-century american environmental literature”. colloquia germanica 44 (2): 149-71. kafka, franz. 1916 (english 1986). the metamorphosis, translated by stanley corngold. toronto: bantum. kolbert, elizabeth. 2014. the sixth extinction: an unnatural history. henry holt and co. kindle edition. leopold, aldo. (1949) 1970. a sand county almanac and sketches here and there. london: oxford university press. meyer, herman. 1973. natürlicher enthusiasmus: das morgenländische in goethes “novelle”. heidelberg: stiehm. morton, timothy. 2010. the ecological thought. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. nelson, soraya sarhaddi. 2012. “berlin calls on volunteer hunters to cull wild boars”. npr. last modified november 20, 2012. http://www.npr.org/2012/ 11/20/165597932/berlin-calls-on-volunteer-hunters-to-cull-wild-boars. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 http://www.npr.org/2012/11/20/165597932/berlin-calls-on-volunteer-hunters-to-cull-wild-boars http://www.npr.org/2012/11/20/165597932/berlin-calls-on-volunteer-hunters-to-cull-wild-boars heather i. sullivan 52 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ plumwood, val. 2011. “being prey”. kurungabaa: a journal of literature, history, and ideas from the sea 4. last modified 2011. http://kurungabaa.net/2011/01/18/ being-prey-by-val-plumwood. schutjer, karin. 2015. goethe and judaism: the troubled inheritance of modern literature. evanston, il: northwestern university press. somaskanda, sumi. 2011. “berlin fights boar wars, as wild swine swagger through city streets”. the washington times. last modified may 12, 2011. http://www. washingtontimes.com/news/2011/may/12/berlin-fights-boar-wars-as-wild-swineswagger-thro/?page=all. steinschek, u., and m. sauerbier. 2015. “steht ein wildschwein vor ihnen, sprechen sie es an”. bild. last modified december, 16, 2015. http://www.bild.de/ regional/berlin/wildschwein/wie-verhalte-ich-mich-41369620.bild.html. stifter, adalbert. 1844 (english 2005). “brigitta”, translated by edward fitzgerald. in famous german novellas of the 19th century, 92-154. new york: mondial. trojanow, ilija. 2011. eistau (melting ice). münchen: carl hanser. walker, marcus. 2008. “in berlin’s boar war, some side with the hogs”. the wall street journal. last modified december 16, 2008. http://www.wsj.com/articles/ sb122937877627908421. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 http://kurungabaa.net/2011/01/18/being-prey-by-val-plumwood http://kurungabaa.net/2011/01/18/being-prey-by-val-plumwood http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/may/12/berlin-fights-boar-wars-as-wild-swine-swagger-thro/?page=all http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/may/12/berlin-fights-boar-wars-as-wild-swine-swagger-thro/?page=all http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/may/12/berlin-fights-boar-wars-as-wild-swine-swagger-thro/?page=all http://www.bild.de/regional/berlin/wildschwein/wie-verhalte-ich-mich-41369620.bild.html http://www.bild.de/regional/berlin/wildschwein/wie-verhalte-ich-mich-41369620.bild.html http://www.wsj.com/articles/sb122937877627908421 http://www.wsj.com/articles/sb122937877627908421 ethical interventions in the wild. an annotated bibliography ethical interventions in the wild an annotated bibliography 1 daniel dorado phd student, carlos iii university of madrid doi: 10.7358/rela-2015-002-dora danieldorado@outlook.com 1. introduction the question of the disvalue suffered by animals in nature, that is, the problem of suffering and other harms suffered by animals in nature, has taken on a new relevance at present, becoming a matter of great practical importance, to be addressed in applied ethics. taking this disvalue into account, several authors have examined its moral implications. this paper reviews the main literature that has dealt with those issues over the last years. it presents an annotated bibliography of principal works on this question. the existence of subsequent inclusion of essays in a collective work is indicated in the notes. only monographs and articles published in journals are included. nonetheless, there are several writing pieces on the topics of interest that are available on the internet and have not been published as monographs or in academic journals: pearce 2009, 2012, 2013; tomasik 2009a, 2009b, 2013; mcmahan 2010a, 2010b. while only essays in english are annotated, there are several essays published in other languages: bonnardel 1996, 2005; laporte 2000; guyard (2002) 2012; de lora 2007; horta 2007, 2011, 2013, 2014; torres aldave 2009, 2011; longueira monelos 2011; cunha 2011a, 2011b, 2012, 2014a, 2014b; faria 2011, 2012; dorado 2012; cunha and garmendia 2013. 1 the author would like to thank max carpendale, oscar horta, kate marples, pablo stafforini and brian tomasik for their help in preparing this paper. mailto:danieldorado@outlook.com http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 daniel dorado 220 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 2. a bibliographical examination of the literature about ethical interventions in the wild clark, stephen r.l. 1979. “the rights of wild things”. inquiry 22 (1-4): 171-88. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/ 00201747908601871. doi: 10.1080/00201747908601871. in this paper, clark examines ritchie’s reductio that granting natural rights to nonhuman animals will force us to the conclusion that we must protect animal preys against predators that wrongly violate the victims’ rights. clark shows that we should defend nonhuman animals against large or unusual dangers, when we can; but he claims that we should not seek to protect nonhuman animals against other nonhuman animals, because we shall easily slip into thinking that they owe us something for which they should pay. he concludes that nonhuman animals may have rights, even rights of welfare, without any absurd implication. the paper was included in this book: clark, stephen r.l. 1997. animals and their moral standing, 16-30. london: routledge. gould, stephen jay. 1982. “nonmoral nature”. natural history 91: 19-26. in this essay, gould claims that buckland’s considered predation as the primary challenge to an ideal world, and that buckland pointed out that carnivores increase enjoyment and diminish pain. in response to buckland, gould presents several cases of disvalue in nature, related to parasitism. gould also argues that the answer to the dilemma of why cruelty exists in nature can only be that there isn’t any answer; it is a strategy that works for ichneumon flies and that natural selection has programmed into their behavioral repertoire. he concludes that if nature is nonmoral, then evolution cannot teach any ethical theory at all. included in: jacobus, lee a., ed. 2010. a world of ideas: essential readings for college writers, 8th edn., 635-48. boston: bedford. sagoff, mark. 1984. “animal liberation and environmental ethics: bad marriage, quick divorce”. osgoode hall law journal 22: 297-307. http://digitalcommons.osgoode.yorku.ca/ohlj/vol22/iss2/5. in this essay, sagoff argues that the granting of rights to animals should lead to concentrating efforts on ensuring basic welfare of animals in http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00201747908601871 http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00201747908601871 http://digitalcommons.osgoode.yorku.ca/ohlj/vol22/iss2/5 ethical interventions in the wild 221 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ nature. he maintains that a liberationist position should involve ecosystem management to benefit wildlife. he explains that it is not possible to be both an environmentalist and an animal liberationist: the environmentalist sacrifices the lives of individual animals to preserve the authenticity, integrity and complexity of ecosystems; and the liberationist sacrifices these to protect the rights and lives of animals. he concludes that an ethics based on the appreciation of the animals does not help to understand or justify an environmental ethic. included in: schmidtz, david, and elizabeth willott, eds. 2002. environmental ethics, 38-44. new york: oxford university press. sapontzis, steve f. 1984. “predation”. ethics and animals 5 (2): 27-38. http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/ethicsandanimals/vol5/iss2/4/. in this paper, sapontzis examines the so-called predation reductio: humans are obligated to alleviate avoidable animal suffering; animals suffer when they are preyed upon by other animals; therefore, humans would be obligated to prevent predation; but such an obligation would be absurd; therefore, humans are not obligated to alleviate avoidable animal suffering. he argues that we are morally obligated to alleviate unjustified animal suffering that it is in our power to prevent without occasioning as much or more unjustified suffering. he points out that animals suffer when they are preyed upon by other animals, and claims that we are morally obligated to prevent predation whenever we can do so without occasioning as much or more justified suffering than the predation would create. included in: sapontzis, steve f. 1987. morals, reason, and animals, 229-48. philadelphia: temple university press. jamieson, dale. 1990. “rights, justice, and duties to provide assistance: a critique of regan’s theory of rights”. ethics 100: 349-62. doi: 10.1086/ 293181. in this paper, jamieson argues that regan’s own views concerning duties of assistance are inadequate, because regan does not tell us under what conditions we have duties to assist those who are threatened by agents, and we sometimes have duties to assist those in distress if they are not threatened by agents. jamieson maintains that if we try to supplement regan’s theory with a class of nondiscretionary duties different than duties of justice, then regan’s response becomes ad hoc. jamieson claims that to limit the duty to http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/ethicsandanimals/vol5/iss2/4/ daniel dorado 222 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ render assistance permits regan to avoid an argument that if animals have rights, then we have duties to protect them from their predators. jamieson points out that there are serious difficulties with circumscribing the duty to assist in the way that regan does. næss, arne. 1991. “should we try to relieve clear cases of extreme suffering in nature?”. pan ecology 6 (1): 1-5. in this essay, naess argues that the development of life on earth clearly presupposes the process of dying. he explains that because it is totally out of our reach completely to eliminate prolonged extreme suffering, it is of no practical value to discuss its ethical status, but its existence makes general glorification of nature strange. he maintains that respect for the dignity of free nature and proper humility do not rule out planned interference on a greater scale, as long as the aim is a moderation of conditions of extreme and prolonged pain, of both human and nonhuman animals. he explains that the higher levels of self-development of a mature being require the assistance of any living being to develop its potentialities. rolston, holmes, iii. 1992. “disvalues in nature”. monist 75 (2): 250-78. https://www.pdcnet.org/pdc/bvdb.nsf/purchase?openform&fp=monist&id= monist_1992_0075_0002_0250_0278. doi: 10.5840/monist199275218. in this paper, rolston claims that there are many disvalues in nature (predation, parasitism, selfishness, randomness, blindness, disaster, indifference, waste, struggle, suffering and death), but there is value too, and transformation of disvalue into value. he claims that we wrongly evaluate nature when we restrict value to human consciousness, and we make value a prisoner of the particular sort of experiential biology and psychology that humans happen to have, or even of the particular sort of culture that humans happen to have chosen. he argues that since the world we have is the only world logically and empirically possible under the natural givens on earth such a world ought also to be. included in: brennan, andrew, ed. 1995. the ethics of the environment, 87-115. aldershot: dartmouth. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 https://www.pdcnet.org/pdc/bvdb.nsf/purchase?openform&fp=monist&id=monist_1992_0075_0002_0250_0278 https://www.pdcnet.org/pdc/bvdb.nsf/purchase?openform&fp=monist&id=monist_1992_0075_0002_0250_0278 ethical interventions in the wild 223 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ dawkins, richard. 1995. “god’s utility function”. scientific american 247 (6): 80-5. doi:10.1038/scientificamerican1195-80. in this essay, dawkins gives several examples that demonstrate that the utility function of life, that is, the one that is being increased to become as great as possible in the natural world, is dna survival. he maintains that the sex ratio in wild animals is generally 50:50, something without economic sense in several species. he points out that longevity is not valued for its own sake but only for the sake of future reproduction. he explains that maximation of dna survival is not directly related to happiness. he suggests that the total amount of suffering in the natural world is huge. he concludes that the universe has no design or purpose. included in: dawkins, richard. 1995. river out of eden: a darwinian view of life, 95-134. new york: basic books. ng, yew-kwang. 1995. “towards welfare biology: evolutionary economics of animal consciousness and suffering”. biology and philosophy 10 (4): 25585. http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2fbf00852469. doi: 10.1007/ bf00852469. in this paper, ng uses evolutionary economics and population dynamics to help answer basic questions in welfare biology: which species are affective sentients capable of welfare, whether they enjoy positive or negative welfare, and whether their welfare can be dramatically increased. he argues that more complex niches benefit the evolution of more rational species. he points out that evolutionary economics also supports the common-sense view that individual sentients failing to survive to mate suffer negative welfare. he discusses the contrast between growth maximation, average welfare, and total welfare maximation. he shows that welfare could be increased without even sacrificing numbers of wild animals, at equilibrium. he concludes that we must aspire to understand more about animal suffering, so that we are able to alleviate the suffering of wild animals in the future. kirkwood, j.k., and a.w. sainsbury. 1996. “ethics of interventions for the welfare of free-living wild animals”. animal welfare 5 (3): 235-43. in this essay, kirkwood and sainsbury argue that there are circumstances in which the wellbeing of wild animals can be improved by therapeutic interhttp://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2fbf00852469 daniel dorado 224 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ vention, but the difficulties, and their potentially harmful consequences, should not be underestimated. they point out that there are sound arguments for not intervening for the welfare of wild animals that are sick or injured as a result of natural (as opposed to human-induced) processes, except perhaps to give euthanasia to individuals that may be suffering from severe pain or distress. however, they conclude that treatment and rehabilitation is a course of action consistent with current ethical approaches to the welfare of nonhuman animals implemented where the harm has been caused directly or indirectly by humans, or where the harmed animals are to some degree under human stewardship. alward, peter. 2000. “the naive argument against moral vegetarianism”. environmental values 9: 81-9. http://www.environmentandsociety.org/ mml/alward-peter-naive-argument-against-moral-vegetarianism. doi: 10.3197/096327100129341985. in this paper, alward claims that if it is morally wrong for humans to eat the meat of certain animals, it is also wrong for lions and tigers and other carnivores to do so; and the differences in cognitive capacities and biological needs between humans and other animals do not undermine this conclusion. he points out that if eating the meat of an animal that was killed for the purpose of being eaten is morally wrong, then we are under an obligation to prevent carnivores from eating meat when we can. he concludes that, given the cruelty of allowing an animal to starve to death, if no alternate food source can be found for them, it seems that we are under an obligation to mercy-kill them. benatar, david. 2001. “why the naive argument against moral vegetarianism really is naive”. environmental values 10: 103-12. http://www. erica.demon.co.uk/ev/ev1006.html. doi: 10.3197/096327101129340769. in this essay, benatar explains the “innocent argument against moral vegetarianism”, using the terminology of peter alward. according to benatar, alward’s argument caricatures the vision of moral vegetarians, and alward’s answers fail against several objections. for benatar, the dependence of carnivores regarding meat-eating is a morally relevant difference between them and humans, provided the acceptance of what is considered by benatar a more refined moral vegetarian thesis: eating the meat of an animal with certain properties who was killed for the purpose http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 http://www.environmentandsociety.org/mml/alward-peter-naive-argument-against-moral-vegetarianism http://www.environmentandsociety.org/mml/alward-peter-naive-argument-against-moral-vegetarianism http://www.erica.demon.co.uk/ev/ev1006.html http://www.erica.demon.co.uk/ev/ev1006.html ethical interventions in the wild 225 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ of being eaten is morally wrong if it was made by anything less than very weighty reasons. benatar does not consider it immoral that nonhuman animals must kill in orden to survive, but he thinks it is unfortunate and regrettable. musschenga, albert w. 2002. “naturalness: beyond animal welfare”. journal of agricultural and environmental ethics 15: 171-86. http://link. springer.com/article/10.1023%2fa%3a1015040708125. doi: 10.1023/ a:1015040708125. in this paper, musschenga claims that a concern for the development of natural capabilities of a wild animal should be distinguished from the preservation of the naturalness of its behavior and appearance. he asks whether we have moral reasons to respect concerns for the naturalness of an animal’s living that transcend its welfare. he argues that the moral relevance of such considerations can be grasped when we see animals as entities bearing nonmoral intrinsic values. he considers that caring for an animal’s naturalness should then be understood as caring for such intrinsic values, and these provide moral reasons for action only if they are seen as constitutive of the good life for humans. he concludes by reinterpreting the notion of indirect duties regarding animals within the framework of a perfectionist ethical theory, which go beyond and supplement the direct duties towards animals. bovenkerk, bernice, frans stafleu, ronno tramper, jan vorstenbosch, and frans w.a. brom. 2003. “to act or not to act? sheltering animals from the wild: a pluralistic account of a conflict between animal and environmental ethics”. ethics, place and environment 6 (1): 13-26. http://www. tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13668790303539#.u8k0v0e8dby. doi: 10.1080/13668790303539. in this essay, bovenkerk, stafleu, tramper, vorstenbosch and frans explain that lost or ill seals in the netherlands are rescued and taken into shelters, and afterwards reintroduced into their natural environment. they analyze the moral assumptions behind the arguments of both the proponents and opponents of sheltering within a morally pluralistic framework. they point out that sheltering on too large a scale would be contrary to the efforts to maintain an independent or wild seal population, which means that a certain amount of caution is called for, but there is no decisive reason http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023%2fa%3a1015040708125 http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023%2fa%3a1015040708125 daniel dorado 226 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ to completely prohibit shelters in the current situation. they conclude that the acceptability of sheltering wild animals depends on the specific circumstances in which an animal is encountered. cowen, tyler. 2003. “policing nature”. environmental ethics 25 (2): 16982. doi: 10.5840/enviroethics200325231. in this paper, cowen argues that utilitarian, deontological and holistic approaches support modest steps to limit or control the predatory activity of carnivores on their victims. he explains that the axiom that controlling nature is intrinsically evil is incompatible with other axioms: animal welfare matters, animals deserve moral consideration, and painful death of an animal is bad. he does not conclude it is necessary to support the control of nature with certainty, because it is possible that the predator/prey relationships do not matter for moral philosophy; but that there is a problem with not engaging in control of nature when the cost is zero. he concludes that we should take the issue of controlling nature seriously and at least we should limit current subsidies for carnivorous animals; but control of nature need not be absurdly costly or violate what, according cowen, are common sense intuitions. fink, charles k. 2005. “the predation argument”. between the species 13 (5). http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent. cgi?article=1041&context=bts. in this essay, fink claims that the so-called predation reductio (the claim that we should not be concerned about animal interests since otherwise we will have a reason to be concerned about predation) cannot be easily dismissed, as many philosophers have tried to do, like peter singer and tom regan. he presents steve sapontzis’ answer to the predation argument. fink argues that it is not inherently absurd to suppose that there is an obligation to protect animals from natural predators, even if this obligation has limited practical application; nor does it conflict with our deepest moral convictions, except, perhaps, in the case of ethical holists. he points out that if someone has the conviction that we should strive to reduce the amount of suffering in the world, then assisting prey animals, in some cases at least, is one way in which this might be accomplished. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1041&context=bts http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1041&context=bts ethical interventions in the wild 227 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ clarke, matthew, and yew-kwang ng. 2006. “population dynamics and animal welfare: issues raised by the culling of kangaroos in puckapunyal”. social choice and welfare 27 (2): 407-22. http://link.springer.com/ article/10.1007%2fs00355-006-0137-8. doi: 10.1007/s00355-006-0137-8. in this paper, clarke and ng discuss the killing of kangaroos at the puckapunyal army base (australia) due to conservationist reasons, and address animal welfare issues related to population dynamics. they argue that natural selection benefits the maximation of the number of surviving offspring, and claim that this need not result in the maximation of the welfare of individuals in the species. they illustrate the contrast between growth maximation and welfare maximation for a single population, and they then discuss this in terms of competing populations. they point out that the variant of different birthrates does not affect the population sizes at equilibrium. they conclude that welfare could be much higher at lower birthrates without even reducing numbers, at equilibrium. hadley, john. 2006. “the duty to aid nonhuman animals in dire need”. journal of applied philosophy 23 (4): 445-51. http://onlinelibrary.wiley. com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-5930.2006.00358.x/abstract. doi: 10.1111/j.14685930.2006.00358.x. in this essay, hadley claims that most moral philosophers accept that we have obligations to provide at least some aid and assistance to distant strangers in dire need. he points out that philosophers who extend rights and obligations to nonhuman animals, however, have been less than explicit about whether we have any positive duties to free-roaming or wild animals. he argues that our obligations to free roaming nonhuman animals in dire need are essentially no different to our obligations to severely cognitively impaired distant strangers. he addresses three objections to the view that we have positive duties to free-roaming nonhuman animals, and responds to the predation objection to animal rights. he examines the problem of how demanding morality will be once it is thoroughly purged of speciesism. morris, michael c., and richard h. thornhill. 2006. “animal liberationist responses to non-anthropogenic animal suffering”. worldviews: environment, culture, religion 10: 355-79. doi: 10.1163/156853506778942077. in this paper, morris and thornhill argue that animal liberationists pay little attention to wild animal suffering. morris and thornhill examine a range of http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2fs00355-006-0137-8 http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2fs00355-006-0137-8 http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-5930.2006.00358.x/abstract http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-5930.2006.00358.x/abstract daniel dorado 228 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ different responses animal liberationists give to the issue of nonanthropogenic suffering, but find none of them entirely satisfactory. they consider that responses that lead logically to the conclusion that anthropogenic suffering should be eliminated can apply equally logically to wild animal suffering. they maintain that the solution of micro-managing habitats to prevent suffering is counter-intuitive, and on closer examination eliminates the intrinsic value of animals’ lives. they support acceptance of the intrinsic value of individual animal lives, extending this from either individual human lives, or from biodiversity, species and ecosystems. they suggest that the combination of animal liberation and environmentalism only really makes sense in the context of a belief in the redeemable qualities of nature. nussbaum, martha c. 2006. frontiers of justice: disability, nationality, species membership. cambridge: harvard university press. in this book, nussbaum develops her capabilities approach. she points out that the interrelationships of animals is a problem for the existence of an overlapping consensus among reasonable comprehensive doctrines that support and sustain the political conception around animal rights, because those interrelationships (and relations of animals with environment) are not usually harmonious. she argues that what is morally relevant is what happens to the victim. she considers it plausible to suppose that we have less responsibility to protect prey than domesticated animals, although perhaps we should protect animals that can be predated without a massive intervention. she maintains that the non-violent method of population control of neutering is preferable; but if it is not possible, then whatever would result in the least painful death should be chosen. young, stephen m. 2006. “on the status of vermin”. between the species 13 (6). http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent. cgi?article=1038&context=bts. in this essay, young defines “vermin” and analyzes the moral concerns surrounding vermin and the potential implications. he thinks that the homeless are perfect candidates for vermin-hood because they are a drain on our economy and pose health risks, not only to themselves but also to others who are daring enough to walk within close proximity; but we have shelters and rehabilitation programs, and we don’t advocate exterminating them. he thinks that if we must extend moral consideration to animals because http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1038&context=bts http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1038&context=bts ethical interventions in the wild 229 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the arguments for keeping them separate are unconvincing to a wellinformed, well-reasoning person, then we must extend moral consideration to nonhuman animals considered to be “vermin”. he concludes that if this is not suitable, then we must extend vermin-hood to humans, specifically it ought not seem morally abhorrent to exterminate the homeless. simmons, aaron. 2009. “animals, predators, the right to life and the duty to save lives”. ethics and the environment 14 (1): 15-27. http://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/ethics_ and_the_environment/v014/14.1.simmons.html. doi: 10.1353/een.0.0018. in this paper, simmons points out that one challenge to the idea that animals have a moral right to life is that any such right would require us to intervene in the wild to prevent animals from being killed by predators. he argues that the belief in an animal’s right to life does not commit us to supporting a program of predator-prey intervention. he maintains that a common retort to the predator challenge is that we are not required to save animals from predators because predators are not moral agents, and that the retort fails to overcome the predator challenge. he seeks to articulate a more satisfactory argument by explaining why we are not required to save wild prey from predators and how this position is perfectly consistent with the idea that animals have a basic right to life. hettinger, ned. 2010. “animal beauty, ethics, and environmental preservation”. environmental ethics 32 (2): 115-34. https://www.pdcnet.org/ pdc/bvdb.nsf/purchase?openform&fp=enviroethics&id=enviroethics_ 2010_0032_0002_0115_0134. doi: 10.5840/enviroethics201032215. in this essay, hettinger claims that animal beauty provides a significant aesthetic reason for protecting nature. he argues that worries about the aesthetic discrimination and the ugliness of predation might make one think otherwise. he maintains that although it has been argued that aesthetic merit is a trivial and morally objectionable basis for action, aesthetic merit is an important value and a legitimate basis for differential treatment, especially in the case of animals. he points out that while suffering and death of animals due to predation are important disvalues that must be accepted, predation’s tragic beauty has positive aesthetic value that can be appropriately aesthetically appreciated. he concludes that the suffering and death in predation need not lead us to conclude that predation is aesthetically negative. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 http://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/ethics_and_the_environment/v014/14.1.simmons.html http://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/ethics_and_the_environment/v014/14.1.simmons.html https://www.pdcnet.org/pdc/bvdb.nsf/purchase?openform&fp=enviroethics&id=enviroethics_2010_0032_0002_0115_0134 https://www.pdcnet.org/pdc/bvdb.nsf/purchase?openform&fp=enviroethics&id=enviroethics_2010_0032_0002_0115_0134 https://www.pdcnet.org/pdc/bvdb.nsf/purchase?openform&fp=enviroethics&id=enviroethics_2010_0032_0002_0115_0134 daniel dorado 230 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ horta, oscar. 2010a. “debunking the idyllic view of natural processes: population dynamics and suffering in the wild”. télos 17 (1): 73-88. http://www.usc.es/revistas/index.php/telos/article/view/284/250. in this essay, horta points out that it is commonly and mistakenly believed that the moral consideration of nonhuman animals entails respect for natural processes, on the assumption that nonhuman animals are able to live relatively easy and happy lives in the wild. he maintains that this belief is mistaken, because the overwhelming majority of nonhuman animals die shortly after they come into existence due to the prevalent reproductive strategy in nature, r-selection. this means that their suffering vastly outweighs their happiness. he argues that concern for nonhuman animals entails that we should try to intervene in nature to reduce the enormous amount of harm they suffer. he claims that this conclusion can only be rejected from a speciesist viewpoint, even if it may seem extremely counter-intuitive at first sight. horta, oscar. 2010b. “the ethics of the ecology of fear against the nonspeciesist paradigm: a shift in the aims of intervention in nature”. between the species 13 (10): 163-87. http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/ bts/vol13/iss10/10/. in this paper, horta discusses an example of human intervention in the wild for anthropocentric or environmental reasons: the reintroduction of wolves in places where they no longer live in order to create what has been called an ecology of fear. this proposal is currently being discussed in places such as scotland. he discusses the reasons for this measure and argues that they are not compatible with a nonspeciesist approach. then, he claims that if we abandon a speciesist viewpoint we should change completely the way in which we should intervene in nature. he argues that rather than intervening for environmental or anthropocentric reasons, we should do it in order to reduce the harms nonhuman animals suffer. he concludes that this conflicts significantly with some fundamental environmental ideals that are not compatible with the consideration of the interests of nonhuman animals. palmer, clare. 2010. animal ethics in context. new york: columbia university press. in this book, palmer explores the issue of humanity’s moral obligation to assisting animals. she notes that one intuitively believes obligations to be http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 http://www.usc.es/revistas/index.php/telos/article/view/284/250 http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/bts/vol13/iss10/10/ http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/bts/vol13/iss10/10/ ethical interventions in the wild 231 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ dependent on whether the animal is domesticated or wild (“laissez-faire intuition”) or on the assumption that one should leave wild animals alone. she contends that all animals deserve moral consideration, based on their capacity for experiential well-being. she claims, though, that humans have a prima facie obligation not to harm wild animals but not usually the duty to assist them (i.e. if a storm followed by floods kills them), though we should intervene if we come across some animals in need. she argues that in the case of some human beings having caused the conditions that are harmful for animals, we should do something to help, though what this help would turn out to be varies with the context. donaldson, sue, and will kymlicka. 2011. zoopolis: a political theory of animal rights. new york: oxford university press. in this book, donaldson and kymlicka develop a political theory of animal citizenship that divides animals into domesticated (companion animals and animals raised for food), wild animals, and liminal animals (adapted to life amongst humans, without being under the direct care of humans). they argue that domesticated animals should be citizens, wild animals should have sovereignty, and liminal animals should be treated as denizens. they propose that human interventions within wildlife habitats are permissible if they uphold the sovereign animals’ value of self-determination, like selective logging that increases light and air circulation in a closed forest environment, aiding individual wild animals in need, and providing them with vaccination. they consider that liminal animals have certain rights within our shared habitat, but not rights as robust as those of citizens. ebert, rainer, and tibor r. machan. 2012. “innocent threats and the moral problem of carnivorous animals”. journal of applied philosophy 29 (2): 146-59. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j. 1468-5930.2012.00561.x/abstract. doi: 10.1111/j.1468-5930.2012.00561.x. in this paper, ebert and machan argue that the existence of predatory animals reveals a weakness in regan’s ([1983] 2004) theory. they show that there are cases in which regan’s approach implies a duty not to assist the animal at risk, contrary to his own moral beliefs. they argue that a modified account of animal rights that accepts the moral patient as a kind of entity that can violate moral rights avoids this conclusion, but it makes nonhuman predation a rights issue that ought to be regulated. they claim that http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-5930.2012.00561.x/abstract http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-5930.2012.00561.x/abstract daniel dorado 232 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ everett (2001, 54) and gruen (2011, 182) base their treatment of predation in part on regan’s theory, running into similar problems. they suggest that if it is found less plausible to introduce morality to the wild than to keep the concept of rights out, then it is possible to reject nonhuman animal rights or to accept a libertarian-ish theory of animal rights. cochrane, alasdair. 2013. “cosmozoopolis: the case against group-differentiated animal rights”. leap: laws, ethics and philosophy 1: 127-41. http://leap-journal.com/archives/leap1-alasdair-cochrane.pdf. in this essay, cochrane claims that relational position and group-based distinctions are less important in determining the rights of animals than zoopolis concludes. he argues that the theory of animal rights developed in this book is vulnerable to some of the critiques that are made against theories which differentiate the rights of humans on the basis of group-based distinctions. he maintains that, in the human context, group-differentiated theories of rights have been criticized on a number of important grounds: for failing to extend to non-associates rights that ought to be so extended; for granting too much weight to the rights of associates over non-associates; for wrongly treating groups as homogenous entities; and for also assuming that these groups necessarily have value as they presently exist. donaldson, sue, and will kymlicka. 2013. “a defense of animal citizens and sovereigns”. leap: laws, ethics and philosophy 1: 143-60. http://leap-journal.com/archives/leap1-donalson-kymlicka.pdf. in this paper, donaldson and kymlicka respond to cochrane and horta challenges to zoopolis’ arguments, including in particular those challenging the specific models of animal citizenship and animal sovereignty this book offers. donaldson and kymlicka focus on three issues: the need for a group-differentiated theory of animal rights with ideas of membership in bounded communities, against more “cosmopolitan” or “cosmozoopolis” alternatives that reduce the moral significance of boundaries and membership; the challenge of defining the nature and scope of wild animal sovereignty; and the problem of policing nature and humanitarian intervention to reduce suffering in the wild. they conclude that a theory of justice for wild animals is needed, so predation should be seen as the kind of tragedy we should accept as a parameter of their lives for the foreseeable future. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 http://leap-journal.com/archives/leap1-alasdair-cochrane.pdf http://leap-journal.com/archives/leap1-donalson-kymlicka.pdf ethical interventions in the wild 233 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ horta, oscar. 2013. “zoopolis, intervention, and the state of nature”. leap: laws, ethics and philosophy 1: 113-25. http://leap-journal.com/ archives/leap1-oscar-horta.pdf. in this essay, horta points out that according to donaldson and kymlicka interventions in nature to aid animals must have some limits since they could otherwise disrupt the structure of the communities that wild animals form which should be respected as sovereign ones, in accordance with a claim based on the widespread assumption that ecosystemic processes ensure that animals have good lives in nature. horta argues that intervention in nature to aid nonhuman animals should not be limited as donaldson and kymlicka argue for several reasons: most animals are r-strategists who die in pain shortly after coming into existence, and those who make it to maturity commonly suffer terrible harms too; and most animals do not form the political communities zoopolis describes. the situation of animals in the wild can be considered analogous to one of humanitarian catastrophe, or to that of irretrievably failed states. sözmen, beril i̇demen. 2013. “harm in the wild: facing non-human suffering in nature”. ethical theory and moral practice 16 (5): 1075-88. http://link. springer.com/article/10.1007/s10677-013-9416-5. doi: 10.1007/s10677-013-9416-5. in this paper, sözmen examines the so-called predation reductio: humans should not alleviate the suffering of nonhuman animals because such an obligation would morally prescribe human intervention in nature for defending nonhuman animals, which is absurd. she considers it possible to avoid the reductio in this way: to intervene only in cases where this is possible and it can reasonably be estimated not to result in more harm than good. she rejects a third way of avoiding the reductio: considering human and nonhuman suffering and death as sufficiently different to allow different types of responses, because the claim that nonhuman suffering and death are not important is only compatible with an anthropocentric bias, and it fails to dismiss the obligation created by the harm of animals in the wild. vinding, magnus. 2014. a copernican revolution in ethics. los gatos: smashwords. https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/451958. in this book, vinding argues that vertebrates and some invertebrates can experience a wide range of pleasant experiences. he points out that http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 http://leap-journal.com/archives/leap1-oscar-horta.pdf http://leap-journal.com/archives/leap1-oscar-horta.pdf http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10677-013-9416-5 http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10677-013-9416-5 https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/451958 daniel dorado 234 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ sentient nonhumans vastly outnumber humans, and many nonhumans experience joy and suffering as intensely as humans do, so the vast majority of suffering and well-being on earth is of nonhuman rather than human kind. he maintains that suffering is not less bad just because it happens in nature, and that wildlife suffering constitutes the vast majority of suffering in the world, so wildlife suffering is a moral problem that we should take seriously if speciesism is rejected. he argues that the vital first step we must take toward doing anything about is to accept that it is indeed an urgent problem of utmost importance. pearce, david. 2015. the hedonistic imperative. los gatos: smashwords. https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/514875. in this essay, pearce explains how genetic engineering and nanotechnology could abolish suffering in all sentient life. he explains that the metabolic pathways of pain and malaise evolved only because they served the inclusive fitness of our genes in the ancestral environment, but they could be replaced by a motivational system based on “heritable gradients of bliss”. this project needs strategic, species-wide pharmacotherapy complemented, and synergistically allied, with genetic engineering. he considers that the feasibility of this project turns its deliberate retention into an issue of social policy and ethical choice. he attaches value in a distinctively moral sense of the term only to actions which tend to minimise or eliminate suffering. thirty-five possible objections, both practical and moral, are raised and rebutted. 3. conclusions the article the rights of wild things (clark 1979) was the starting point for the consideration in the applied ethics literature of the question of the disvalue suffered by animals in nature. note that, previously, the issue was dealt with by several authors, like lewis gompertz (1852, 11-9; [1824] 1992, 85-96) and john stuart mill ([1874] 1958, 18). however, it was after clark’s paper that further works on this issue were published. several essays were published in the 1980’s and 1990’s, but a growing number of authors in the field of animal ethics began to discuss the issue starting in 2000. of the thirty-five works included in this annotated bibliography, twenty-five have been published since that year. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/514875 ethical interventions in the wild 235 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ between 1972 and the early years of 1980s, those theorists addressing the issue of the moral consideration of animals had typically addressed very general questions. from 1980 on, however, they began to publish more sophisticated research (dorado 2010, 61). there is a relation between the growing interest in the question of the disvalue that is present in nature and the growing sophistication of the works on animal ethics. it should be noted that the first authors to address this problem considered it to be just another issue among the several ones animal ethics has to deal with. however, the situation changed with the publication of towards welfare biology (ng 1995), which showed the extent of the existing disvalue in nature, and the moral significance of this problem. it was not until the late 2000s, though, that this paper started to be really influential. from 2007 on, this paper has been quoted several times by the authors included in this bibliography. since then several articles have been published that have examined the moral implications to be drawn not from the existence of predation, but from animal population dynamics and the fact that the reproductive strategy most animals follows is what has been traditionally characterized as r-selection,. it should be taken into account that over the years there has been a growing consensus among researchers dealing with the problem of what is the situation of animals in nature, and the conclusions that can be drawn from it. they conclude that disvalue outweighs value in nature for reasons shown by population dynamics, and that the rejection of speciesism entails that we should help animals living in the wild. they have also agreed that it is necessary to continue to do research on this subject. with this in mind, it may be possible that in the future, as it was the case in general in the field of animal ethics from the 1980s, more sophisticated research on this issue will be published. in order for this to happen, contributions by authors with other backgrounds apart from philosophy (such as biology, health sciences, sociology, political science, law …) will be instrumental. moreover, it should be noted that the growing interest in such matters has influence outside academia. there are websites and discussion groups where they are discussed, and there are charities dedicated to raising awareness about the issue, such as animal ethics 2. it is likely that this trend will continue in the future. 2 http://www.animal-ethics.org. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 http://www.animal-ethics.org/ daniel dorado 236 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ references aikin, scott. 2014. “environmental ethics and the expanding problem of evil”. think 13 (36): 33-9. http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayabstract? frompage=online&aid=9126036&fileid=s1477175613000304. doi: 10.1017/ s1477175613000304. bonnardel, yves. 1996. “contre l’apartheid des espèces: à propos de la prédation et de l’opposition entre écologie et libération animale”. les cahiers antispécistes 14. http://www.cahiers-antispecistes.org/spip.php?article103. 2005. “en finir avec l’idée de nature, renouer avec l’éthique et la politique”. les temps modernes 630-1: 107-21. buckland, william. 1837. geology and mineralogy considered with reference to natural theology: vol. i. philadelphia: carey, lea and blanchard. carlson, allen. 1986. “critical notice of rolston, 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abril. http://especismonao.net/sobre-as-diferencas-entre-anti especismo-e-ecologismo/. 2014b. “o argumento da imposição como independente das conseqüências: versão especista”. especismo não!, 23 abril. http://especismonao.net/ o-argumento-da-imposicao-como-independente-das-consequencias-versaoespecista/. cunha, luciano carlos, and gabriel garmendia da trindade. 2013. “por que os danos naturais deveriam ser considerados como de igual importância moral?”. synesis 5 (1): 32-53. http://seer.ucp.br/seer/index.php?journal=synesis&page= article&op=view&path%5b%5d=278. de lora deltoro, pablo. 2007. “los animales y el gobierno de la naturaleza”. in de animales y hombres: studia philosophica, edited by asunción herrero guevara, 97-116. oviedo: biblioteca nueva. dorado, daniel. 2010. “la consideración moral de los animales no humanos en los últimos cuarenta años: una bibliografía anotada”. télos 17 (1): 47-63. http:// www.usc.es/revistas/index.php/telos/article/download/282/248. 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55-9. http://www.ub.edu/fildt/revista/pdf/ rbyd26_animal.pdf. everett, jennifer. 2001. “environmental ethics, animal welfarism, and the problem of predation: a bambi lover’s respect for nature”. ethics and the environment 6 (1): 42-67. http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/ethics_and_the_environment/ summary/v006/6.1everett.html. doi: 10.1353/een.2001.0005. faria, catia. 2011. “sobre o bem de tudo e de todos: a conjunção impossível entre ambientalismo e libertação animal”. ágora: papeles de filosofía 30 (2): 27-41. http://hdl.handle.net/10347/7392. 2012. “muerte entre las flores: el conflicto entre el ecologismo y la defensa de los animales no humanos”. viento sur 125: 67-76. https://www.academia. edu/4657939/muerte_entre_las_flores_el_conflicto_entre_el_ecologismo_y_ la_defensa_de_los_animales_no_humanos. gompertz, lewis. 1852. fragments in defence of animals, and essays on morals, soul, and future state; from the author’s contributions to the animals’ friend society’s periodical, and his letters to dr. forster; with a sketch of the society; and original matter. london: w. horsell. (1824) 1992. moral inquiries on the situation of man and of brutes. fontwell: centaur. gruen, lori. 2011. ethics and animals. cambridge: cambridge university press. guyard, clémentine. (2002) 2012. dame nature est mythée: seconde mutation. lyon: carobella ex-natura. horta, oscar. 2007. “tomándonos en serio la consideración moral de los animales: más allá del especismo y el ecologismo”. in de animales y hombres: studia philosophica, edited by asunción herrero guevara, 191-226. oviedo: biblioteca nueva. 2011. “la cuestión del mal natural: bases evolutivas de la prevalencia del desvalor”. ágora: papeles de filosofia 30 (2): 57-75. http://hdl.handle.net/10347/7395. 2013. “desvalor en la naturaleza e intervención”. ecosofía 1: 29-36. http:// dspace.usc.es/bitstream/10347/7395/1/59-77.pdf. 2014. “por qué defender a los animales es cuestión de justicia”. ética más allá de la especie. https://masalladelaespecie.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/ defender-animales-cuestion-justicia.pdf. laporte, philippe. 2000. “l’écologisme, un défi pour l’antispécisme?”. les cahiers antispécistes 18. http://www.cahiers-antispecistes.org/spip.php?article147. le blanc, jill. 2001. “a mystical response to disvalue in nature”. philosophy today 45 (3): 254-65. http://philpapers.org/rec/lebamr. doi: 10.5840/ philtoday200145332. longueira monelos, ángel. 2011. “el sufrimiento animal y la extinción”. ágora: papeles de filosofía 30 (2): 43-56. http://hdl.handle.net/10347/7394. mcmahan, jeff. 2010a. “the meat eaters”. the new york times, september 19. http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/the-meat-eaters/. 2010b. “predators: a response”. the new york times, september 28. http:// opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/28/predators-a-response/. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 http://www.ub.edu/fildt/revista/pdf/rbyd26_animal.pdf http://www.ub.edu/fildt/revista/pdf/rbyd26_animal.pdf http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/ethics_and_the_environment/summary/v006/6.1everett.html http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/ethics_and_the_environment/summary/v006/6.1everett.html http://hdl.handle.net/10347/7392 https://www.academia.edu/4657939/muerte_entre_las_flores_el_conflicto_entre_el_ecologismo_y_la_defensa_de_los_animales_no_humanos https://www.academia.edu/4657939/muerte_entre_las_flores_el_conflicto_entre_el_ecologismo_y_la_defensa_de_los_animales_no_humanos https://www.academia.edu/4657939/muerte_entre_las_flores_el_conflicto_entre_el_ecologismo_y_la_defensa_de_los_animales_no_humanos http://hdl.handle.net/10347/7395 http://dspace.usc.es/bitstream/10347/7395/1/59-77.pdf http://dspace.usc.es/bitstream/10347/7395/1/59-77.pdf https://masalladelaespecie.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/defender-animales-cuestion-justicia.pdf https://masalladelaespecie.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/defender-animales-cuestion-justicia.pdf http://www.cahiers-antispecistes.org/spip.php?article147 http://philpapers.org/rec/lebamr http://hdl.handle.net/10347/7394 http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/the-meat-eaters/ http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/28/predators-a-response/ http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/28/predators-a-response/ daniel dorado 238 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ mill, john stuart. (1874) 1958. nature, and utility of religion. new york: liberal arts. nozick, robert. (1974) 2013. anarchy, state, and utopia. new york: basic books. pearce, david. 2009. “reprogramming predators: blueprint for a cruelty-free world”. hedweb. http://www.hedweb.com/abolitionist-project/ reprogramming-predators.html. 2012. “a welfare state for elephants?: a case study of compassionate stewardship”. hedweb. http://www.hedweb.com/abolitionist-project/ elephantcare.html. 2013. “the antispeciesist revolution”. institute for ethics and emerging technologies, july 26. http://ieet.org/index.php/ieet/more/pearce20130726. regan. tom. (1983) 2004. the case for animal rights, updated edn. with a new pref. berkeley: university of california press. ritchie, david g. (1894) 2013. natural rights: a criticism of some political and ethical conceptions. new york: routledge. singer, peter. (1975) 2009. animal liberation, updated edn. new york: ecco. tomasik, brian. 2009a. “the predominance of wild-animal suffering over happiness: an open problem”. essays on reducing suffering. http://reducing suffering.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/wild-animals_2015-02-28.pdf. 2009b. “the importance of wild-animal suffering”. foundational research institute. last modified january 16, 2015. http://foundational-research.org/ publications/importance-of-wild-animal-suffering. 2013. “intention-based moral reactions distort intuitions about wild animals”. essays on reducing suffering. last modified 6 november, 2015. http:// reducing-suffering.org/intention-based-moral-reactions-distort-intuitionsabout-wild-animals/. torres aldave, mikel. 2009. “capacidades y derechos de los animales: argumentos a favor de la teoría de m. c. nussbaum”. dilemata. http://www.dilemata.net/ revista/index.php/dilemata/article/view/3/3. 2011. “de lobos y ovejas: ¿les debemos algo a los animales salvajes?”. ágora: papeles de filosofía 30 (2): 77-98. http://hdl.handle.net/10347/7397. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 http://www.hedweb.com/abolitionist-project/reprogramming-predators.html http://www.hedweb.com/abolitionist-project/reprogramming-predators.html http://www.hedweb.com/abolitionist-project/elephantcare.html http://www.hedweb.com/abolitionist-project/elephantcare.html http://ieet.org/index.php/ieet/more/pearce20130726 http://reducing-suffering.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/wild-animals_2015-02-28.pdf http://reducing-suffering.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/wild-animals_2015-02-28.pdf http://foundational-research.org/publications/importance-of-wild-animal-suffering http://foundational-research.org/publications/importance-of-wild-animal-suffering http://reducing-suffering.org/intention-based-moral-reactions-distort-intuitions-about-wild-animals/ http://reducing-suffering.org/intention-based-moral-reactions-distort-intuitions-about-wild-animals/ http://reducing-suffering.org/intention-based-moral-reactions-distort-intuitions-about-wild-animals/ http://www.dilemata.net/revista/index.php/dilemata/article/view/3/3 http://www.dilemata.net/revista/index.php/dilemata/article/view/3/3 http://hdl.handle.net/10347/7397 posthuman narratives, italian style posthuman narratives, italian style emiliano guaraldo phd candidate, university of north carolina guaraldo@live.unc.edu amberson, deborah, and elena past. 2014. thinking italian animals: human and posthuman in modern italian literature and film. new york: palgrave macmillan. 263 pp. $ 90.00 isbn 978-1-137-45475-1 among other things, the 2014 american association of italian studies conference in zurich will be remembered for its meaningful conclusion. after her exceptional keynote address speech (posthumanist paradoxes), the italianist scholars in the audience applauded rosi braidotti in a long, heartfelt, and regenerating standing ovation. this event marked an important step in a more general trend within the italian studies scholarship. it is a wellestablished fact that in recent years there has been a proliferation of conference sessions, scholarly articles, and academic production aimed at the rereading of italian literary and cinematic traditions in the light of posthuman, ecocritical, and new-materialist studies. in zurich, braidotti acknowledged this trend and complimented the italianist academics for their contributions. by enthusiastically adopting the post-human “navigational tools”, the world of italian literary studies seems to be finally taking the environmental turn towards a deeper understanding of post-humanism and towards an open, and inclusive attitude regarding non-human subjectivities. later in 2014, thinking italian animals: human and posthuman in modern italian literature and film was published as part of the italian and italian american studies series by palgrave macmillan. this book stands as proof of the found interest in posthumanism by the north american italian studies academia. scholars of italian departments from the united states wrote most of the contributions that compose the book, making thinking italian animals exemplary of the renovation and hybridization of italian studies in the north american departments. roberto marchesini and serenella iovino, who are currently the most prominent scholars for post-humanism and ecocriticism in italy, also contributed with two remarkable essays, respectively the heterospecific as ontopoietic epiphany and hybriditales: posthumanizing calvino. the participation of scholars of mailto:guaraldo@live.unc.edu http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 emiliano guaraldo 122 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ global importance for the environmental humanities such as iovino and marchesini adds up to the excellent collection of essays that amberson and past put together in their ambitious project. the volume is structured in three parts: “ontologies and thresholds”, “biopolitics and historical crisis”, and “ecologies and hybridizations”. each part includes a handful of essays that focus specifically on the works of one or more author, being those literary texts or film. the diversity of the essays that compose thinking italian animals is profound and, as a result, it offers a panoramic view on how scholars operating from literary departments are currently approaching themes such as animal ethics, the animal question, and the human/nonhuman animal divide, starting from literary analysis. the essays of thinking italian animals share several points of contact. many possible “reading paths” can connect the fourteen contributions that constitute the volume. most of the works analyzed in thinking italian animals are from the 20th or 21st century, with the exception of del principe’s enticing essay the monstruous meal: flesh consumption and resistance in the european gothic. exposing the relationship between works such as collodi’s pinocchio, tarchetti’s fosca, shelley’s frankenstein, and stoker’s dracula, del principe indicates the monstrous “transhuman body as a key site for articulation of the construction of species and national identity” in 19th century europe (179). according to del principe, gothic monsters’ bodies function as resisting objects against speciesist desires of meat consumption and as a tool to destabilize the fixed boundary between human and nonhuman animals. meat consumption and cannibalism are also at the center of valentina fulginiti’s excellent essay the postapocalyptic cookbook, which focuses on the dystopian/cyberpunk novels free karma food (2006) by italian authorial collective wu ming and laura pugno’s critically acclaimed sirene (2007). literature and cinema have widely adopted postapocalyptic, sci-fi, and dystopian themes to not only titillate the audiences’ imaginations, but also as narrative devices to destabilize the anthropocentric gaze of capitalist mass culture. in this sense, daniele fioretti claims that paolo volponi’s dystopian allegory of il pianeta irritabile (1978) “foresaw the main point of the contemporary debate on animality: the idea that human beings are not something separate from animals” (154). this is an idea that the readers of thinking italian animals will find in many of the essays that comprise the volume, as in several of the authors’ works examined seems to emerge some sort of embryonic anti-speciesist self-consciousness. of course, this self-conscious thought by authors such as tozzi, montale, pavese, luzi, landolfi does not necessarily imply an advanced understanding of the nonhuman other, but rather a “posthuman http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 deborah amberson and elena past, “thinking italian animals […]” 123 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ foreshadow”, to use fioretti’s term, an acknowledgment on the ontological limitations of a human centered awareness of life. posthumanism often resonates also in other theoretical traditions, for example in feminist theory and the analysis of biopolitical structures of power. in cesare pavese, posthumanism, and the maternal symbolic, elizabeth leake places pavese’s literary production under the theoretical scrutiny of feminist theory and post-humanism more specifically at the intersection of both. in particular, leake is interested in pavese’s dedicated attention to the woman’s body and the biological nature of maternity, the relationship between violence and sexuality, and the mythos of male parthenogenesis. in montale’s animals: rhetorical props or metaphysical kin gregory pell individuates animal depictions in montale’s poetry that seem deeper and more complex than “trivial anthropomorphism”, thanks to the poet’s selfaware engagement with the animal otherness (57). the author’s engagement is essential also in the case of luzi’s work, as pointed out by matteo gilebbi in one of the most memorable essays of the entire book, animal metaphors, biopolitics, and the animal question in which gilebbi states, “the presence of animal figures in poetry does not always serve the animal question in an ontological sense”. (95) more specifically, it is the appearance of animal metaphors that undermine anthropocentrism (the so-called “theriomorphisms”) that can make possible a dialogue between poetry and animal ontology. such a dialogue is also the fundamental structure of gilebbi’s text, in which luzi and agamben interact with surprising complementarity. the analysis of literary texts and authors takes up most of the pages of thinking italian animals, as elena past’s (re)membering kinship: living with goats in the wind blows round and le quattro volte and alexandra hill’s creatureliness and posthumanism in liliana cavani’s the night porter and pier paolo pasolini’s salò are the only two essays dealing with film. in particular past’s contribution considers two extremely interesting recent films that deal with innovative strategies with the relationship between human and nonhuman life and landscapes they inhabit, demonstrating contemporary italian independent cinema’s attentive gaze on nonhuman subjects. the posthuman foreshadowing that gradually materializes reading the examples of italian literature presented in the book answers also other questions, this time on the nature itself of a volume like thinking italian animals. how is relevant for a de-localized critical debate on animality and the animal question a work apparently nested within the national borders of italy? in an increasingly interconnected academia, where boundaries between disciplines seem to collapse exposing the complex networked nature of contemporary humanities, this seems a relevant concern. intuitively, we could think that the ideas of italian national entity http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 emiliano guaraldo 124 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ and language that on a superficial level are serving as trait d’union of the volume are anthropocentric and far from an anti-speciesist understanding of the humanities. but even keeping in mind these concerns, the distinctive “posthuman feel” that transpires from these re-readings of italian literary texts is real and undeniable. the sense of anticipatory cognizance towards the animal other’s ontological existence becomes the real link between the works analyzed in thinking italian animals, rather than their national origin. furthermore, as pointed out by roberto esposito and cited by amberson and past in the introduction, we are reminded that there is a uniqueness if italian thought, as “italian philosophy has been thinking the human and, more specifically, the living or embodied human with marked intensity for many centuries” (3). in this sense, the italian framework that defines the scope of the book takes a deeper meaning: italian philosophy differs from other western currents of thought in that it moves beyond the horizon of language to traverse the disciplinary and lexical boundaries of the strictly philosophical, positioning itself across the spheres of politics, history, and life. a propensity for “contamination” with the “non-philosophical” allows italian thought to incorporate, as it were, the living or embodied human within its conceptual scaffolding. (3) thinking italian animals’ collection of essays represents a clear leap forward from previous works on the animal presence in italian literary and film culture. on one hand, the contributors share a common theoretical and methodological framework composed by the pivotal works of authors such as agamben, derrida, foucault, haraway, braidotti, lyotard, and seem to be deeply invested in the wider epistemological project of the environmental humanities. on the other hand, the contributors and the editors of the volume explicitly point out that they are not simply interested on the mere passive presence of animals in italian texts and film, but rather in the ways in which italian literature seems to be a fertile soil for the seeds of posthumanist and anti-speciesist thoughts. the ultimate objective of an ambitious project such as thinking italian animals is obvious. amberson and past’s unearthing of the hidden creative ways in which italian literature and film have embraced the nonhuman subjectivities and the posthuman horizon will eventually initiate a debate on topics that cannot be ignored anymore. finally, this volume has the merit of consolidating italian literary academia on the map of current environmental humanities, potentially initiating transnational, interdisciplinary, and comparative efforts within the humanities departments of italy. quoting amberson and past, thinking italian animals earns itself a place on a larger anti-speciesist project as it “invites further efforts to hybridize, and de-anthropocenter the creaturely world around us” (13). http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 gadda’s pasticciaccio and the knotted posthuman household gadda’s pasticciaccio and the knotted posthuman household deborah amberson 1 elena past 2 1 associate professor of italian, university of florida 2 associate professor of italian, wayne state university doi: 10.7358/rela-2016-001-ambe dambers@ufl.edu elenapast@wayne.edu the celebrated final scenes of carlo emilio gadda’s novel, “quer pasticciaccio brutto de via merulana”, find detective ingravallo pursuing a clue as he investigates the brutal murder of liliana balducci, an upper-middle-class inhabitant of an apartment on the street of the novel’s title. the location for the book’s concluding showdown is a dilapidated house, or an “oikos”, to borrow from the greek, into which the investigator, an outsider, is introduced. “oikos”, which became the prefix “eco” in both “economics” (literally, law of the house) and “ecology” (or, study of the house) here provides a dynamic lens for the final scenes of the pasticciaccio, and for viewing its unremitting tension between singularity and generality, interiority and exteriority, anthropic and geological time, human and posthuman. our article proposes the space of the impoverished roman household as a key to entering the gaddian narrative architecture, a space that resonates with what jeffery jerome cohen describes as “the tangled, fecund, and irregular pluriverse humans inhabit along with lively and agency-filled objects, materials, and forces” (prismatic ecology, xxiii). the dwelling on via merulana, and even more distinctly the house (or hovel) in which the novel ends, challenge our notions of domestic spaces, their porosity, and their proper inhabitants. in fact, in the narrative’s exploration of these two houses and their occupants, we find intriguing portraits of the tensions that trouble the supposed borders of the human and the posthuman. the “pasticciaccio”, as we argue, closes (or opens) the door on a narrative architecture of polarity, where material and ontological tensions lead to both human and posthuman conclusions. keywords: carlo emilio gadda, posthumanism, material ecocriticism, dirt theory, via merulana, leibniz, monads, finitude, nomadic thought, stone. where does the posthuman dwell? at what address? and in what type of house? architectural and logistical questions must be formulated as we contemplate notions of environments and ecologies, in particular given that the prefix eco comes (as many have noted) from the greek oikos for mailto:dambers@ufl.edu mailto:elenapast@wayne.edu http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 deborah amberson elena past 66 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ “household” (buell 2005, 13). as the terrain in fields including posthumanism, ecocriticism, and the environmental humanities shifts, taking on materialities and ontologies to admit the agency of things animal, vegetable, and mineral, the architecture of our shared domicile also transforms. ecology, of course, understands that the entire earth is our household. yet as two creatures who spend many hours at our desks in florida and michigan, sheltered from sun and snow by walls and roofs, we propose that examining the shape of micro-households (our single-family dwellings, our apartments and condos and hotel rooms and offices) has important implications in a posthuman world, and that posthumanism in turn can transform our sense of the built environment. is a house a container for anthropic action, or is it coextensive with its human and nonhuman inhabitants, and an agent in its own right? as ariane lourie harrison insists when mapping posthuman territory in the context of architecture, “the posthuman challenges the long-standing conception of the building as an object autonomous from its environment and governed by disciplinary interiority” (2013, 3). in understanding human embeddedness in the nonhuman world, we come to understand that “nature”, as harrison points out, is not “other” to architecture. in a range of lively examples, from french-hungarian sculptor nicolas schöffer’s spatiodynamic tower (1954) to american architectural team diller + scofidio’s vapor-cloud blur building (2002), harrison shows how our contemporary imagination can begin to envision a “networked, responsive – or even posthuman – architecture” (2013, 11) that destabilizes thresholds and invites in the world and its nomadic plurality of species, climates, and technologies 1. 1. gaddian polarities of stone and death the roman apartment building at 219 via merulana and at the heart of carlo emilio gadda’s quer pasticciaccio brutto de via merulana (that awful mess on via merulana) is a far cry in architectural terms from the vibrating, transparent, perforated constructions that harrison describes. “worm-eaten and gray”, it is “one of those big buildings constructed at the beginning of the century which fill you at first sight with a sense of 1 see harrison 2013, 11-23, for further descriptions of these spaces, as well as harrison’s case studies interspersed throughout the collection. see also http://www.dsrny.com/ projects/blur-building (accessed august 19, 2015) for a video of the blur building. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 http://www.dsrny.com/projects/blur-building http://www.dsrny.com/projects/blur-building gadda’s “pasticciaccio” and the knotted posthuman household 67 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ boredom and canarified contrition” (gadda 2007, 22) 2. and yet the dwelling on via merulana, and even more distinctly the house (or hovel) in which the novel ends, challenge our notions of domestic spaces, their porosity, and their proper inhabitants. in fact, in the descriptions of these two houses and their occupants, we find intriguing portraits of the tensions that trouble the supposed borders of the human and the posthuman. such tensions in fact define the milanese-born writer gadda (18931973). albert sbragia diagnoses a “poetics of polarity” in gadda’s writing, foregrounding a contrast between “lyricism and satire, subjectivity and mimesis, historical awareness and reactionary blindness” (1996, 28). comparable polarities mark gadda’s temperament, which italo calvino describes as oscillating between rage and civility, reason and angst: an electrical engineer, he tried to master his hypersensitive, anxious temperament with a rational, scientific mentality, but he simply exacerbated it instead; and in his writing he gave vent to his irascibility, his phobias, his fits of misanthropy, which in his everyday life he repressed behind the mask of ceremonious politeness belonging to a gentleman of another age. (calvino 2007, vii-viii) given these manifold polarities, it comes as no surprise that gadda’s work is also marked by a fluctuation between an apparently posthuman sensibility, attuned to a dynamic material world in which the human is firmly enmeshed, and an anguished awareness of the tragic finitude of the individual organic entity, mortally vulnerable to violence and ultimately doomed to disappear. gadda’s pasticciaccio follows, though rarely in a linear fashion, two narrative threads or, as befits this detective novel, two crimes committed in the building on merulana street and assigned to police investigator francesco ingravallo. the first crime involves a theft of jewels from the apartment of signora menegazzi, while the second is the murder of detective ingravallo’s friend liliana balducci. these crimes point us to those two gaddian poles most relevant to what we might term his anguished posthumanism. while the jewels belong quite literally to the temporal and spatial limitlessness of geological time, the murdered liliana leads us into the tragically fleeting realm of anthropic temporality. the first gaddian pole anticipates the concerns of fields including posthumanism, the new materialisms, and material ecocriticism, in that it seems to conceive, as serenella iovino and serpil oppermann propose material ecocriticism does, the “engagement with matter as a condition to retrace 2 all citations from the pasticciaccio come from this edition. the pasticciaccio first appeared in 1946 in five installments in letteratura. in 1957 a revised version was published in novel form by garzanti. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 deborah amberson elena past 68 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ and recognize agential emergences as they coalesce in social, scientific, and cognitive practices” (2012, 451) 3. in the critically well-trodden passage where the stolen jewels are located by corporal pestalozzi in a grubby bedpan, for example, a single object reflects and refracts the passage of time: “[…] a little cross of some semiprecious dark-green stone, which the fingertips of the future sergeant could not stop savoring […]: a handsome, shining little green-black cylinder, for interpreting horoscopes by the shitty priests for egypt […]: mysteriosophic candy, concealed in the ancient womb of the earth, seized from the earth’s womb, one day geometrized to magic” (2007, 320). the vast temporality of the gems is noteworthy – from pestalozzi’s future promotion from corporal to sergeant, they hurtle backwards to ancient egypt and, even further, to the time when they were extracted from their incubation in a telluric uterus. the text grasps the jewels’ dynamic materiality; they are not stable objects fixed in time, but are instead defined by their incessant and infinite becoming, branching outwards and connecting with other entities across eons 4. gadda clarifies this representational position when he explains that: “[…] things, objects, events have no value to me in and of themselves, closed within the wrapping of their individual skin, […]; they have value to me in an expectation, in a waiting for what will follow, or in an appeal to what preceded and determined them” (2001, 211). after all, he explains, the fact or the object in and of itself is little more than the “dead body of reality, the fecal residue of history” (2007, 212). in the philosophical treatise meditazione milanese (milanese meditation), written in the late 1920s and published posthumously in 1974, gadda contests the very notion of stable matter or substance. referencing heraclitus, the philosopher commonly, though perhaps erroneously, associated with the phrase πάντα ῥεῖ (panta rhei or “everything flows”), gadda claims that the persistence of apparently unchanged elements within a system creates what is an illusion of continuity, unity, or stable being (2002, 17). here, and in multiple other texts, gadda’s work offers a vision of a dynamic materiality where beings and objects are defined (and redefined) by their relation 3 iovino and oppermann propose that approaching “matter as a text, […] broadens the range of narrative agencies, making it a ‘posthuman performativity’”, in order to ask the following questions: “[…] who is the storyteller of these stories narrated through and across bodies by manifold material-discursive agents, such as toxic waste, sick cells, individual organisms, and social forces? who is really the ‘narrating subject’, if things – collectives, assemblages, actants – are narrative agencies?” (2012, 459). 4 gian carlo roscioni writes that, rather than “naming objects”, gadda “surprises them in their becoming” (1969, 3). unless otherwise noted, translations from the italian are ours. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 gadda’s “pasticciaccio” and the knotted posthuman household 69 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ to a multifaceted reality. matter acquires that same animation that jane bennett identifies in her account of a “vibrant materiality that runs alongside and inside humans” (2010, viii) 5. equally important is the fact that agency is not the exclusive domain of a human subjectivity endowed with intentionality 6. rather, in gadda’s literary universe, all material entities, organic and inorganic, exert agentic force, another factor that opens the way for comparison with new materialisms such as, for example, timothy morton’s consideration of object-oriented ontology (2013) or karen barad’s reflections on “intra-action” where agency becomes an “enactment”, rather than “something that someone or something has” (2007, 214). if the jewels are dazzling examples of this gaddian dynamism, radiating outwards in all temporal directions to forge relations with future sergeants and long deceased egyptians, where does the murdered liliana and her human finitude fit in? actually, the dynamic materiality of relation also underpins gadda’s understanding of human subjectivity. he contests in no uncertain terms the concept of an entity separated from the totality of beings, claiming, in a 1953 essay titled l’egoista (the egoist), that all our lives are “symbiosis with the universe” and our individuality is the “meeting point” or the “knot or tangle of countless relations with countless situations (facts or beings) that are apparently external to us” (2001, 234). in a formulation that resonates with chaos theory’s butterfly effect, he argues for the interdependence of all things: “if a dragonfly flies in tokyo, it triggers a chain reaction that reaches me” (2001, 234) 7. however, despite this resounding rejection of a self-contained subjectivity which he derides as that of a “postal parcel” (2002, 36), gadda seems highly sensitive to the destiny of this individuated subject. and while his considerations of interconnectedness frequently embrace a chaotic and even joyously mischievous tone, his portraits of the demarcated subject introduce a wrathful tone of tragic anguish. 5 gadda’s baroque style also partakes of this dynamism. he acknowledges that any word employed has long lost its virginity and, over the course of its history, has acquired multiple meanings and nuances which can be further deformed by a “spastic” use (2001, 18). for an excellent study of gadda’s vital materialism in the context of la cognizione del dolore (acquainted with grief ), see falkoff 2014. 6 a spectacular example of this is the destruction generated by the lightning strike in acquainted with grief . 7 this formulation seems indebted to the thought of leibniz, a philosopher dear to gadda. specifically, the question of interconnectedness suggests paragraph 61 of the monadology: “[…] each body is affected, not only by those in contact with it […] but also, through them, it feels the effects of those in contact with the bodies with which it is itself immediately in contact. from this it follows that this communication extends to any distance whatsoever” (1989, 221). http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 deborah amberson elena past 70 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ what appears to underpin this tragic tone is the vulnerability and finitude of the subject. indeed, while the first pole of the pasticciaccio, the jewels, offers a vast configuration of spatial and temporal relation, the second, the murder, suggests a violent amputation of these same relations. reduced to a corpse, liliana is “cruelly separated from all things, from the lights and phenomena of the world” (2007, 380) and her death constitutes an “extreme decompounding of possibles, an unfocusing of interdependent ideas, formerly harmonized in one person” (2007, 84). while these citations still suggest a subject defined by relation, liliana also points us to an alternative configuration of subjectivity not uncommon in gadda’s pages. in opposition to the subject of relation, he indicates a fruitless human tendency to shore up the borders of the self in an attempt to sever human subjectivity from its material enmeshment. in the case of liliana these efforts revolve around her bourgeois status and her unfulfilled longing for the legacy of a child 8. whether this vain tendency towards selfpreservation stems from terror before death’s annihilation or constitutes a misguided restoration of human privilege before the chaos of dynamic materialism, gadda himself is not immune to its temptations. describing his life as a “humiliated and offended being”, he characterizes his writing as an instrument of his rage with which he might “re-establish ‘my’ truth, ‘my’ way of seeing, namely, the instrument of vindication against the outrages of destiny” (2001, 94). these manifold tensions and oppositions make gadda an ideal literary case study for a consideration of the knots of posthumanism. acknowledging as fact and, more importantly, as ethical code a human enmeshment in a world of infinite and dynamic relation, he opens his texts onto a geological temporality in which, as jeffrey jerome cohen writes, the “human immediately becomes posthuman as a consequence of the enlarged temporal frame that geology demands” (2015, 60). yet, gadda does not overlook the pain occasioned by the temporal limits and the vulnerability of human life. he may frequently and mercilessly satirize bourgeois constructions of a demarcated and self-interested human identity, but he is fully and furiously aware of the tragedies and indignities of anthropic time. as we arrive at the end of the pasticciaccio, gadda categorically understands that the “narrating subject” of reality is more-than-human (iovino and oppermann 2012, 459), but the single human death occurring in these pages still prompts anguish. 8 gadda provides an extreme example of this tendency in gonzalo pirobutirro, the protagonist of acquainted with grief, whose phobic and furious occupation of his family’s villa becomes an attempt to affirm his “sacrosanct private, most private, mine, mine!” (1969, 90). http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 gadda’s “pasticciaccio” and the knotted posthuman household 71 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the house itself performs this tension as the two sections to follow, written from apparently opposing perspectives, will suggest. assunta’s hovel contains and encloses but also permits penetration and opening; it is in a state of time-induced decay but also perhaps hybridization. and, as one man lies dying within, his human body connecting across species and time periods, gadda seems to ask of his posthuman framework: who will be left to read this material text of reality? 2. monadic houses and anthropic time assunta crocchiapani’s home is in a state of decay. the walls have lost their original pink colouring and are now characterized by a “faded squalor” on all but one rust covered wall (2007, 378-79). the roof tiles appear as stumps and the roof as a whole appears softened and heat-swollen, ready to fly away in a strong gust of wind (379). the shutters are “putrid” and “splintered” and the entire “rotten apparatus”, looks ready to “fall and crash in a ruin” (379). the house, like assunta’s father within, is dying; the festering structure mirrors a barely conscious body covered in bed sores and filth. the house also replicates the wary and angry apprehension of its other inhabitant, assunta. the windows are not transparent; the frames contain no glass but are sealed with greased paper or iron (379). shutters are “half-closed” or they are slamming shut; a window opens and is immediately closed again; the door is small and, when the policemen demand entry, it opens only a crack (378-9). this hovel, like many of the other homes detailed across gadda’s texts, from gonzalo’s obsessively guarded villa to liliana’s well-ordered, bourgeois apartment within the chaotic building on via merulana, suggests the borders of the individuated subject and illuminates his or her relation with a broader reality. gadda seems to underscore this possibility as he describes assunta’s home as being “slightly separated from the flock” (2007, 378). moreover, his insistence on closed, closing, and opaque windows suggests leibniz’s description of the monad as an indivisible unit of substance that has “no windows through which something can enter or leave” (1989, 214). yet, as gadda’s theorization of the self of relation addressed above illustrates, this impenetrable configuration is not, to his mind, an ethical state of being 9. indeed, gadda’s subjectivity resonates more fully with alfred 9 in meditazione milanese gadda plots a project of heuristic becoming that locates the ethical position beyond the borders of the demarcated subject n corresponds to the http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 deborah amberson elena past 72 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ north whitehead’s “actual occasion”, a creature “constituted by its totality of relationships” (1979, 80) 10. the impenetrability here of the monad suggests then the subject’s misguided efforts at self-preservation, an attempt to extract itself from the dynamism of becoming to lay claim to a more stable being. this monadization, however, is not just the arrogant posture of the eponymous egoist of gadda’s aforementioned essay, but is also the posture of one subjected to an “oltraggio” or outrage, a recurrent term in gadda’s oeuvre. having probably played an indirect role in liliana’s murder, assunta is not a pure victim. yet, as ingravallo and his colleagues close in on her squalid home, they are figured as black-clad grave-diggers (2007, 378). their presence constitutes a menace even to the humans, dogs, and hens outside the hovel (378). declaring themselves in no uncertain terms, the police officers demand entry: “police! let us in! open the door!” (378). theirs is an aggressive penetration of assunta’s monadic hovel and self; ingravallo, in his capacity as officer of the law, observes her with a “steady, cruel eye” and assunta’s frowning face manifests wrath “as if at an unforeseen outrage” (381-2). the house, specifically the staircase, “creaks” under the weight of the officers as they move towards the room of the dying man (382). here the law, and certainly not for the first time in the text, is figured as a violence or indignity toward the subject 11. like the hovel, the subject buckles and warps, trampled by police officers in zealous pursuit of the identity of the guilty party and, presumably, the subsequent punishment of the same. as such the investigative paradigm comes to resemble an especially brutal version of the methodological dilemma described in meditazione milanese: “[…] to know is to insert something into reality and it is, therefore, to deform that reality” (249). though a policeman, ingravallo seems attuned to the deformative pain wrought by his investigation. in effect, he seems sadly aware that his search for the guilty party constitutes a cruel penetration of the monadic human subject figured here as semi-sealed hovel. he grasps the necessity subject’s attempt to preserve a stable identity: “[…] it is […] to persist, to be i” (146). n + 1 represents an ethically preferable state that often requires self-sacrifice to access a sphere of becoming or “superconsciousness, supersystem” (146). n 1 is the ignoble configuration epitomized by, amongst others, the murderer who, in obeying his greed, negates all human connectedness (149). 10 gilles deleuze provides a comparison of leibniz and whitehead (1993). 11 the pasticciaccio offers multiple examples of this tendency. these include not just the examination of liliana’s corpse but also the reaction of filippo angeloni, who, when interrogated after the jewel robbery and despite his innocence, withdraws into himself such that his face becomes “a mute and desperate protest against the inhumanity, the cruelty of all organized investigation” (47). http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 gadda’s “pasticciaccio” and the knotted posthuman household 73 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ of his role; he is “harsh, as he was required to be” because, as policeman and as enraged friend to the victim, he hears, in his “atrociously wounded spirit”, liliana calling for justice from “her sea of shadows” (2007, 381-2). yet, as he sees on assunta’s forehead the fold formed by an angry frown, a fold that recalls both liliana’s wounded throat and the furrow of her sex which he discerned through her underwear as he scrutinized her corpse, his final sentiment is one, “almost”, of repentance (388). assunta enfolds liliana, and ingravallo seems stricken. his investigation and its punitive consequences suggest a second murder and this time assunta is the victim 12. perhaps this dilemma is the reason behind the famously inconclusive ending of the pasticciaccio 13. leaving readers without our curiosity satisfied, gadda draws us back toward human suffering and the manifold indignities of anthropic time, not only through assunta’s outrage but also and much more materially through the agonies of her father. we learn virtually nothing of the life and character of assunta’s father. what we do know is that he is dying, that he is covered in bedsores, that his room smells horrendous, and that, in his suffering, the man embodies sickness itself and is referred to simply as “the illness” (2007, 383). death has stripped him of all distinguishing features and personality traits; it is not only unclear whether he is alive or dead, but even his gender, despite his beard, is no longer self-evident (383). discussing a scene from dickens’s our mutual friend in which a detested character is found on the threshold of death and treated with care until he recovers, gilles deleuze argues for the force of a de-individuated life, “freed from the accidents of inner and outer life, that is, from the subjectivity and objectivity of what happens” (qtd. in smith 1997, xiii). but for gadda this specific man’s impending death suggests not that deleuzian vital immanence that resonates with material dynamism, but a geological temporality that is terrifying in its vastness. indeed, speaking temporally, while the investigative paradigm murders subjective particularity with the pinpoint temporality of a uniform application of one law to all beings, this death dwarfs human existence with its infinite scale. assunta’s father’s body lies fleshless; his is a “bony and cachetic face” which, “motionless” on the pillow, is a “yellow-brown like something in an 12 discussing detective fiction, tzvetan todorov cites michel butor’s fictional burton who claims that all detective fiction is “based on two murders of which the first, committed by the murderer, is merely the occasion for the second, in which he is the victim of the pure and unpunishable murderer, the detective” (1977, 44). 13 in a 1968 interview with dacia maraini, gadda stressed the novel’s literary completeness, claiming that ingravallo knows who the murderer is and that is enough (gadda 1993, 171-2). http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 deborah amberson elena past 74 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ egyptian museum” (2007, 383). only the whiteness of his beard reveals him as belonging to an “era of human history painfully close” (383). as the man nears death his body is on the verge of entering into that material dynamism of infinite possibility open to the jewels. he too hurtles back to antiquity through his resemblance to ancient egyptian objects while his beard keeps him bound to the present. veronica migliarini, the elderly woman who attends him, appears to be already part of this temporal and spatial vastness. not only is her posture compared with that of pontormo’s cosimo de medici but her face with its “dry, lizardy skin” gives her the “wrinkled immobility of a fossil” and the air of a “hundred-and-ninety-year-old aztec woman” (385). but pain marks the man’s death, and his entry into the infinite dynamism of matter will strip him violently of his sentience, his self-consciousness, and his intentionality. as such, this broader temporality acquires a decidedly menacing, even vampiric quality. eternity, gadda writes, is already bent over him and her gulping down of saliva prompts a comparison with the “greedy gaze of a red cross woman” or a “slightly necrophiliac” nurse overly keen to administer “perpetual immunization” (384-5). veronica, a “true icon” perhaps of geological time, barely sees the present; her gaze offers a “spent quiet” which is “opposed to the event, like the mindless memory of the earth, from paleontological distances” (385). but this telluric memory without mind is one that, as cohen writes concerning stone, “hurts” the human and not only because rocks “so easily become hurled weapons” (2015, 79). specifically, stone’s temporality and more broadly that of the earth hurts humans by diminishing the scale of our existence (cohen 2015, 79). hubristically happy at the top of our own species hierarchy, we are reduced, before the “mindlessness” of telluric or geological time, to the status of the proverbial mayfly. we are impelled towards the painful realization that we are not the measure of all things and that, tragically, we, as beings “with mind”, must die. 3. nomadic houses and posthuman time as her father lies dying, assunta crocchiapani’s house is alive. alongside the unfolding human tragedy of the father’s death, the material dynamism of the space around the feeble figure reverberates with posthuman significance. re-entering the home of the dying man, this time with an eye to these nonhuman actors, we find that ingravallo encounters that man whose species, gender, and vital state (described above) are indiscernible, a figure who is both in a coma and pulsing with “strange borborygms” that suggest http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 gadda’s “pasticciaccio” and the knotted posthuman household 75 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ “miraculous imminence” (2007, 385). reexamining the description of the father, we move through an architecture of death that parallels the space of the house in which he lays dying. the sheet and blankets on the bed rise and float with the man’s shaky breaths (385); the “outstretched little body” crosses the borders between species to become like a “skinny cat in a sack set on the ground” (383). both “motionless” and strangely mobile, the father and veronica move towards becoming bone (383) and stone – “the wrinkled immobility of a fossil” (385). but in gadda, stone moves. in fact a posthuman family greets the police brigade on the threshold of the house, where they find an interspecies assemblage of “kids, chickens, two women, two mongrel dogs with tails curled up like a bishop’s crook, revealing all their beauty” (2007, 378). the gleaming black eyes that peer at them could potentially belong to any of this mass, and no one can answer di pietrantonio’s question regarding “who’s here?” with any precision. there are not just creatures animating the landscape around the house, though; the house itself moves and shifts before our eyes. before the threshold are slabs of stone “hollowed by footsteps, and shoes, and nails” (378). the north wind has created “dark rust and shadows” on one side of the house; the roof tiles are “wavy” and grass grows on them; drops fall from the tiles; windows and shutters slam shut but also, significantly, open; a tree twists through the garret, serving as a beam and suturing together indoors and outdoors (379). the crocchiapani house speaks (by creaking), stinks, waves, rots, and splinters, showing its dynamism and “the evaporation of the years” (379). in this sense, it moves beyond its monadic status to become an architectural nomad, which challenges readers to engage in nomadic thought in the terms described by rosi braidotti. nomadic thought, she says, turns the thinking subject “into the threshold of gratuitous (principle of non-profit), aimless (principle of mobility or flow) acts which express the vital energy of transformative becoming (principle of non-linearity)” (2013, 166-7). recounting the house and its curvilinear, mobile lines, the novel lingers on a posthuman threshold that once again defers “progressing” towards the resolution of the crime to instead focus on the vital, and dirty, dynamism of matter. the crocchiapani house’s nomadic “squalor” presses against the closure of the windowless monad. suggestively recalling the “pasticciaccio” or “awful mess” of the book’s title, it is a far cry from many of the edenic and experimental spaces described in harrison’s posthuman architectural experiments, which float over cities (yona friedman’s spatial city, 1960, designed to hover over paris) or envelop them in clouds of purified water vapor (the blur building). instead, the crocchiapani residence helps uncover a “dirty” nonhuman universe, where alongside the tragedy http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 deborah amberson elena past 76 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ of individual human death, we find a form of decomposition that actively recomposes the landscape (as it nourishes literary composition). throughout the text, dirty households provide a material connection between the shifting spaces of the investigation. moving furniture in the house of liliana balducci after her murder, ingravallo and his investigative team find dust (2007, 36); the uncooperative zamira is encountered “pushing a broom, preceded by a conspicuous cluster of domestic fluffs and straws and indefinable rubbish” (277); the train just outside of camilla mattonari’s house sends up “cannonades of brown smoke from its spout” (306), and the tiny room in which she and her family lives smells of “the lipoids, the amino acids, the urea, the sweat, in short, in which the clothing of the poor is steeped” (314). these dirty spaces reflect the pervasive mobility of dirt, which is, as heather sullivan shows convincingly, a kind of a cyborg: “[…] the literal ground without which there would be no terrestrial life” but capable of exerting a “destructively agentic influence” on the things it touches (2012, 516). recalling that the “human” is likely etymologically related to “humus”, or “living soil” (518), sullivan argues for the hybrid, dynamic, nomadic qualities of dirt, and reminds us that dirt emerges from our bodies (516), which will return to dust. in the pasticciaccio’s posthuman household, dirt, smoke, and sweat extend the houses’ thresholds outwards into the city of rome and the countryside beyond, and they carry the threshold inwards into the human and nonhuman bodies. in sharp contrast with the violent, sudden death of liliana, in fact, the father’s slow process of dying emphasizes the temporal arc that connects us all to humus. in the nomadism of dirt, and in the nomadic, shifting household, the dying father has a chance at what braidotti calls “an ethics of sustainability that aims at shifting the focus toward the positivity of zoē ” (2010, 212). although the crocchiapani house, and gaddian spaces more generally, are often formed of hard, stony matter (think of that threshold, the gems, the nails, the beams), the movement of these objects through time and space, and the disintegration of many of them before our eyes, gives them an active “shapelessness” that recalls that of the blur building, dramatizing, like it does, what cary wolfe claims “is true of all architectural forms” (2013, 129): that matter is mobile and open to interaction with the world. these objects thus point us to what wolfe, pondering the moving, ephemeral architecture of the blur vapor house, calls “the ultimate question: namely, who is doing the experiencing? who – in phenomenological, ethical, and political terms – are ‘we’, exactly?” (2013, 121). the gaddian universe, although indubitably concerned with the fate of the human subject, constantly reconfigures that “we” by way of the complicated knot of relations. in the final scene of the pasticciccio, dirt and stone contextualize the human http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 gadda’s “pasticciaccio” and the knotted posthuman household 77 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ in a network of temporal encounters and crossings that are both metaphorical and, by way of our rooting in trans-corporeal flows, material: a human body is part cat and part egyptian mummy; another is part lizard and part fossil; wood is part house and part coffin; death is part consignment to eternity and part rebirth as dirt. that worn stone on the threshold of the crocchiapani house serves as a monumental reminder that “the world has never been still”, and that humans “remain earth formed from earth, living upon the earth through alliance with earthen matter, returning at death to earth again” (cohen 2015, 6). what, then, might it mean to die in a nomadic, posthuman household? in a provocative article on the politics of “life itself” and new ways of dying, braidotti rethinks agamben’s notion of biopolitics, a concept that insists, she argues, on introducing “finitude as a constitutive element within the framework of subjectivity, which also fuels an affective political economy of loss and melancholia at the heart of the subject” (2010, 211). contesting advanced capitalism’s monetarization of death, or what she calls the “ideology of compensation” that leads to requests for damages to repay suffering (as in the case of the shoah or soviet communism), braidotti wonders whether instead “death is overrated”? (212). suggesting that death is “after all only another phase in a generative process” (212), braidotti proposes that rather than “mutual reciprocity”, which is the logic that drives capitalism, empathy, and the kind of “justice” that suggests that reparations can be made for atrocities, we need “mutual specification and mutual codependence” (214). although posited in radical terms, this move intends to support an affirmative ethics, whereby the subject is “a frame for interaction and change, growth and movement” (215). such an affirmative ethics is arguably discernable in gadda’s creative elisions of man and stone, dying father and living house. on his way to becoming-stone and becoming-house, assunta’s father is both infinite and nearing human finitude. and in the final paragraph of the book, assunta’s “splendid vitality”, “undaunted faith”, and “incredible cry” all serve to halt the linearity of the investigation, spiraling the novel back into the realm of dirty indeterminacy. and so the pasticciaccio closes (or opens) the door on a narrative architecture of polarity, where material and ontological tensions lead to both human and posthuman conclusions. useful here are cohen’s moving reflections on lindow man, the body of a pre-common era man found in 1984 and now on permanent display in the british museum, who was brutally murdered before being buried. cohen describes himself hunched over the display case when his family arrives. while his son is impressed with how “cool” the ancient human remains are, his three-year-old daughter katherine dissolves into tears asking if lindow man will be okay, becoming http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 deborah amberson elena past 78 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ distraught on learning that he is irretrievably dead (2015, 95-6). lindow man becomes a memento mori that reminds us of human mortality, but he also “incarnates a narrative with life”, namely the “endurance of the past”, albeit a disturbingly brutal one in this case. cohen urges us to “refuse to petrify bodies into objects” and, more importantly, prevails upon us to avoid responding to the disorientation or the “loss of bearing” occasioned by stone’s longevity by mooring ourselves in human exceptionalism (97). convinced, like cohen, of the theoretical and ethical appeal of matter’s dynamism, gadda remains nonetheless sensitive to the painful implications of the tragic finitude of the individual being. his writing certainly embraces those stone-induced qualities and tendencies cohen describes as follows: “[…] stone’s endurance unsettles narration, curving linear narratives into vortices, limning history with havoc” (79). like cohen’s daughter, he mourns the fate of his literary lindow men. yet like cohen’s posthuman thinker, the pasticciaccio also leaps “from ephemeral stabilities, from the diminutive boundedness of merely human tales” (3). that is why the houses that cannot contain the protagonists of the pasticciaccio come to constitute protagonists in and of themselves. the stories of the many articulate beings, spaces, and forces across gadda’s writing, from fascism to jewels, from lavish meals to celery in a grocery bag, from clucking chickens to creative lightning strikes, trace the author’s meditations on the tragedy of being born into a world where there are so many voices to listen to that one human lifespan – or one household, or one novel – can never suffice. references barad, karen. 2007. meeting the universe halfway: quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. durham: duke university press. bennett, jane. 2010. vibrant matter: a political ecology of things. durham, duke university press. braidotti, rosi. 2010. “the politics of ‘life itself’ and new ways of dying”. in new materialisms: ontology, agency, and politics, edited by diana coole and samantha frost, 201-18. durham: duke university press. 2013. the posthuman. malden, ma: polity press. buell, lawrence. 2005. the future of environmental criticism: environmental crisis and literary imagination. malden, ma: blackwell. calvino, italo. 2007. “introduction”. in carlo emilio gadda, that awful mess on via merulana, translated by william weaver, v-xiv. new york: new york review of books. cohen, jeffrey j. 2013. prismatic ecology. ecotheory beyond green. minneapolis: university of minnesota press. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 gadda’s “pasticciaccio” and the knotted posthuman household 79 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 2015. stone: an ecology of the inhuman. minneapolis: university of minnesota press. falkoff, rebecca. 2014. “carlo emilio gadda’s junk and other vibrant matter in milan and maradagàl”. california italian studies 5 (2): 83-105. deleuze, gilles. 1993. the fold: leibniz and the baroque. minneapolis: university of minnesota press. gadda, carlo emilio. 1969. acquainted with grief, translated by william weaver. new york: george braziller. 1993. per favore, mi lasci nell’ombra: interviste 1950-1972. mila no: adelphi. 2001. i viaggi la morte. milano: garzanti. 2002. meditazione milanese. milano: garzanti. 2007. that awful mess on via merulana, translated by william weaver. new york: new york review of books. harrison, ariane lourie. 2013. “charting posthuman territory”. in architectural theories of the environment: posthuman territory, edited by ariane lourie harrison, 3-33. new york: routledge. iovino, serenella, and serpil oppermann. 2012. “theorizing material ecocriticism: a diptych”. isle: interdisciplinary studies in literature and environment 19 (3): 448-75. leibniz, gottfried wilhelm von. 1989. philosophical essays, edited and translated by roger ariew and daniel garber. indianapolis, in cambridge, ma: hackett. morton, timothy. 2013. hyperobjects: philosophy and ecology after the end of the world. minneapolis: university of minnesota press. roscioni, gian carlo. 1969. la disarmonia prestabilita. torino: einaudi. sbragia, albert. 1996. carlo emilio gadda and the modern macaronic. gainesville: university press of florida. smith, daniel w. 1997. “introduction”. in gilles deleuze, essays critical and clinical, translated by daniel w. smith and michael a. greco, xi-liii. minneapolis: university of minnesota press. sullivan, heather i. 2012. “dirt theory and material ecocriticism”. isle: interdisciplinary studies in literature and the environment 19 (3): 515-31. tzvetan, todorov. 1977. the poetics of prose. ithaca: cornell university press. whitehead, alfred north. 1979. process and reality. new york: simon & schuster. wolfe, cary. 2013. “lose the building: systems theory, architecture, and diller + scofidio’s blur”. in architectural theories of the environment: posthuman territory, edited by ariane lourie harrison, 115-37. new york: routledge. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 disentangling obligations of assistance. a reply to clare palmer’s “against the view that we are usually required to assist wild animals” disentangling obligations of assistance a reply to clare palmer’s “against the view that we are usually required to assist wild animals” catia faria phd candidate, pompeu fabra university doi: 10.7358/rela-2015-002-fari catiaxfaria@gmail.com animals are sentient individuals. they can be harmed and benefited by what happens to them. a significant number of nonhuman animals live under human control, yet the overwhelming majority of them live in the wild (tomasik 2014). many of the harms wild animals endure are due to natural events, rather than to human agency. given the means at our disposal, wild animal suffering could be, to some extent, prevented or, at least, alleviated. this raises the question of whether we are morally required to intervene in nature to assist them or, alternatively, whether we may permissibly choose not to. clare palmer is one of the few philosophers who directly tackles this problem 1, answering it from the relational account of the moral consideration of nonhuman animals which she has developed (2010, 2013, 2015). as it can be surmised from her contribution to this issue, her claim is that we are not usually required to assist wild animals. however, we may be permitted to do so. this thesis relies on two premises: (i) we are morally required to assist others in need if, and only if, we have a prior morally-relevant entanglement with them; (ii) usually, there are no such morally-relevant entanglements between human beings and wild animals. palmer’s default position is, thus, that we lack general obligations to help others. instead, we merely have special obligations of assistance towards those individuals with whom we have morally-relevant entanglements. it is the existence of such entanglements what generates obligations 1 some salient exceptions are sapontzis 1987; cowen 2003; mcmahan 2010; donaldson and kymlicka 2011; horta 2013. mailto:catiaxfaria@gmail.com http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 catia faria 212 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ of assistance. since human beings and wild animals usually do not maintain these morally relevant relationships, helping them is merely permitted, as opposed to morally required. and we may decide to exercise that permission by refraining to assist them. in what follows, i will assess palmer’s argument and discuss whether this is indeed the case. in palmer’s view, prior morally-relevant entanglement refers to any causal relation between an individual’s particular situation of exposure to a harm (which generates the need of aid) and past human action. domesticated animals are a paradigmatic example of this. as she points out: […] where humans have deliberately created relations of dependent vulnerability with animals (especially where this involves prior harms, such as wild capture), special obligations to care for these animals, and to assist them, are also created. (2015) that is, we are required to prevent or alleviate the suffering of domesticated animals because we deliberately put them in a situation of vulnerability and dependence. if the argument is sound, it allows palmer to establish a morally relevant difference between domesticated animals and those living in the wild, in spite of their having similar morally relevant capacities (equal capacity to suffer and enjoy their lives). palmer draws on a human analogue for support: the case of parents’ special obligations towards their own children. even though all children have similar morally relevant capacities, she claims, we only have special obligations to assist our own, since we are in some way responsible for putting them in a situation of vulnerability, by having brought them into existence. likewise, despite their similar levels of suffering, we have only special obligations towards the animals we have deliberately made dependent and vulnerable through domestication – those within our “contact-zone”. in sum, we should assist domesticated animals (but not those living in the wild) not merely because their well-being is threatened by some harmful event, but because we are responsible for making them vulnerable to that threat. however, the analogy does not prove as much as it intends. even conceding that parents have special obligations towards their own children, it does not follow that they do not have reasons to assist other children in need. it might simply be that their reasons to assist their own children are stronger than those to assist other people’s children. in fact, most people would consider it impermissible not to assist a child, let’s say, dying of malaria, if we could otherwise help her, on the grounds that we are not responsible for making her vulnerable to that disease. if this is so, then http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 disentangling obligations of assistance 213 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ even if it were right that our reasons to assist domesticated animals were stronger than our reasons to assist wild animals, it would still be unjustified to fail to assist animals in the wild. thus, this argument from analogy cannot ground palmer’s strong view that obligations to assist individuals in need only arise from prior morallyrelevant entanglements. she seems to be aware of this alternative to her view when elsewhere she claims: there might be a different version of this view – that requirements to assist do exist in such cases but that they are much weaker where there’s no prior entanglement; however, i don’t have space to develop such a view here. (2013, 29) however, the latter would not merely be a different version of palmer’s view but a completely different one. and this weak relational thesis is, indeed, the one that most plausibly follows from palmer’s arguments. if we, nevertheless, focus on her stronger thesis, immediate worries arise in its application to the human case, as palmer herself acknowledges. in particular, if our reasons to assist other individuals are generated by a causal link between present suffering and previous human action, there seems to be no requirement to help distant human beings in need due to natural causes. if we have not made these human beings vulnerable to that harm (what is generally true of harms caused by natural events), we have no obligation to assist them. palmer attempts to avoid this implication by further specifying her argument: […] the entanglements of human societies, in particular the social and structural connections between virtually all people, connections that benefit some while causing suffering to others, provide a basis for human obligations to assist other humans […]. (2015) there are two plausible ways of understanding palmer’s answer to what generates these special obligations of assistance among human beings: (i) special obligations of assistance are generated by causal relations. that is, all harms that human beings suffer are directly or indirectly caused by the social and structural connections among human beings that benefit some while causing suffering to others. but this seems highly implausible. first, it is not true of all harms. there are clear cases of harms that humans suffer whose cause cannot be traced back to human action. paradigm examples of these are diseases, as well as natural catastrophes such as earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, droughts, etc. if palmer is right, we would have no obligation to help those humans in need suffering from these and similar natural events. thus, it would be http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 catia faria 214 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ false that her account provides a basis for human obligations to assist other humans in need. one might say against this that there is a relevant difference between both cases, since the humans that suffer the harms belong to the same network of relevant connections as those humans whose actions are partly responsible for the harms, whereas wild animals do not. however, that reply would be misguided in two different ways. first, if an individual is harmed by an action, then that individual immediately enters into the relevant network of connections with the agent. to accept this when the victims are human and denying it when the victims are nonhuman would be an instance of speciesism, an unjustified form of discrimination (horta 2010a). second, let us suppose that the relevant connections that allegedly hold among human beings, and which ground special obligations among them, are not causal in the latter sense but, instead, refer to certain other kinds of relations, which hold between individual human beings, such as: […] mutually recognized communication, the ability of humans to justify themselves to others, reciprocity in economic relations, mutual cooperation, the joint organization of political and other institutions, membership of political communities, the sense of a political “world order”, and membership in families. (palmer 2010, 121) if that were the case, then special obligations to assist would not arise towards all human beings either. that is because those human beings who fail to engage in the aforementioned relations would be excluded. it is clearly the case that some human individuals, by virtue of their functional diversity or other circumstances, do not engage into “mutual communication”. nor do they reciprocate or enter into any political, economic or familial relations. hence, we would also lack any obligations to assist them, even if it were in our power to do so. thus, unless palmer accepts that we lack the obligation to assist human beings that do not satisfy these conditions, her argument does not provide a sound basis for excluding nonhuman animals from the scope of those obligations (e.g., wild animals). let us then consider a different way of understanding her view about what generates these special obligations and let us see to what extent it might accomplish that goal. (ii) special obligations of assistance are generated by equality-reasons. that is, the social and structural connections among human beings make some worse-off than others. this gives us equality-based reasons to alleviate the harms of the worse-off human individuals, even when these are not directly or indirectly caused by the social and structural connections among human beings. such is the case of natural harms. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 disentangling obligations of assistance 215 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ of course, in order for the argument to succeed in showing the existence of differential obligations towards human beings and nonhuman animals in similar circumstances, it would have to be the case that nonhuman animals are justifiably excluded from the scope of equality. otherwise, the harms that animals suffer in the wild should also be considered in comparative terms. there are, as a matter of fact, sound reasons to believe this is indeed the case. if equality applies to all those individuals whose lives can go well or badly, then it applies to all sentient beings. since most nonhuman animals are sentient (hence, their lives can go well or badly) excluding them from the scope of equality is unjustified (persson 1993; holtug 2007; faria 2013). in addition, when compared to most humans, nonhuman animals are the worse-off. this is particularly true of animals that live in the wild, whose lives are, in general, not even barely worth living, as they contain more suffering than positive well-being (i will return to this point below). thus, when understood in comparative terms, palmer’s argument, instead of grounding a permission not to assist animals in the wild, actually furnishes a requirement to help them with the aim of equalizing their very low levels of well-being with those of human beings. one might say, again, that equality reasons only arise among individuals who are entangled in morally-relevant ways and that animals that live in the wild fail to do so. however, that would beg the question, as it would take us back to the problem discussed in the previous section regarding the assistance to those humans who do not enter into such alleged morallyrelevant entanglements, and who most of us believe we are required to assist. moreover, the moral relevance of these entanglements in establishing obligations of assistance can be questioned altogether. assuming that it were feasible to help those individuals without jeopardizing similarly weighty interests, we ought to provide them with the assistance they need. this is so because the cause of the harm that individuals suffer does not affect the weight of their interests in not being harmed. for example, the interest in not suffering from a leg injury inflicted by another human is, all things being equal, as strong as the interest in not suffering from a similar injury caused by the fall of a tree. thus, if human interests in avoiding suffering and in living their lives are relevant independently of other considerations, and if those interests are equally weighty independently of who or what frustrates them, taking them into account requires two different courses of action. first, it requires that we refrain from harming these individuals. second, it requires that we prevent them from being harmed by other events or that we alleviate unavoidable harms they endure (e.g., by preventing their deaths or by reducing their suffering). thus, it would http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 catia faria 216 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ be unjustified not to act according to either way of accounting for other individuals’ interests, whenever it is in our power to do so. this can be clearly observed in the following scenario. suppose that you are presented with these choices: (i) press button a: all human beings are immunized against all lethal forms of cancer; (ii) press button b: only those human beings with whom we are engaged in “morally-relevant entanglements” are so immunized; (iii) press no button. palmer’s view would imply that we are morally required to press b, while we may permissibly choose not to press a. this is because our special obligations of assistance are completely satisfied by pressing button b. however, most people would find this odd. assume that the costs of pressing either button are the same. also, more individuals are benefited when a is pressed than when b is. so it seems that any view that does not require an agent to benefit others even when that comes at no cost, not even to the agent herself, is hardly acceptable. of course, in real world cases, helping always bears a cost for the agent or for others. yet this scenario does not aim to show that we should not take costs into account when deciding whether we should help others. that must indeed be taken into account. what this scenario does show is that we are required to help others even if we are not relevantly entangled with them in the ways specified by palmer. now, suppose that it were feasible, and had similarly low costs, to help a wild animal population, say, by rescuing it from a flood or by vaccinating it against an extremely painful disease. failing to so would constitute a similar disregard of their interests. such as in the human case, what generates an obligation to help these nonhuman individuals is the importance of their well-being, the extent to which it is threatened by some event and our possibility to intervene in order to help them without causing a greater harm. against this it could be argued that intervening in nature to help wild animals would then be morally required only when it had a low cost. it would not be required, however, when the cost is non-negligible. there is a way, though, to dispute this argument. a number of consequentialist views disagree with this position. there are other positions, nevertheless, which do accept that intervening to aid others at some non-negligible cost is merely supererogatory, unless the situation in which others are is a catastrophic one. yet, in those cases in which not intervening will bring about that others suffer a truly enormous amount of harm, and in which the cost of intervention can be afforded, even these views accept that tradeoffs are necessary and that therefore, intervention can no longer be considered supererogatory but required. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 disentangling obligations of assistance 217 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ in this regard, when deciding whether we should help wild animals, the magnitude of the harms they suffer is usually underestimated. most animals that live in the wild are what has been traditionally called “r-strategists”, that is, they follow the reproductive strategy that consists in maximizing reproductive fitness through the maximization of offspring. this entails an extremely low survival rate, with most individuals dying before they reach sexual maturity, and leading gruesome short lives (pianka 1970). as some have argued extensively, it is highly probable that their lives contain much more suffering than well-being, which, on aggregate, makes suffering largely predominant over well-being in nature (ng 1995; horta 2010b and 2013; tomasik [2009] 2014). these facts are crucial since once we have questioned the relevance of the kind of entanglements palmer specifies, the most important factors to take into account when deciding whether or not to assist others, as i mentioned before, have to do with how much they can be benefited and at what cost. given the magnitude of wild animal suffering, usually the costs of intervening in order to help them will be significantly smaller than the benefit they may receive. that is what generates our moral obligation to assist them, in a way that can be accepted not only by consequentialist views but also from many non-consequentialist perspectives. references cowen, tyler. 2003. “policing nature”. environmental ethics 25: 169-82. donaldson, sue, and will kymlicka. 2011. zoopolis: a political theory of animal rights. new york: oxford university press. faria, catia. 2014. “equality, priority, and nonhuman animals”. dilemata 14: 225-36. holtug, nils. 2007. “equality for animals”. in new waves in applied ethics, edited by jesper ryberg, thomas s. petersen, and clark wolf, 1-24. basingstoke: palgrave macmillan. horta, oscar. 2010a. “what is speciesism?”. journal of agricultural and environmental ethics 23: 243-66. 2010b. “debunking the idyllic view of natural processes: population dynamics and suffering in the wild”. télos 17: 73-88. 2013. “zoopolis, intervention, and the state or nature”. law, ethics and philosophy 1: 113-25. mcmahan, jeff. 2010. “the meat eaters”. the new york times, september 19. ng, yew-kwang. 1995. “towards welfare biology: evolutionary economics of animal consciousness and suffering”. biology and philosophy 10 (3): 255-85. palmer, clare. 2010. animal ethics in context. new york: columbia university press. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 catia faria 218 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 2013. “what (if anything) do we owe wild animals?”. between the species 16 (1): 15-38. 2015. “against the view that we are usually required to assist wild animals”. relations. beyond anthropocentrism 3 (2): 203-10. persson, ingmar. 1993. “a basis for (interspecies) equality”. in the great ape project: equality beyond humanity, edited by paola cavalieri and peter singer, 183-93. new york: st. martin’s press. pianka, eric r. 1970. “on rand k-selection”. american naturalist 104: 592-7. sapontzis, steve f. 1987. morals, reason, and animals. philadelphia: temple university press. tomasik, brian. 2014. “how many animals are there?”. essays on reducing suffering. http://reducing-suffering.org/how-many-wild-animals-are-there/. 2015. “the importance of wild animals suffering”. foundational research institute. http://foundational-research.org/publications/importance-of-wildanimal-suffering/. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 http://reducing-suffering.org/how-many-wild-animals-are-there/ http://foundational-research.org/publications/importance-of-wild-animal-suffering/ http://foundational-research.org/publications/importance-of-wild-animal-suffering/ refusing help and inflicting harm. a critique of the environmentalist view refusing help and inflicting harm a critique of the environmentalist view eze paez post-doctoral researcher, universitat pompeu fabra doi: 10.7358/rela-2015-002-paez joseezequiel.paez@upf.edu abstract due to a variety of natural causes, suffering predominates over well-being in the lives of wild animals. from an antispeciesist standpoint that considers the interests of all sentient individuals, we should intervene in nature to benefit these animals, provided that the expectable result is net positive. however, according to the environmentalist view the aim of benefiting wild animals cannot justify intervening in nature. in addition, harmful human interventions can sometimes be justified. this view assumes that (i) certain entities such as ecosystems or species have intrinsic value, and that (ii) at least sometimes these values are more important than nonhuman well-being. in this article i review the arguments in support of this view advanced by three prominent environmentalists (albert schweitzer, paul w. taylor and j. baird callicott) and show how none of them succeed at grounding these assumptions. keywords: animal ethics, antispeciesism, environmentalism, biocentrism, ecocentrism, nonhuman animals, intrinsic value, intervention in nature, wild animals, natural harms. human beings have the capacity to intervene in nature. that is, they can interfere with natural processes or change ecosystems, thereby altering the course of events that would otherwise develop if human action would not have taken place. given this capacity to intervene, the question arises of whether this interference is morally justified and, if so, under which circumstances it should occur or which goals it must pursue. regarding this problem, there is a fundamental discrepancy between different views. in this article, i will assess two wide sets of these. on the one hand, those who claim that it is justified to intervene in nature to help animals that live in the wild (section 1). on the other hand, those who, assuming environmentalist perspectives, deny that such justification obtains. in addition, they claim that in certain occasions it is justified to mailto:joseezequiel.paez@upf.edu http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 eze paez 166 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ intervene in nature when doing so would cause harm to the animals that live there (section 2). environmentalist views asume two different theses: an axiological thesis and a thesis about our balance of reasons. i will show that none of the arguments used by three prominent environmentalists – albert schweitzer, paul w. taylor and j. baird callicott – succeed in justifying the axiological thesis (section 3). next, i will argue that given its implications for human beings, the thesis about the balance of reasons is also unacceptable (section 4). i will conclude that the environmentalist view should be abandoned and that the antispeciesist view is right in claiming that we should intervene in nature to help the animals that inhabit it. 1. the antispeciesist view: interventions that benefit animals in the wild according to several authors (see, e.g., sapontzis 1984; ng 1995; cowen 2003; nussbaum 2006; horta 2010a; mcmahan 2010; tomasik 2014), one of the aims that would justify intervening in nature is helping nonhuman animals that live there. such help could consist in preventing them from suffering a natural harm or in alleviating it when its occurrence is unavoidable. it could also consist in providing animals with some other benefit, thereby making their lives better. thus, these would be positive interventions for animals in the wild. in fact, contrary to what is often believed, the lives of animals that live in the wild are far from being idyllic. as it is pointed out in other papers of this volume (e.g., faria, horta; and also horta 2010a), animals that live in the wild are subjected to a variety of serious and systematic harms which cause most of them to lead short lives full of suffering. it is true that there are certain natural processes that harm nonhuman animals and regarding which we currently lack the means to intervene effectively. this would be the case of the reproductive strategy followed by the majority of animals (“r-selection”), which maximises the chances of survival by increasing the number of offspring while investing a very small amount of parental care. since, on average, only one individual per parent survives, it follows that most individuals die soon after birth. usually, they die in painful ways, without having experienced any positive well-being during their entire lives. in addition, the individuals that survive to adulthood are also exposed to a wide range of natural harms on a daily basis, such as starvation and dehydration, diseases and parasitism or injuries caused by other animals. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 refusing help and inflicting harm 167 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ even though we cannot presently intervene to alleviate these harms on a large scale, we do have the means to do it at a medium or small scale. as a matter of fact, it is possible to help (it is already done) some of these animals in need. for example, by providing them with water and food or curing them of injuries and diseases. from the rejection of speciesism it follows that the aim of helping animals in nature and who are in need justifies intervening in natural processes or altering ecosystems. speciesism, in its anthropocentric version, is a kind of discrimination which consists in disfavouring the interests of certain individuals on the grounds that they do not belong to the human species (horta 2010b; faria and paez 2014). the majority of wild animals are, like most humans, sentient beings. that is, they are individuals with the capacity to suffer and enjoy what happens in their lives. thus, they have a well-being of their own. many of us would not resist the claim that we would have decisive reasons to intervene in nature if the individuals in need were human beings. in fact, this is what we commonly do, for example, in those cases in which humans are victims of natural disasters. since speciesism must be rejected (e.g., pluhar 1995; dunayer 2004; horta 2010b), our attitude regarding the situation of wild animals in need should be the same as when human beings are in similar circumstances. thus, from a moral view which takes the interests of all sentient animals into account (human or nonhuman), we have decisive reasons to intervene in nature in order to benefit the animals that live there, whenever we can do it and provided that our intervention is not expected to cause more suffering than the one it aims at reducing. 2. the environmentalist view: between non-intervention and negative intervention environmentalist positions endorse a view which is contrary to the one just discussed. they claim that the aim of helping animals in nature does not gives us reasons – or, at least, it does not give us even sufficient reasons – to intervene. we could thus define this position about intervention in nature as the one according to which pursuing certain environmentalist aims (such as the preservation of species or ecosystems or not interfering with natural processes) can justify inflicting harms on sentient nonhuman animals (negative intervention) as well as failing to prevent them from experience some harm (not carrying out a positive intervention). http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 eze paez 168 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ we can analyze the environmentalist position about intervention in nature as a conjunction of two different theses: (a) an axiological thesis about the kind of things which are intrinsically valuable, and (b) a thesis about the result of the balance of reasons when intrinsically valuable entities are affected. regarding the axiological thesis, it is necessary to clarify in what sense the preservation of species or of ecosystems or the non-interference in natural processes are, according to environmentalism, morally relevant aims. these aims are promoted by environmentalism not because they might be good for human beings. if that were the case, we would be facing a purely anthropocentric theory. that is, bringing about these aims would only be an instrument to achieve the ultimately valuable aim – the satisfaction of human interests. it is not the case either that environmentalism defends (as it is usually believed) that we should preserve species or ecosystems, or abstaining from interfering with natural processes, because that is good for the animals that live in the wild. as we have seen, given the predominance of suffering in nature, concern for the interests of nonhuman individuals does not justify non-intervention. on the contrary, it implies that we should intervene in order to help them. for environmentalism, the preservation of species or ecosystems, or not interfering with the course of natural processes, are ultimate aims and not the means for achieving some further aim. this is so because, according to this perspective, the existence of these entities or the natural course of these processes is intrinsically valuable and not merely valuable to obtain other outcomes, such as the promotion of the well-being of sentient individuals. that does not entail that environmentalism is incompatible with the belief that the well-being of sentient individuals is intrinsically valuable. now regarding the thesis of the balance of reasons, it does entail that if we consider the promotion of well-being to be a morally relevant aim, that will be subordinate to other typical environmentalist aims. one the one hand, intervention in nature to help wild animals always presupposes an unjustified interference with natural processes. this gives us reasons against intervening. if we endorse an environmentalist theory, either these are our only reasons to act or these reasons are always stronger than the reasons given by the benefit generated by intervention for nonhuman animals in need. on the other hand, often, respecting or promoting what environmentalism regards as intrinsically valuable requires, alternatively, carrying out certain interventions in ecosystems with the aim of restoring them to a former http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 refusing help and inflicting harm 169 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ state, previous to human intervention. these kind of interventions which further environmentalist aims are defended even when they cause great harm to the animals that live in nature. this happens, for example, when environmentalists support the so-called “ecology of fear”, that is, promoting certain biotic relations between predators and prey in order to accomplish certain conservationist aims (horta 2010d; faria 2012). the aim is achieved through the reintroduction of predator species in ecosystems where they had long been absent, which implies a great suffering for the animals that are taken as prey. in what follows, i will criticize both the axiological thesis and the thesis of the balance of reasons implied by environmentalism. my aim is to show that we have reasons to reject them and, with them, the whole environmentalist view about intervention in nature. 3. objecting to the axiological thesis of the environmentalist view the axiological thesis of a moral theory refers to what it considers to be valuable as an end, as opposed to what is valuable in a merely derived way, as a means to achieve what is considered ultimately valuable. different versions of the environmentalist view defend different axiological theses. the importance of the axiological thesis for these different versions of environmentalism resides in that these theories directly derive our moral reasons from what they consider intrinsically valuable. if we discovered that we may refuse to accept these axiologies or, even, that we must reject them, it would follow that we may also refuse to accept the reasons against positive interventions (and for negative interventions) that these different versions of environmentalism derive from them. it is plausible to claim that any axiology should include, at least, aspects of the well-being of sentient individuals, e.g., how much well-being exists in a state of affairs or how it is distributed. this follows from accepting the moral importance of our own well-being, and from recognising that the failure to attribute a similar importance to the well-being of other individuals can only be the product of an arbitrary restriction. we may use this to ground different normative positions. for example, it could be claimed that, among different alternative courses of action, we must choose the one that produces, on aggregate, greater net positive well-being. if, in addition, equality was included in our axiology, we should also take into account how well-being is distributed among the affected individuals in order to http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 eze paez 170 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ identify the best alternative. that is, at least one of the things that should morally matter to us in an ultimate sense is how well or badly the life of sentients individuals fares and how they can be positively or negatively affected by our actions or omissions. to the extent that elements distinct from well-being are introduced in an axiology, the possibility arises that what we ought morally to do does not coincide with what is the best in terms of the aggregation – or of the distribution – of well-being for the sentient individuals affected by our decisions. that is to say that the reasons derived from those other values distinct from well-being may come to justify not to benefit an individual or inflicting her some harm, even if the opposite is what would be morally required solely in terms of well-being. one may, thus, wonder, what arguments exist for the inclusion of elements distinct from well-being in our axiology. hence, defenders of the axiological thesis must show: (a) in general, that it makes sense for something distinct from well-being to have intrinsic value; (b) in particular, that entities such as species or ecosystems have intrinsic value. in what follows i will assess three different axiological theories, each from a different environmentalist author, as well as the normative positions that can be derived from them. 3.1. albert schweitzer: reverence for life albert schweitzer (1994) claims that all living organisms possess a will to live. this will to live consists in: (a) the preference for continuing to live rather than ceasing to exist that all organisms have, and (b) the desires to experience pleasure and not to experience suffering of all organisms. according to schweitzer, all lives with a will to live are intrinsically valuable and they are so to the same degree. if follows from this that human beings have the obligation to procure the satisfaction, and prevent the frustration, of the desires that constitute a will to live. likewise, this is an obligation we have regarding all living organisms (since all harbour these desires) and that is equally stringent regarding all of them (since all are valuable to the same degree). this would explain why organisms have intrinsic value. now, it would also allow us to account for the intrinsic value of species and ecosystems. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 refusing help and inflicting harm 171 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ to the extent that living organisms are members of species and ecosystems, the intrinsic value of the latter is a function of the intrinsic value of their members. as we have seen, schweitzer characterises the will to live in terms of mental states, that is, in terms of desires. if this characterisation is understood in a strict sense, then it is false that all living organisms have a will to live. this is because not all living organisms possess a capacity to have mental states and, therefore, not all of them can entertain the desires in which this will consists. only sentient individuals can, for instance, desire to experience pleasure or desire not to experience suffering. this way of construing schweitzer’s thesis is indistinguishable from an axiology which claims that what matters is the well-being of individuals, and which believes that what contributes to individual well-being is the satisfaction of desires, whereas what detracts from it is their frustration. but one cannot derive reasons against interventions beneficial to the animals that live in nature, or reasons for negative interventions, from this construal of schweitzer’s view. similarly to what happens with what i name the antispeciesist view, we are worried about the well-being of all sentient individuals. this entails, again, that we have decisive reasons to intervene in nature in order to help the sentient nonhumans that live there, whenever we can, and when the expected result of our intervention is, in the overall, beneficial for them. now we may understand schweitzer’s characterisation of the will to live in terms of “desires” as merely figurative. certainly, over time, those traits of living organisms have been selected which improved their chances of survival until reproduction. this makes them respond to their environment in a favourable way regarding some stimuli and in an aversive way regarding others, whether they possess or not a capacity to have mental states. this renders intelligible the claim that in a loose sense all organisms “desire” to live, or “desire” to avoid what will harm them. this is the same sense in which we may claim that a river “desires” to flow into the sea. but this is a different sense from the one that implies that there is some individual who possesses certain mental states the frustration or satisfaction of which will have an impact on her well-being. as we have seen, this is only true of sentient individuals. given the figurative sense in which, under this construal, the term “desire” would be employed, it is mysterious how the will to live might be intrinsically valuable. thus, we either understand the will to live to be characterised by a figurative use of “desire”, or we understand that this term is employed in a strict sense. in the first case, we can attribute intrinsic value to species and ecosystems, as a function of the intrinsic value of the organisms that are their members. however, there is no consideration whatsoever supporting http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 eze paez 172 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the notion that the possession of such “desires” renders an organism intrinsically valuable, nor, therefore, that species or ecosystems are valuable in that way as well. in the second case, such considerations do exist, though only regarding sentient individuals, since only they can entertain desires in the strict sense which is relevant for well-being. nevertheless, such a view cannot claim that species or ecosystems have intrinsic value, but only that they have instrumental value: they are valuable or disvaluable insofar as they contribute in a positive or negative way to the well-being of the individuals that are a part of them. given the predominance of suffering in nature, regarding ecosystems that instrumental value is overwhelmingly negative. 3.2. paul w. taylor: respect for nature according to taylor (1986) all entities with a good, or well-being, of their own have an intrinsic value that must be respected (or using his own phrase, they have an inherent worth) 1. on the one hand, the fact that an entity has a well-being of its own implies that it can be benefited or harmed by what happens to it. on the other hand, the fact that its intrinsic value must be respected implies that we have reasons not to harm entities with a well-being of their own and not to interfere with their activities. according to this author, organisms are the kind of entity that possesses a well-being if its own, since what happens to them can be good or bad for them (1986, 61-2). in fact, organisms are the primary bearers of well-being (71). what is good for an organism, taylor claims, from the organism’s own perspective, is what promotes the aims to which its internal processes and external activities are oriented. contrariwise, what is bad for an organism, from its own perspective, is what frustrates such aims. examples of such processes would be the adaptation to the environment, the preservation of the organism’s existence or the perpetuation of its species. thus, an organism possesses a high level of well-being, from the organism’s own perspective, when it has successfully adapted to its environment and when it has developed the normal biological functions before dying (66-8). 1 certainly, taylor uses the phrase “inherent worth” (75). however, with this term he refers to a kind of value which is similar to the one i refer to by “intrinsic value”: that which is valued as an end, and not merely as a means. it so happens, though, that this author distinguishes between what is valuable as an end independently of the existence of a conscious individual that values it so (inherent worth), from what is valuable in this way only because there is an individual who judges it to be so (the varieties of intrinsic value and inherent value, 73-4). http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 refusing help and inflicting harm 173 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ in this way, we have moral reasons not to harm organisms and to avoid interfering in their activities (72). although, as i said, organisms are the primary bearers of well-being (or those who bear well-being in a non-derivative way), they are not the only entities of which it can be predicated. organisms constitute populations or communities that, since they are groupings of primary bearers of well-being, are also derivative bearers of it. this implies that we also have reasons not to harm groupings of organisms, such as species or ecosystems, and to avoid interfering in their activities. now, taylor’s view rests on the thesis that there is something like an organism’s own perspective, according to which an event can be good or bad for it. strictly speaking, though, this is false of organism’s in general: there is no such thing as the perspective of a non-sentient organism. because it lacks a subjective point of view, and a capacity for affective mental states, it is not possible for an event in the world to cause it to have experiences of enjoyment or suffering. in a similar way, it is also impossible, strictly speaking, that it establishes for itself aims that are the contents of desires that can be frustrated or satisfied. certainly, as was also true in our discussion of schweitzer, we can speak about an organism’s perspective in a figurative way. in that case, our attribution of “aims” to non-sentient organisms (or to the non-conscious processes of organisms) would be, like before, a shortcut to refer to the fact that given the conditions in which individuals’ traits have been selected for over time, these have developed a set of survival and reproduction mechanisms. it would then be true that all organisms have a “well-being” in that sense. non-sentient organisms, thus, only possess “well-being” in the second, figurative sense, but not in a strict sense. sentient organisms, for their part, possess well-being in both senses. this is problematic. as it was suggested above, it would be implausible to claim that individuals’ well-being, strictly speaking, is not valuable and that, therefore – assuming a normative stance which is common to all the authors that are here being discussed – we do not have reasons to promote it. if, furthermore, we believe that “wellbeing” in taylor’s figurative sense is valuable as well, we will also derive from that fact reasons to promote it. the problem is that the maximisation of well-being in taylor’s sense is conceptually distinct from the maximisation of well-being in a strict sense. the aims of adapting to the environment and realisation of reproductive functions before death are logically independent from the promotion of the well-being of an individual. in addition, in our world, these are incompatible aims. what on aggregate maximises adaptation to the environment and reproductive success are precisely natural processes responsible for the predominance of suffering in nature. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 eze paez 174 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ let us assume for the sake of the argument that “well-being” in taylor’s figurative sense has normative importance. since regarding sentient organisms each one of these two considerations (well-being in a strict sense and well-being in a figurative sense) would give us moral reasons pointing to opposite directions, we must determine which is morally weightier. to that end, we can think about which one we believe that ought to prevail in case that the living organisms at issue were human beings. we would either claim that well-being in a subjective sense always prevails over well-being in taylor’s sense, or that the latter lacks any normative relevance. unless we are speciesist, we must extend this conclusion to those cases in which what we are considering is the situation of nonhuman sentient individuals. these are precisely the cases in which we are considering whether to help the animals that live in nature. even if it were true that the best we could do is to let nature follow its course, because that is what would maximise on aggregate the “well-being” of organisms in taylor’s sense, that is incompatible with what is best for the well-being, in a strict sense, of sentient individuals. in this way, we would still have decisive reasons to intervene in nature with the aim of helping them, and whenever the expected result is net positive. the alleged reasons against doing so based on the intrinsic value of organisms, or of groupings of organisms like species or ecosystems, are either always weaker than those based on the well-being of individuals in a strict sense, or non-existent. 3.3. j. baird callicott: the inherent value of biotic communities until now, i have employed the term “intrinsic value” to refer to the value which something has as an end, as opposed to the value it can have as a means to obtain further things which are indeed valued as ends. in his work, however, callicott prefers to speak of “inherent value” to refer to an axiological category with identical normative implications 2. callicott starts with the observation that human beings possess an affective constitution with a capacity for such moral feelings as sympathy, loyalty or patriotism. given our affective constitution, there are certain objects which arouse those feelings, thus becoming recipients of inherent value. through the process of natural selection, this constitution of affec 2 actually, callicott distinguishes between “intrinsic value” and “inherent value”. though both refer to the evaluation of something as an end, the first is “objetive and independent of all valuing consciousness” (1989, 161), whereas the second “is not independent of all valuing consciousness” (ibid.). with respect to my argument, however, this distinction is inconsequential. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 refusing help and inflicting harm 175 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ tions has been standardised among all members of the human species, producing a “consensus of feelings” (1989, 164). it is possible that we fail to attribute inherent value to some entities not because they are unfit objects of value, but simply because of an epistemic mistake: we ignore that they possess certain attributes, possessed as well by the entities we consider to be inherently valuable, and which are precisely the ones that make them proper objects of valuation. whenever this happens, what we must do, for the sake of consistency, is to include them in the set of entities to which we give inherent value. thus, for instance, in the beginning we valued in an inherent way those human beings that belonged to our community. after discovering that other human beings, given the properties which they share with the members of our community, are also proper objects of our moral feelings, the right thing to do is to also attribute inherent value to them. according to callicott, if we reason from the facts about which ecology informs us, we must recognise that other entities are also the proper objects of our moral feelings (1989, 162-3). in the first place, nonhuman natural entities, insofar as members, just like human beings, of the same biotic community, are the proper object of the feelings of sympathy or benevolence. in the second place, nature as a whole, insofar as the great biotic community to which we belong, is the proper object of the moral feeling of loyalty. this argument for the extension of our moral feelings from other human beings to biotic communities and their members assumes that the latter share with the former the properties which are relevant with regard to those feelings. certainly, other sentient beings (be they human or not) are proper objects of feelings such as sympathy or benevolence because they have a well-being of their own. in this way, they have the capacity to suffer and to enjoy what happens in their lives, so that they can be positively and negatively affected by our actions. what is morally appropriate is to have favourable disposition towards what is good for them and a contrary one towards what is detrimental for them. similarly, communities of sentient beings (be they human or not) can be proper objects of feelings such as loyalty. actions that have consequences on the community as a whole or a part of it can have a positive or negative impact on the sentient individuals who are their members. a disposition such as loyalty can be useful insofar as it moves us to act, with respect to the community, in the ways that benefit to the greatest extent those that compose it. however, none of that is true of non-sentient entities and the communities we may consider them to compose. this is because they cannot be benefited or harmed by our actions, since these are entities that lack a capacity to be positively or negatively affected by what happens to them. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 eze paez 176 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ due to all that, it does not follow, contrary to callicott, that biotic communities (and, hence, species or ecosystems) and their non-sentient members are proper objects of our moral feelings and that, therefore, we must also consider them as inherently valuable. 4. objecting to the thesis of the balance of reasons it follows from the analysis in the previous section that none of the authors discussed manages to develop a plausible argument for the intrinsic (or inherent) value of species or ecosystems. under the assumption that no other argument, different from those presented here, would be persuasive, we can conclude that we have no reasons to include these entities as basic elements in our axiology. it is, indeed, possible to object that such an assumption may prove to be unjustified. now even in that case, that would not be sufficient to support the environmentalist view against positive interventions and for negative interventions in nature. additionally, it is necessary for a further thesis, independent to these axiologies, to be also justified – the thesis of the balance of reasons: thesis of the balance: at least on some occasions, the reasons derived from the value of species or ecosystems are stronger than the reasons derived from what is better for the sentient beings who would be affected by our decision. in these cases, it would be justified to choose an alternative that is worse for those sentient beings because it is the best one for the affected species or ecosystems. given that speciesism is an unjustified prejudice, the thesis of the balance must hold whatever the species of the sentient beings affected by our decision, that is, be they human or nonhuman. for all those cases regarding which we believe that the intrinsic value of species or ecosystems gives us decisive reasons against helping nonhumans living in nature we could find analogous cases in which the individuals in need are human beings. rejecting speciesism and accepting the thesis of the balance leads us to conclude that in none of those cases such individuals ought to be helped. this is clearly unacceptable regarding the cases in which those who need our intervention are human beings. since our treatment of nonhuman interests in a similar situation must be the same, the implications that accepting the thesis of the balance would have for them should also seem to us unacceptable. our only alternative is, then, to reject as well the thesis of the balance. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 refusing help and inflicting harm 177 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 5. conclusion the environmentalist view, as defined in this paper, claims that the preservation of certain natural entities (such as species or ecosystems) or the noninterference with natural processes can justify both inflicting some harm to sentient nonhuman animals (negative intervention) and failing to prevent them from suffering some harm (not carrying out a positive intervention). however, if my argument is sound, then the environmentalist position is not justified. firstly, we do not have reasons to accept an axiology which, along with the well-being of sentient individuals, incorporates other entities as intrinsically valuable. secondly, even if we accepted such an axiology, we should reject the thesis that, after the balance of reasons, the reasons given by the value of these entities might be stronger than the reasons given by the well-being of sentient individuals. thus, the mere aim of preserving species or ecosystems or of avoiding interfering with natural processes (a)  cannot even give us sufficient reasons to inflict some harm to sentient individuals and (b) cannot even give us sufficient reasons against preventing them from suffering some harm or against mitigating some harm they will suffer. now from an antispeciesist view, which takes the interests of all sentient animals into account, whether they are human or not, what matters most is how their well-being is affected by our actions and omissions. it follows from this view that we have decisive reasons against performing negative interventions in nature (those with an expected net negative value for nonhuman animals). similarly, it implies that, whenever it is in our power to do so, and if the intervention is expected to bring about more benefits than harms, we have decisive reasons to intervene in nature with the aim of helping the animals that live there. references callicott, j. baird. 1989. “intrinsic value, quantum theory, and environmental ethics”. in id., in defense of tile land ethic: essays in environmental philosophy. albany: state university of new york press. cowen, tyler. 2003. “policing nature”. environmental ethics 25: 169-82. dunayer, joan. 2004. speciesism. derwood: ryce. faria, catia. 2012. “muerte entre las flores: el conflicto entre el ecologismo y la defensa de los animales no humanos”. viento sur 125: 67-76. faria, catia, and eze paez. 2014. “anthropocentrism and speciesism: conceptual and normative issues”. revista de bioética y derecho 32: 82-90. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 eze paez 178 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ horta, oscar. 2010a. “disvalue in nature and intervention”. pensata animal 34. horta, oscar. 2010b. “debunking the idyllic view of natural processes: population dynamics and suffering in the wild”. télos 17: 73-88. horta, oscar. 2010c. “what is speciesism?”. journal of agricultural and environmental ethics 23: 243-66. horta, oscar. 2010d. “the ethics of the ecology of fear against the nonspeciesist paradigm: a shift in the aims of intervention in nature”. between the species 10: 163-87. mcmahan, jeff. 2010. “the meat eaters”. the new york times, september 19. http:// opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/the-meat-eaters/. ng, yew-kwang. 1995. “towards welfare biology: evolutionary economics of animal consciousness and suffering”. biology and philosophy 10 (3): 255-85. nussbaum, martha c. 2006. frontiers of justice: disability, nationality, species membership. cambridge: harvard university press. pluhar, evelyn b. 1995. beyond prejudice: the moral significance of human and nonhuman animals. durham: duke university press. sapontzis, stephen. 1984. “predation”. ethics and animals 5: 27-38. schweitzer, albert. 1994. “civilization and ethics”. in environmental ethics: readings in theory and application, translated by a. naish. boston: jones and bartlett. taylor, paul w. 1986. respect for nature: a theory of environmental ethics. princeton: princeton university press. tomasik, brian. 2014. “the importance of wild animal suffering”. foundational research institute. http://foundational-research.org/publications/importanceof-wild-animal-suffering. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/the-meat-eaters/ http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/the-meat-eaters/ http://foundational-research.org/publications/importance-of-wild-animal-suffering http://foundational-research.org/publications/importance-of-wild-animal-suffering welfare biology as an extension of biology. interview with yew-kwang ng welfare biology as an extension of biology interview with yew-kwang ng max carpendale independent researcher doi: 10.7358/rela-2015-002-carp mbc5@sfu.ca yew-kwang ng is winsemius professor in economics at nanyang technological university, singapore and emeritus professor at monash university. he has been a member of the academy of social sciences in australia since 1980, and in 2007 received the highest award (distinguished fellow) of the economic society of australia. he has published over two hundred papers in leading journals in economics, as well as in biology, cosmology, mathematics, philosophy, psychology, and sociology. his books include: welfare economics; mesoeconomics: a micro-macro analysis; social welfare and economic policy; specialization and economic organization; efficiency, equality, and public policy: with a case for higher public spending; and common mistakes in economics: by the public, students, economists, and nobel laureates. he has been a world leading scholar in welfare economics and mesoeconomics. in 1995 he published a very influential paper towards welfare biology: evolutionary economics of animal consciousness and suffering, which launched concern for the situation of animals in the wild and proposed the creation of a new discipline “welfare biology”. mc: what motivated you to write towards welfare biology (ng 1995)? y-kn: i am an economist by training and profession. all my publications beyond economics did not start as normal research. soon after my ph.d., i read some health advice saying that it is best not to work after dinner, so that you will be relaxed and sleep better and will be able to work better the next day. with the exception of a few days in a year, i follow this advice and do sleep and work better. i thus spend the after dinner time watching tv and reading magazines and books beyond economics for fun. mailto:mbc5@sfu.ca http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 max carpendale 198 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ about 6 years or so before 1995 (in which towards welfare biology was published), i was reading stuff on biology. it then occurred to me that biologists seemed to study only the positive/empirical stuff in biology like the behaviour, evolution, anatomy, living environments, population dynamics, etc. of animals, scarcely on their welfare. true, there are biologists, philosophers and others who are interested in animal welfare. however, this is more a cause than a formal study. as far as i knew, “welfare biology” was not even coined, let alone studied properly and formally. this was obviously a big gap that should be filled. moreover, this was an important gap not only academically, but more importantly, practically and morally, since it is obviously related to animal welfare. determined to help fill this gap a bit, i spend the next few years using also day time to do background reading, including in evolutionary biology and animal welfare. in fact, the amount of time i spent on this paper surpasses those on any other paper i published previously by a factor of at least three. it was only my more recent after-dinner-reading-triggered research on the origin of our universe (ng 2011a; 2011b) that matched or even surpassed this. my training in economics helped in the writing of this paper in three aspects: (1) in economics, we have the distinction of positive economics and welfare economics, a distinction which prompted me to query the gap in welfare biology; (2) there are the well-known three basic questions in economics (what to produce? how to produce? for whom?) which prompted me to raise the three basic questions in welfare biology (which species are capable of welfare? whether their welfare is positive or negative? how to increase their welfare?); (3) the principle of economizing in economics is similar to that in natural selection. mc: in biology, r-strategists animals are those that have huge progenies (they can lay thousands or millions of eggs) most of whom die shortly after coming into existence. it is sometimes argued that it is not clear whether these animals are sentient, so we should not worry a lot about them. yet from a bayesian perspective, it seems that because of the large numbers of animals involved and the pain involved in death, concern for these animals should dominate in our decisions about wild animal suffering. what are your views on this? y-kn: we do not know with any degree of certainty yet whether these animals are sentient. however, due to their large numbers, even if there is only a 0.1% probability that they do suffer, the welfare implication is enormous. hence, my view is that the problem should certainly not be dismissed and much more research should be done to find out the answer, even just in increasing our probability judgments. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 welfare biology as an extension of biology 199 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ mc: what are your views on whether these young animals are sentient? say, several day old bull frog tadpoles? y-kn: we do not know with any degree of certainty yet whether these animals are sentient. my paper on welfare biology proposes some principles that may partly help answer such questions. to be sentient, a species (an individual organism in it really) has to be plastic. thus, the study of the plasticity in animal behaviour is very important. mc: what do you think of the possibility of insect suffering and what do you think are the implications of this? y-kn: this question is discussed in tomasik ([2009] 2015). i once raised this with peter singer at monash university (probably in the 1980’s as i wrote several joint papers with him over 1981-1990). i suggested that we should propose that there should be legislation banning those window/ flyscreen designs that trap insects inside. these insects may be sentient; if we could avoid/reduce their suffering at only small costs on us, it should be done morally. though singer did not dispute my position, he said that most people would dismiss insects as not sentient. mc: what are your views on the harms that adult wild animals suffer? y-kn: unless it leads to more enjoyment or helps to prevent more suffering, any suffering itself, whether of humans or of animals, by wild animals or by animals farmed by us, is bad. if we could help to reduce unnecessary suffering at relatively low costs, we should. mc: what do you think are the usual objections to your position regarding the suffering of animals in the wild? y-kn: i am not sure that i disagree with peter singer (1973) in that “wildlife should be left alone”. in fact i agree with a slightly qualified statement: “for now, wildlife should be largely left alone”. we do give occasional helps to wildlife and more could be given without serious negative consequences. however, i agree with singer that we do not possess enough knowledge and ability to help reduce suffering in the wild on a large scale safely. nevertheless, as i argue conceptually in my welfare biology paper and others (e.g. horta 2010; tomasik 2015) argue with more empirical support, animals in the wild are likely to suffer more than enjoy. if this buddhist premise is true even at only 5% probability (my estimate is more than 50%), we should not ignore this, as the suffering involved could be very large. we should not be completely anthropocentric and be concerned only with human welfare. thus, we should at least start to study the problem more seriously and find out. hopefully, in the not too distant http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 max carpendale 200 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ future, we may find out more and be able to help reduce animal suffering both for farm animals and animals in the wild. nevertheless, we should also be very cautious to avoid doing more harm than good. mc: what do you think the proposed discipline you have called welfare biology would look like and how do you think that it would be different from current scientific practice in biology? y-kn: welfare biology may be regarded as a natural extension of biology. it uses existing knowledge in biology and beyond to help us to judge which species are capable of welfare, and to find out whether their welfare is positive or negative, and hence hopefully also help us to try to reduce their suffering and increase their welfare. mc: what should be done for a welfare biology to be developed? who should we try to convince first? y-kn: university departments in biology should encourage more research and teaching in welfare biology. with my welfare biology paper as a starting point, supplemented with other publications in animal welfare, biology and moral philosophy, a subject in welfare biology could already be offered in a good biology department now either at the undergraduate and/or the graduate level. more research funding to do research on animal welfare and welfare biology should be awarded. in terms of its practical welfare implication, this is an area with enormous potential. we should probably first try to convince biologists interested in animal welfare. mc: have you spoken about your position with biologists? what is the impact that you imagine your work and that of others who may follow you to have with biologists, as well as with others such as philosophers and economists? y-kn: before the publication of the paper, i had spoken on it at seminars and conferences that are somewhat biology-related. after its publication, i sent the paper to a number of people in biology departments, but i did not receive any response. i have not done much since then; my professional duties are in economics. my substantial contributions in economics had earned me the highest award of the economic society of australia  – distinguished fellow in 2007 (corden et al. 2008). however, in terms of its potential implications for reducing suffering, i regard my welfare biology paper as more important than all my contributions in economics put together. thus, so far it has not been given sufficient attention that it deserves. [however, the same is true for many of my papers in economics as well! haha!] http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 welfare biology as an extension of biology 201 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ mc: in your view, what are the main obstacles that those willing to spread these ideas may find? y-kn: i guess it is the anthropocentric attitude of most people, ignoring the sufferings of other species. people should ask: what if i were an individual of the poor suffering species? mc: what do you think of the objection that helping wild animals is not possible or practical? y-kn: i largely agree with this view if it refers to the current situation. however, some help is already possible and with more knowledge, we will likely be able to do more in the future. though we should be very cautious and must also take the costs and danger of helping wild animals into account, we should not take the position that we may ignore animal suffering (even just confined to wild animals) forever. if the net suffering of animals is larger than the net welfare of humans (as i suspect to be the case) and this unfortunate situation cannot be changed forever, from an over-all perspective (all sentients including animals and humans), the destruction of the whole world is a better option. however, i am not in favour of destruction, as i believe that, in the long term, we will be able to help animals to reduce their suffering; we will also be able to increase our welfare dramatically through brain stimulation (discussed in an appendix of both ng 2000 and 2011b) and genetic engineering, though we have to be very cautious. mc: what practical steps do you think we should take to reduce wild animal suffering in the short term? y-kn: i do not advocate large-scale help to wild animals in the short term. we should first concentrate on two things: doing more research and try to improve the conditions of farm animals. this short-term preference on reducing suffering for farm animals first is based on several considerations: (1) we know more about the suffering of farm animals than wild animals now; (2) we can reduce the suffering of farm animals at relatively low costs (including the danger of disrupting the ecological balance) to ourselves; (3) people are generally more susceptible to the feasibility and moral obligation of reducing suffering of farm animals. however, this short-term strategy should not preclude doing more research on the welfare of wild animals now and our obligation to help them in the future. mc: is the best way to help wild animal suffering to spread concern about wild animal suffering? y-kn: this is one way. another is to study to learn much more about wild animal suffering. i want to echo the concluding sentence of horta http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 max carpendale 202 relations – 3.2 november 2015 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ (2010): “promoting debate on this issue, doing research on it and questioning speciesism appear to be the most important ways in which we all can work today in order to reduce the immense amount of suffering and death that exists in the world”. mc: do you think that research done on case studies of how animals are harmed in the wild and on proposals to aid them could eventually inform actual policies that would have an impact on that? y-kn: yes, i certainly do. however, i do not think that this will happen soon, and not before much more studies on animal welfare for both farm animals and wild animals. it will also be unlikely to happen before the degree of our morality has substantially improved to a level where anthropocentrism or speciesism is widely regarded as a shame as racism and sexism are currently. however, being an optimist regarding human nature, i am confident that we will eventually reach such a level. but i do not know how long it will take. references corden, w. max, peter forsyth, and christis tombazos. 2008. “distinguished fellow of the economic society of australia, 2007: yew-kwang ng”. economic record 84 (265): 267-72. horta, oscar. 2010. “debunking the idyllic view of natural processes: population dynamics and suffering in the wild”. télos 17 (1): 73-90. ng, yew-kwang. 1995. “towards welfare biology: evolutionary economics of animal consciousness and suffering”. biology and philosophy 10 (3): 255-85. 2000. efficiency, equality, and public policy: with a case for higher public spending. london: macmillan. 2011a. “on the origin of our cosmos: a proposition of axiomatic evolved cosmic consciousness”. journal of cosmology 13: 3754-64. http://journalofcosmology.com/quantumcosmos113.html. 2011b. how did the universe come about? axiomatic evolved-“god” creationism. fudan university press. http://www.fudanpress.com/root/showdetail. asp?bookid=7233. singer, peter. 1973. “food for thought [reply to a letter by david rosinger]”. new york review of books 20 (10), june 14. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/ archives/1973/jun/14/food-for-thought/. tomasik, brian. (2009) 2015. “do bugs feel pain?”. essays on reducing suffering. http://reducing-suffering.org/do-bugs-feel-pain/. 2015. “the importance of wild-animal suffering”. relations. beyond anthropocentrism 3 (2): 133-52. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/57 http://journalofcosmology.com/quantumcosmos113.html http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1973/jun/14/food-for-thought/ http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1973/jun/14/food-for-thought/ the politics of animal rights advocacy 47 relations – 1.i june 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the politics of animal rights advocacy kim stallwood independent scholar, deputy chief executive, minding animals international and co-founder and european director, animals and society institute doi: 10.7358/rela-2013-001-stal kim@kimstallwood.com abstract the main aim of this paper is to make the case that the politics of animal rights advocacy rests with establishing the moral and legal status of animals as a public policy issue. presently, animal rights is primarily framed as an optional lifestyle choice. it is not understood as a matter for mainstream politics, including public policy, the policies of political parties, regulations and legislation. starting with barbara noske’s concept of the animal industrial complex, i consider the present status of the many traditions, cultural norms, economic and other incentives which license our instrumental use animals for human gain. i propose a five-part evaluation process of social movements and use it to evaluate the modern animal rights movement. i critique its present strategy with its emphasis on personal lifestyle choice as inadequate in challenging the animal industrial complex. i conclude the modern animal rights movement must implement a long-term strategy which advances animal issues as public policy, which is in addition to its present strategy promoting optional vegan, crueltyfree lifestyle choice. keywords: advocacy, animal rights, industrial complex, lifestyle, moral crusade, otherness, policy, social movement, strategy, vegan. 1. introduction the publication of animal liberation by peter singer in 1975 is usually recognised as the start of the animal rights movement (singer [1975] 1990). it was not until 1983 and the publication of the case for animal rights by tom regan that a rights-based argument for animals was made (regan 1983). while agreeing with singer that animals are sentient, regan rejected utilitarianism as animal interests always run the risk of being trumped by human needs. philosophers such as singer and regan influenced the animal rights movement in its understanding of the moral and legal status of animals. http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ kim stallwood 48 relations – 1.i june 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the animal rights movement sought to influence public opinion, encourage vegan, cruelty-free living, change public policy, and pass laws. notwithstanding almost a half century of animal activism, particularly the promotion of vegan, cruelty-free living, the human exploitation of other animals is unabated. the animal rights movement has yet to challenge in any meaningful way the animal industrial complex. the ‘animal industrial complex’ is the term used to describe the many traditions, institutions and industries which transform animals into products and services for human consumption. debate about the politics of animal rights advocacy is necessary to inform the animal rights movement of the way in which it can successfully challenge the animal industrial complex. the main aim of this paper is to make the case that ending the use of animals in such areas as agriculture, entertainment and research is the responsibility of society as a matter of public policy. 2. animal industrial complex anthropologist barbara noske first identified the animal industrial complex as the accumulation of interests responsible for institutionalised animal exploitation. “animals have become reduced to mere appendages of computers and machines”, she wrote (noske 1989, 20). the presence of the animal industrial complex is so pervasive that its existence often goes unrecognised and unacknowledged. two turning points signify the shift in human attitudes toward animals and their institutionalised exploitation. the first is chicago and its stockyards and slaughterhouses which operated from 1865 for some 100 years. the second turning point occurred after world war two when traditional extensive farming practices were replaced by intensive industrial production to product meat, eggs and dairy. the chicago stockyards and factory farming are two primary examples of the animal industrial complex and how, since the industrial revolution, it commodified the production, slaughter and consumption of billions of animals. underpinning the animal industrial complex were western orthodox judeo-christian religious belief systems and the materialism of scientific reductionism (white 1967; morrison 2009). they reinforced human prejudice in its assumption that other animals exist for human use (leahy 1991; scruton 1996). religion and science also provided a foundation to patriarchy, which situated man as superior to women, children, animals and nature (gaard 1993, kheel 2008). embedded within patriarchy is the notion of the ‘other’. women, the politics of animal rights advocacy 49 relations – 1.i june 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ children, animals, and nature are the other. “he is the subject, he is the absolute”, wrote simone de beauvoir in the second sex, “she is the other” (de beauvoir 1986, 16). as women are the other to men, so, animals are the other to humans. otherness empowers power and control, which licenses exploitation. as misogyny is the hatred of women by men, misothery is human “hatred and contempt for animals” (mason 1993, 163). otherness also causes invisibility. carol j. adams describes in the sexual politics of meat the presence of animals in meat as the “absent referent” (adams [1990] 2010). the meat on a plate can range in appearance from the explicit (e.g. one entire fish cooked and served whole) to the implicit (e.g. ground beef in a burger made from multiple animals). ultimately, these norms and values produce lebensunwertes leben or life unworthy of life (lifton 1986, 21). the animal industrial complex renders the lives of animals as life unworthy of life. animal exploitation, as an established and accepted practice, perpetuates and legitimises itself, while hiding from the consequences of its actions. the true economic consequences of animal exploitation are not met by the animal industrial complex but by consumers and society. the animal industrial complex is also enabled with government approved programs (e.g. trade agreements, financial incentives, tax credits, exemptions from the law) whose costs are met again by taxpayers. the animal industrial complex favours privatisation and government deregulation to ensure it supervises itself with voluntary standards. the priority for the animal industrial complex is to protect its profits and other entitlements. the animal industrial complex has a self interest in over stating the benefits to its exploitation of animals. it wishes to manipulate public opinion to fear any change in their use of animals. as noske asks, “which human needs are being fulfilled and whose interests are promoted by the existing animal industrial complex?” (1989, 23; emphasis in original). it is doubtful that all of the products and services derived from animal exploitation are essential for our survival. of course, when asked about animal rights, people are going to express concern about giving up any pleasure (e.g. eating meat) or losing any benefit (e.g. safe products) they may feel is their prerogative. but the deeper people’s understanding, particularly in areas considered egregious (e.g. fox hunting, testing of cosmetics on animals), the less fear there is of a loss of pleasure or benefit. sympathy for animals, when they are particularly cruelly treated and where there is a willingness to forgo any perceived or real benefits by the public, is demonstrated in the public’s support for legislation and other public policy measures restricting or prohibiting animal cruelty and exploitation (for information on public opinion and animal rights, see humane research council 2012). kim stallwood 50 relations – 1.i june 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the dominance of the animal industrial complex is emboldened by the animal rights movement, particularly with its emphasis on vegan, crueltyfree living. while it deserves recognition for ending some egregious use of animals and taking advantage of the opportunities for new markets in consumerism (e.g. meat-free, vegetarian, and cruelty-free vegan), the animal industrial complex does so without any commitment to ending its institutionalised violence toward animals. this has the effect of weakening the animal rights movement’s call for moral and legal rights for animals by ensuring the problem of animal exploitation remains as an optional personal lifestyle choice. while genuine cooperation between the animal rights movement and the animal industrial complex is an important strategy, the former must avoid being used by the latter, even unwittingly, to legitimise and even perpetuate institutional animal exploitation. political campaigns which call for public policy to end animal exploitation will mobilise vast financial resources from the animal industrial complex to ensure its profitable use of animals survives. there is, of course, enormous profits to be made from animal exploitation. these profits are protected by existing arrangements with governments and their regulatory mechanisms thereby ensuring the continuation of animal exploitation. the animal industrial complex has a proven history of collusion with private security forces and state law enforcement to monitor, pervert and harm the animal rights movement. it is, therefore, not surprising that animalrelated public policy is more about protecting our interests in what we do to them than in protecting them from us. animals are represented in public policy by those who benefit from the power and control they exert over them. animal researchers (not anti-vivisectionists) and animal farmers (not vegans) are more likely to be members of the policy-making networks which determine regulations and laws governing our relations with animals. 3. the politics of animal rights advocacy the emphasis placed by the animal rights movement in the strategy to convince everyone to adopt a vegan, cruelty-free lifestyle choice suggests that it sees itself as a moral crusade. generally, moral crusades are one specific issue which is framed as an exclusive cause with extraordinary meaning embedding a religious, spiritual, political or moral belief as an integral component. moral crusades rely upon campaigns which trigger moral shocks to provoke public debates. an extraordinary situation or conflict, which may receive unprecedented attention from the public or the media or both, may be called a moral panic. the politics of animal rights advocacy 51 relations – 1.i june 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ moral crusades can be controversial issues relating to lifestyle choice (e.g. alcohol consumption and recreational or illegal drug use), sexual activity (e.g. pornography, homosexuality, monogamy) or issues of individual freedom (e.g. abortion, euthanasia, death penalty). generally, moral crusades are social movements whose missions address fundamental and profound issues relating to human activity, the relationship humans have with their perception of themselves and their place in society. the animal rights movement at present behaves more like a moral crusade than a social movement with its emphasis on personal lifestyle choice. jeff goodwin and james m. jasper define social movements as “collective, organized, sustained, and noninstitutional challenge to authorities, powerholders, or cultural beliefs and practices” (goodwin and jasper 2002, 3). the academic study of social movements by sociologists and political scientists offers insight into the animal rights movement as a social movement. further, the writings of social movement practitioners (e.g. studies, histories, biographies, memoirs) also provide lessons to learn from their experiences. for example, the animal rights literature includes biographies (williamson 2005; fitzgerald 2008; greenwald 2009) and movement studies and histories (finsen and finsen 1994; munro 2005; phelps 2007). further, sociologists and political scientists include the animal rights movement in their research (jasper 1997; grant 2000; crossley 2002). in his book, eco-wars, political scientist ronald t. libby discusses analysis of the animal rights movement by bill rempel, a research scientist in animal agribusiness at the department of animal science at the university of minnesota (libby 1998, 62-3). rempel makes the case that the industry’s perception of the political influence of animal rights groups passes through four stages. the animal rights movement develops, politicises, legislates and litigates an issue. from my experience with the animal rights movement, i conclude he was partially correct. therefore, i have adapted it to the following five stages. 1. public education, when people are enlightened about the issue and embrace it into their lives. 2. public policy development, when political parties, businesses, schools, professional associations and other entities that constitute society adopt sympathetic positions on the issue. 3. legislation, when laws are passed on the issue. 4. implementation, when laws and other public policy instruments are enforced on the issue. 5. public acceptance, when the issue is embedded into the values of society. this is the lifespan of a successful social movement, as it emerges from obscurity to acceptance. the five stage analysis makes it possible to deterkim stallwood 52 relations – 1.i june 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ mine which stage is reached by a social movement, what is next, and why some organisations and issues fail, stagnate or succeed. most issues start in stage one and expand to the others, but not always in a clear sequential order. for any social movement to achieve its mission it must pass through each of the five stages and maintain an active engagement in each one. in doing so, its ability to resist setbacks, obstacles and opposition from opponents is diminished increasingly. in other words, as a social movement expands its presence in each stage while maintaining activities in each one, the power and control that any opposition may weald against it is further weakened. the five stages illustrate the transition animal advocates must make from moral crusader to political activist and the animal rights movement from a moral crusade to a political movement. we can never assume a growing collective of personal lifestyle change automatically leads to institutional, societal change. the capriciousness of human nature is subject to change. institutionalised regulations and laws are much more entrenched expressions of society’s values. i conclude the animal rights movement is mostly in stage one (public education), with some presence in stages two (public policy), three (legislation) and four (implementation). if stages one and two are the moral crusade, stages three and four are the political movement. inevitably, the animal rights movement confronts the animal industrial complex because of its instrumental use of animals. the arenas in which this conflict is played out include public opinion, public policy, legislation, law and society generally. but the animal rights movement is not competent for these encounters. its understanding of the animal industrial complex, and institutional animal exploitation, is limited to optional personal lifestyle choice. animal rights is not understood as a mainstream political issue. in contrast to the animal rights movement, the animal industrial complex, which does understand the politics of animal exploitation, is resolutely entrenched and fully engaged in all five stages. which stage would the animal industrial complex want the animal rights movement to be in? its answer would be the stage we currently occupy, stage one (public education). further, it will do everything in its power to ensure the animal rights movement maintains this position. this is because the first stage is the beginning and the stage with least influence of all the five stages. the politics of animal rights advocacy 53 relations – 1.i june 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 4. new strategy for the animal rights movement why is the animal rights movement entrenched in stage one? the answer lies in how people become animal advocates. with the exception of those who were raised by vegans or vegetarians and educated about animal cruelty and exploitation, people become animal advocates because they experience a personal transformative moment. everyone who is an advocate for animals has a compelling personal story. these unique narratives describe how they were transformed from someone who ate meat and fish to a vegetarian or vegan. personal transformative moments may be triggered by a variety of experiences, including reading a book, watching a film, speaking with a friend, witnessing animal cruelty, experiencing a profound relationship with a companion animal, and so on. tom regan describes in empty cages three types of animal advocates (regan 2004, 21-8). the damascan, who has a startling revelation. the muddler, who struggles with the challenge of animal rights throughout their life. the davincian, who intuitively understood all along. ken shapiro also characterises animal advocates as caring sleuths, who discover, seek and embrace the suffering of animals (shapiro 2007). these personality types help to illustrate who animal advocates are and how they each arrived from different places. also, they help to explain why animal advocates are a diverse group of people who do not always agree. the personal transformative moment is powerful. so compelling, in fact, that it overwhelmingly informs the rationale of most of the animal rights movement’s current strategy to educate the public. this is why the calendar of the animal rights movement falls mostly into stage one public education: media stunts, information dissemination, demonstrations, advertising campaigns, personal appeals by celebrities and so on. these are all attempts by the animal rights movement to influence people, essentially, to go vegan. by emphasising personal lifestyle choice over institutional change, the animal rights movement pursues a strategy which is not fit for purpose and impedes severely its ability to achieve institutional change. a new strategy, with equal emphasis in action at the level of the individual and society, is needed. the animal rights movement, only then, will be in a better position to succeed in achieving its mission and confronting the animal industrial complex. framing animal rights as a political movement emphasises a strategy which moves from the individual to society, an approach that includes public policy, legislation and law enforcement. this choice in strategy is reflected in how its mission is viewed. generally, animal rights is seen as a demand for individual lifestyle change. in contrast, as a political movekim stallwood 54 relations – 1.i june 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ment, the animal rights mission calls for the transformation of society and its relationship with animals. 5. the politics of animal rights advocacy it is customary to portray britain as a nation of animal lovers. from its origins in the 1800s to the 1970s, the public supported a social movement for animals whose dominant ideology was animal welfare. britain’s timid but sincere animal welfare movement tried to make itself relevant in the “swinging sixties” with its traditional message of kindness to animals. but the 1970s was a decade of political and social unrest. it saw the emergence of such political ideologies and social movements as feminism, environmentalism, peace, multiculturalism, and gay liberation. it was, perhaps, inevitable that the animal rights movement would be also established in the 1970s as a social movement to accomplish animal liberation. animal welfare organisations, including the royal society for the prevention of cruelty to animals, were forced to respond to these changing times and the increasing presence of animal rights. animal welfare supporters, who were mostly middle-class women, found themselves confronted by a new wave of animal rights advocates, who were younger men and women. many were working class. they were not afraid to challenge traditions. they were vegetarians and vegans. they spoke of animal rights. they sabotaged fox hunts, demonstrated outside circuses with performing animals, and broke into research laboratories, causing property damage, and liberating rats, mice and dogs. the ideology of the modern social movement for animals includes individuals, local groups and national and international organisations who work together sometimes but often do not. the movement includes two primary ideological camps: animal welfare and animal rights. but to view the movement just as a welfare/rights divide is to simplify a complex social movement and overlook its most important challenge. notwithstanding its ideological complexity and factional constitution, the modern social movement for animals is making progress in educating the public about the moral and legal status of animals and, to a much lesser extent, influencing public policy makers and elected representatives. the challenge of the politics of animal rights advocacy, however, is to understand why the social movement for animals persists in focussing more on public opinion than the law. for many years, robert garner has stood out as the primary political theorist exploring the political status of animals (garner [1993] 2004; the politics of animal rights advocacy 55 relations – 1.i june 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 1998; 2005a; 2005b). his current research considers society’s treatment of animals within the context of justice and the application of ideal and nonideal theory to animal ethics with respect to legislation related to regulating and ending animal suffering (garner forthcoming). new research in the political status of animals is being led by siobhan o’sullivan in animals, equality and democracy (2011) and sue donaldson and will kymlicka in zoopolis: a political theory of animal rights (2011) and others. o’sullivan makes the case that existing inconsistencies within the law relating to animals should be addressed. for example, laws relating to dogs as companion animals and research tools are different. clearly, this difference reflects the nature of the relationship between dogs and people. one is a companion animals. the other is a research tool. the law which establishes the highest standard of animal welfare should be applied consistently wherever the law relates to that species, regardless of the circumstances. in other words, the law should be the same for the same species in different circumstances. the approach that donaldson and kymlicka take is to apply political theories on citizenship to animals. our varied relationships with animals have their own moral complexities which have, in turn, political consequences. some animals should be seen as forming separate sovereign communities on their own territories (animals in the wild vulnerable to human invasion and colonisation); some animals are akin to migrants or denizens who choose to move into areas of human habitation (liminal opportunistic animals); and some animals should be seen as full citizens of the polity because of the way they have been bred over generations for interdependence with humans (domesticated animals). (donaldson and kymlicka 2011, 14) the debate about animal ethics engaged by singer, regan, and others is augmented by the debate about politics and animals made by garner, o’sullivan, donaldson, kymlicka, and others. it is one thing to claim moral rights for animals. it is something else to persuade society and its representational governments to recognise legal rights for animals, including enforcement by the state with its legal apparatus. 6. conclusion most, if not all, social movements struggle with the question of fundamentalism and real politik or abolition and regulation. often, they fail to resolve it successfully. the animal rights movement is no exception (francione and garner 2010). frequently, this tension is framed as an exclusive choice. i kim stallwood 56 relations – 1.i june 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ do not support this view. both are needed to help the other achieve the change they seek. the challenge is to learn how to direct strategies simultaneously and complementarily. this is why animal rights is more than just a moral crusade pursuing idealistic goals of abolition. it is also a pragmatic social movement working to embed the values of animal rights into public policy (stallwood 1996). the politics of animal rights advocacy informs not only the debate about the nature of the present moral and legal status of animals but also how to embed the values of animal rights into society. references adams, carol j. (1990) 2010. the sexual politics of meat. new york: continuum. de beauvoir, simone. 1986. the second sex. harmondsworth: penguin. crossley, nick. 2002. making sense of social movements. buckingham: open university press. donaldson, sue, and will kymlicka. 2011. zoopolis: a political theory of animal rights. oxford: oxford university press. finsen, lawrence, and susan finsen. 1994. the animal rights movement in america. new york: twayne publishers. fitzgerald, john. 2008. bad hare days. london: olympia publishers. francione, gary, and robert garner. 2010. the animal rights debate. new york: columbia university press. gaard, greta, ed. 1993. ecofeminism. philadelphia: temple university press. garner, robert. (1993) 2004. animals, politics and morality. manchester: manchester university press. second edition. 1998. political animals. basingstoke: macmillan. 2005a. the political theory of animal rights. manchester: manchester university press. 2005b. animal ethics. cambridge: polity press. forthcoming. a theory of justice for animals. oxford: oxford university press. goodwin, jeff, and james m. jasper, eds. 2002. the social movement reader. malden, ma: blackwell. grant, wyn. 2000. pressure groups and british politics. basingstoke: macmillan press. greenwald, marilyn. 2009. cleveland amory: media curmudgeon & animal rights. lebanon, nh: university press of new england. humane research council. 2012. “animal protection ranked as most favorable social cause”. humanespot.org. accessed december 6, 2012. http://www. humanespot.org/content/animal-protection-ranked-most-favorable-social-cause. jasper, james m. 1997. the art of moral protest. chicago: university of chicago press. kheel, marti. 2008. nature ethics. lanham, md: rowman & littlefield. the politics of animal rights advocacy 57 relations – 1.i june 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ leahy, michael p.t. 1991. against liberation. london: routledge. libby, ronald t. 1998. eco-wars. new york: columbia university press. lifton, robert j. 1986. the nazi doctors. new york: basic books. mason, jim. 1993. an unnatural order. new york: simon & schuster. morrison, adrian r. 2009. an odyssey with animals. oxford: oxford university press. munro, lyle. 2005. confronting cruelty. leiden: brill. noske, barbara. 1989. humans and other animals. london: pluto press. o’sullivan, siobhan. 2011. animals, equality and democracy. basingstoke: palgrave macmillan. phelps, norm. 2007. the longest struggle. new york: lantern books. regan, tom. 1983. the case for animal rights. berkeley, ca: university of california press. 2004. empty cages. lanham, md: rowman & littlefield. scruton, roger. 1996. animal rights and wrongs. london: demos. shapiro, ken. 2007. “the caring sleuth: portrait of an animal rights activist”. in the feminist care tradition in animal ethics, edited by josephine donovan and carol j. adams, 153-73. new york: columbia university press. singer, peter. (1975) 1990. animal liberation. new york: new york review. stallwood, kim. 1996. “utopian visions and pragmatic politics: challenging the foundations of speciesism and misothery”. in animal rights: the changing debate, edited by robert garner, 194-208. basingstoke: macmillan. white, lynn, jr. 1967. “the historical roots of our ecologic crisis”. in reflections on nature, edited by lori gruen and dale jamieson, 5-14. oxford: oxford university press. williamson, lori. 2005. power & protest: frances power cobbe and victorian society. london: rivers oram press. recent approaches in the posthuman turn: braidotti, herbrechter, and nayar recent approaches in the posthuman turn braidotti, herbrechter, and nayar başak ağın dönmez phd and instructor (english), middle east technical university, ankara agin@metu.edu.tr braidotti, rosi. 2013. the posthuman. cambridge: polity press. 180 pp. $ 19.95. isbn 978-0-7456-4158-4 herbrechter, stefan. 2013. posthumanism: a critical analysis. london: bloomsbury. 248 pp. $ 29.95. isbn 978-1-78093-606-2 nayar, pramod k. 2014. posthumanism. cambridge: polity press. 204 pp. $ 24.95. isbn 978-0-7456-6241-1 the posthuman turn in its current phase owes much to the new materialist paradigm, which has mainly extended the definition of agency to the nonhuman sphere. such extension has led to significant boundary breakdowns between the biotic and the abiotic, nature and culture, as well as discourse and matter. the privileged status of information over materiality had long overshadowed posthumanism from the late 1980s to the early 2000s, when biotechnological developments triggered the idealization of super-human fantasies with complete disregard for the rest of the planetary inhabitants. the conflict between “the old” and “the new” approaches to posthumanism recalls katherine hayles’s famous words. on the one hand, posthumanism is misunderstood and associated with a form of incorporeal cognizance, as in hans moravec’s naïve fantasies of doing away with the bodily capabilities of the human altogether in mind children (1988). on the other hand, posthumanism incorporates both the material and the discursive into a form of embodied consciousness: mailto:agin@metu.edu.tr http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 başak ağın dönmez 106 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ if my nightmare is a culture inhabited by posthumans who regard their bodies as fashion accessories rather than the ground of being, my dream is a version of the posthuman that embraces the possibilities of information technologies without being seduced by fantasies of unlimited power and disembodied immortality, that recognizes and celebrates finitude as a condition of human being, and that understands human life is embedded in a material world of great complexity, one on which we depend for our continued survival. (hayles 1999, 5) as exemplified by several relatively recent publications, hayles is not the only scholar who is concerned over misconceptualizations of the posthuman. donna haraway has found moravec’s vision “self-caricaturing”, stating that this is “a kind of techno-masculinism” (2006, 146), as she refrains from marking her own work as posthumanist. stacy alaimo has similarly expressed her disturbance over “the critical reception of the cyborg as technological but not biological”, noting that this “insinuates a transcendent cyber-humanism that shakes off worldly entanglements” (2010, 7). with the emergence of the new materialisms as an essential companion to its development, the posthuman turn has come to denote a horizontal, rather than a hierarchical, alignment of the human and the nonhuman. the human forces are no longer thought to be the only agentic “matters” that matter. thanks to the work of leading figures in the (post) humanities, such as stacy alaimo, jane bennett, karen barad, jeffrey j. cohen, vicki kirby, nancy tuana, serenella iovino, serpil oppermann, and cary wolfe, just to name a few, the gap between information and materiality, discourse and matter, and thus the human and the nonhuman, is increasingly bridged at present. through the recent configurations of matter as agentic and storyladen, the posthumanist discussions in our current era involve humans and nonhumans alike, including not only animals and plants, but also microorganisms, or subatomic and cellular beings and things, as well as impersonal agents like electricity or radioactivity. karen barad’s agential realistic accounts of the world, which can be best summarized in her own words as “we are a part of that nature that we seek to understand” (2007, 26; emphasis in the original), successfully chart this new posthumanist venture. this new materialistic approach has paved the way for a proliferating number of publications on posthumanism in the 2010s, such as rosi braidotti’s the posthuman (2013), stefan herbrechter’s posthumanism: a critical analysis (2013), and pramod k. nayar’s posthumanism (2014). these three publications brilliantly survey the various channels that feed posthumanism. although braidotti is not often directly associated with the new materialist trend in thought, in the posthuman she reformulates posthumanism with an ontological merger of the material and the social, providing soluhttp://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 braidotti, “the posthuman“; herbrechter, “posthumanism”; nayar, “posthumanism” 107 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ tions to all problematized aspects of the posthuman, along with her suggestions for the future prospects of the humanities. the book consists of four chapters with telling titles: “post-humanism: life beyond the self”, “postanthropocentrism: life beyond the species”, “the inhuman: life beyond death”, and “posthuman humanities: life beyond theory”. the traces of braidotti’s posthuman can also be found in her earlier work (e.g., metamorphoses: towards a materialist theory of becoming [2002]; posthuman: all too human: towards a new process ontology [2006a]; transpositions: on nomadic ethics [2006b]), but the posthuman is the ultimate outcome of all the posthumanist schemes braidotti has ever been a part of. braidotti remarkably points out that the posthuman challenges the dichotomies of self/other, mind/body, subject/object, heteronormative/queer, and, above all, human/nonhuman. in the introduction, braidotti echoes the harawayan and latourian lines that we have never been fully human, nor “modern”, for that matter. she starts her study of posthumanism with the deconstruction of cartesian dualisms and the enlightenment ideals of “man”. she cleanses posthumanism of its exaggeratedly technophiliac or technophobic, unnecessarily speculative, and extremely radicalized mischaracterizations, depicting the posthuman as both an informational and a material entity, which builds mainly upon a naturalcultural scale. she considers the posthuman to be “an assumption about the vital, self-organizing, and yet non-naturalistic structure of living matter itself”, which rests on a “non-dualistic understanding” of the “nature-culture continuum” (2013, 2-3). through the “self-organizing (or auto-poietic) force of living matter” (braidotti 2013, 3), the author poses critical questions: [f]irstly, what is the posthuman? more specifically, what are the intellectual and historical itineraries that may lead us to the posthuman? secondly: where does the posthuman condition leave humanity? more specifically, what new forms of subjectivity are supported by the posthuman? thirdly: how does the posthuman engender its own forms of inhumanity? more specifically, how might we resist the inhuman(e) aspects of our era? and last, how does the posthuman affect the practice of the humanities today? more specifically, what is the function of theory in posthuman times? (2013, 3) in her answers to these questions, braidotti presents four vignettes, all of which provide ethical questions on the state of the posthuman and posthumanism. in the first chapter, she discusses the exclusionary definitions of the human, positing that the humanism versus anti-humanism quandary has often been misunderstood and that philosophical anti-humanism is confused with misanthropy, which has resulted in “many atrocities […] committed in the name of hatred for humanity” (2013, 15). linking her http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 başak ağın dönmez 108 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ own understanding of the posthuman to an objection to the universalization of the human concept, she notes that humanist ideals need to be replaced “with a more complex and relational subject framed by embodiment, sexuality, affectivity, empathy, and desire as core qualities” (2013, 26). following from these statements, she then entangles her feminist-political posthumanism with the idea of what the new materialists call agentic matter: my monistic philosophy of becomings rests on the idea that matter, including the specific slice of matter that is human embodiment, is intelligent and self-organizing. this means that matter is not dialectically opposed to culture, nor to technological mediation, but continuous with them. this produces a different scheme of emancipation and a non-dialectical politics of human liberation. this position has another important corollary, namely that political agency need not be critical in the negative sense of oppositional and thus may not be aimed solely or primarily at the production of countersubjectivities. subjectivity is rather a process of auto-poiesis or self-styling, which involves complex and continuous negotiations with dominant norms and values and hence also multiple forms of accountability. (2013, 35) braidotti contends that the emergence of a new posthuman subjectivity lies at the heart of a human-nonhuman intermingle, an enmeshment with the material and the cultural alike, as she outlines her definition of posthumanism as “the historical moment that marks the end of the opposition between humanism and anti-humanism and traces a different discursive framework, looking more affirmatively towards new alternatives” (2013, 37). she also stresses that the posthuman turn “displaces the exclusive focus on the idea of europe as the cradle of humanism, driven by a form of universalism that endows it with a unique sense of historical purpose” (2013, 53), leading her discussion to the case of the nonhuman others in the second chapter. she proposes alternatives to the vitruvian man, in a wide-ranging scope from animals to robotic bodies. in this, however, braidotti cautions against reiterating “the deception of a quantitative multiplicity which does not entail any qualitative shifts” because these would involve the risk of “technological transcendence”, “hyped-up disembodiment”, and “fantasies of trans-humanist escape”, along with “re-essentialized, centralized notions of liberal individualism” (2013, 102). in her final remarks to this chapter, braidotti suggests a much more clarified and affirmative alternative to these techno-fantasies of extreme humanisms and underlines the redefinitions of kinship and ethical accountability. in the third chapter, “the inhuman: life beyond death”, braidotti sets off with marcel l’herbier’s film, l’inhumaine (1924), which, in her own words, “deals with the super-human capacity of the female of our species to manipulate and control the course of human history and evoluhttp://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 braidotti, “the posthuman“; herbrechter, “posthumanism”; nayar, “posthumanism” 109 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ tion” (2013, 105). she then moves onto the discussions of jean-françois lyotard’s the inhuman (1989) through problematizing the capitalistic alienation and commoditization of the human. suggesting that the inhuman can no longer be defined as such, braidotti postulates that “the current historical context has transformed the modernist inhuman into a posthuman and post-anthropocentric set of practices” (2013, 109). following from the distinction of bios/zoë and life/death, braidotti philosophizes on the contemporary ways of dying and the destructive effects of technology in this third chapter. by alluding to mythological and classical figures like thanatos, hecuba, and medea, she enthrallingly suggests that “[t]he inhuman forces of technology have moved into the body, intensifying the spectral reminders of the corpse-to-come. our social imaginary has taken a forensic turn” (2013, 113). she draws upon foucauldian bio-politics and achille mbembe’s necropolitics to discuss how our posthuman condition reformulates the questions of these ethical concerns as to which species will die or live. she, thus, calls death “the inhuman within”, and then connects our current ways of “disappearing” to the vitalist and materialist emphases on a cosmic monism: what we humans truly yearn for is to disappear by merging into this generative flow of becoming, the precondition for which is the loss, disappearance, and disruption of the atomized, individual self. […] this can be described also as the moment of ascetic dissolution of the subject; the moment of its merging with the web of non-human forces that frame him/her, the cosmos as a whole. we may call it death, but in a monistic ontology of vitalist materialism, it has rather to do with radical immanence. that is to say the grounded totality of the moment when we coincide completely with our body in becoming at last what we will have been all along: a virtual corpse. (2013, 136) the fourth chapter lists the main criteria for a posthuman theory as “cartography accuracy, with the corollary of ethical accountability; trans-disciplinarity; the importance of combining critique with creative figurations; the principle of non-linearity; the powers of memory and the imagination and the strategy of de-familiarization” (2013, 163). braidotti emphasizes that each of these guidelines should provide valuable insight into how the social and the natural sciences can function together as toolkits for a new and emerging posthumanities, concluding her book by reminding us that “[n]ot all of us can say, with even a modicum of certainty, that we have actually become posthuman, or that we are only that” (2013, 186). she notes that the posthuman quandary requires us to reckon our human condition, to reformulate subjectivity, and bearing in mind the complex nature of our times, to postulate a fresher and a more horizontal system of ethics and moral values. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 başak ağın dönmez 110 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ she also prompts us to think about the necessity of altering the humanities through her suggestions. broadly speaking, braidotti’s survey of the posthuman and posthumanism highlights a new materialistic and/or vitalist necessity of moving beyond the linguistic emphasis on the nature/culture divide. stefan herbrechter’s posthumanism: a critical analysis also surveys posthumanism in six chapters, but it concentrates more on nietzschean anti-humanism and postmodernism in their critique of humanity. although herbrechter’s view of posthumanism more heavily stresses the twenty-first century technologization, his call for a “postscience”, through which the boundaries between life sciences and the humanities erode, echoes braidotti’s mention of the posthumanities, thereby slightly resonating with the inseparability of the material and the discursive. in the first chapter, “towards a critical posthumanism”, herbrechter essentially addresses the cultural construction of the human as a concept. critically reflecting on the “quasi-mystical universal human ‘nature’”, herbrechter states that the “great cultural achievements” of the human “serve to promote the cohesion of humanity in general” (2013, 12). he sees posthumanism as a follow-up movement to the postmodernist critiques of liberal humanism, stressing the importance of values such as “particularity”, “difference”, “multiplicity”, and “plurality”, instead of singularity and universality of a definable human form: humans and their humanity are historical and cultural constructs rather than transcendental concepts free from ideology, and they therefore have to be placed within larger contexts like ecosystems, technics, or evolution. this approach only becomes posthumanist when the human is no longer seen as the sole hero of a history of emancipation, but as a (rather improbable but important) stage within the evolution of complex life forms. (2013, 9) after discussing the postmodern critiques by significant figures like lyotard, derrida, and foucault, herbrechter provides a more detailed survey of posthumanism in the second chapter, entitled “a genealogy of posthumanism”. expanding on the nietzschean concept of “overman”, he highlights ihab hassan’s article titled prometheus as the performer: toward a posthumanist culture? a university masque in five scenes (1977) as the first philosophical text to initiate the idea of the posthuman. in this chapter, herbrechter engages with critical questions of technologization, futurism, and artificial intelligence, noting that these are indispensable elements of posthumanism at present. however, among many other examples, he places a special emphasis on hayles’s how we became posthuman (1999), which is considered to be one of the major publications in the posthumanities to embark on the realignment of information and materiality. accentuating that the posthuman has multiple “economic, military, scientific, and/or moral” facets (2013, 37), he elaborates on the concept from http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 braidotti, “the posthuman“; herbrechter, “posthumanism”; nayar, “posthumanism” 111 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ several philosophical and popular cultural aspects, thereby underlining the co-evolutionary steps that both the humans and technological bodies have synchronously taken. he warns against the “crass opposition between technophile and hypermodern transhumanists and technoskeptic, antimodern posthumanists with a great number of shadings inbetween” (2013, 53), noting that despite the hopeful tones provided by the rhetoric of “departure” from humanism and the idea of “overcoming” humanism, the liberal humanist formulations of the enlightenment might well be repeated under new technological emergences, such as “cognitive and neuroscientific concepts” (2013, 61). thus, he suggests that a critical posthumanism needs to “overcome the ideological confrontation between liberal humanists and cultural materialists, mindful of both the historical context and the current climate of cultural change” (2013, 61). finding a balance between these two stances, the third chapter, “our posthuman humanity”, concentrates on the discussions of everyday uses of information technologies and their importance. herbrechter maintains that digital technologies of information not only “recognize” data as “information”, but “transform everything into information” (2013, 78). thus, he proposes to consider posthumanization “the disappearance of the modern metanarratives of the enlightenment and human emancipation” (2013, 78). he views this posthumanization process as “the loss of totality and the liberation of its parts in the context of technological change and the dissolution of the last (meta)narrative, arguably underestimated by postmodernism, namely anthropocentric humanism” (2013, 78). he further argues that posthumanism in its critical sense needs to “embrace technological challenge while at the same time it needs to think through a postmodern critique, […] mapping change onto the long-term dimension of posthumanization, which in fact begins with the very idea of hominization” (2013, 79). the fourth chapter is entitled “posthumanism and science fiction”, and it focuses on the parallelisms between popular culture and prosthesization, digitalization, cyborgization, and virtualization in consumer societies. analyzing various samples from the media and films, herbrechter notes that “science fiction tries to achieve a ‘defamiliarization’ of an already posthumanized world. it thus shakes the humanist value system to an extent where the ontology of the human becomes precarious and the subject of utopia as such” (2013, 112). examining the matrix trilogy as one of his many examples, herbrechter states that the main character of the series, neo, is neither human, nor inhuman, but in fact a “medium” or “translation itself”, which is gradually divinized into a form of spirituality. arguing that these “posthumanist parables are troubling”, he calls for a radical critique of such quasi-posthumanisms through critical posthumanism (2013, 134). http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 başak ağın dönmez 112 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ in the fifth chapter, “interdisciplinarity and the posthumanities”, herbrechter follows a similar path to braidotti, maintaining that “through bio-, nano-, cogno-, and infotechnologies not only humanist tradition and education has come under siege but also the future of the humanities” (2013, 135). he argues that “the posthumanities” must “become a forum for the interdisciplinary and dissensual knowledge community to face [the] responsibilities” towards the nonhuman others. in the final chapter of his book, entitled “posthumanism, digitalization, and the new media”, herbrechter notes that societies are increasingly becoming virtual, and explains how digitalization of information and technologization transform methods of obtaining knowledge, thus equating the posthumanities with digital humanities. he also notes that “cyborgization is […] not merely a hybridization of the organic and the mechanical”, but the grafting of an informational and digital (i.e., virtual and virtualizing), coded and simulated (i.e., no longer relying on representation) reality onto human embodiment” (2013, 188). this is not to suggest that new forms of dualism are replicated, but rather it denotes a virtual embodiment, in which information itself possesses material forces. herbrechter concludes this chapter by noting that [p]osthumanism may be understood as the demand for an anthropology of a new, posthuman society with its moral, political, ecological, and so on, premises, on the one hand, and for a history of technology (technics) and media, with their fundamental co-implications between human, technology, information, culture, and nature, on the other hand. (2013, 193) this final remark is significant in the sense that it outlines herbrechter’s posthumanism. the emphasis put on the networks of technology, information, and “culture and nature” reverberates, to some extent, a vitalist and monistic philosophy, as also underlined in braidotti’s the posthuman and pramod k. nayar’s posthumanism, which is another lively account of posthumanism published in the 2010s. nayar’s posthumanism is divided into six chapters, with several subheadings. in the first chapter, “revisiting the human: critical humanisms”, the author starts with striking examples from science-fiction novels and films, such as terminator (1984-2009), gattaca (1997), and never let me go (2005), noting that these literary and popular representations provide “corporeal-physiological fluidity, ontological liminality, and identity-morphing”, which may well outline some of the fundamental characterizations of the posthuman in the current era (2014, 2). this chapter explains the basic terms and definitions, such as humanism, transhumanism, and posthumanism, formulating the basis for the rest of the discussion. despite the emphasis on the biotechnological aspects of posthumanism, nayar heavily http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 braidotti, “the posthuman“; herbrechter, “posthumanism”; nayar, “posthumanism” 113 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ relies on the questioning of the meaning of being human, calling into question such features as rationality, autonomy, and linguistic ability, thereby drawing parallelisms between different forms of discrimination, such as sexism, racism, and speciesism. he emphasizes the emerging possibilities of the posthuman era, which allows the production of empowered and subaltern identities in the form of “vampires, animals, or humans” (2014, 34). in the second chapter, “consciousness, biology, and the necessity of alterity”, nayar “traces key moments in biological, philosophical, and computational theories that contribute in significant ways to the rise of posthumanist thought” (2014, 35). he specifically attaches importance to maturana’s and varela’s “autopoiesis”, and, in this sense, his approach is similar to that of cary wolfe and, to a certain extent, of braidotti. by focusing more on information flows and feedback loops, the author also highlights the importance of hayles’s posthumanist formulations. discussing other significant concepts within the posthumanities, such as symbiogenesis and alterity, nayar provides an overall sense of the posthuman, which merges gender studies, critical animal studies, and postcolonial studies. rejecting the centrality of the humankind in a challenge to the enlightenment ideals, nayar argues that the new theories in posthumanism refuse to see “human or any subjectivity as self-contained, sovereign, and independent” (2014, 53). this is a significant claim, on which many critical veins of posthumanism rely at present. bearing this significance in mind, nayar’s third chapter, “the body, reformatted”, concentrates on bringing the body and materiality back into the equation in deconstructive methodologies. basing his main argument on thacker’s “view of biology as biomedia”, nayar draws two vital conclusions: “[…] first, the body is the data stored in the computers and databases”, which denotes a kind of “dematerialization”, and “second, the data can generate a body”, which signals a “rematerialization” (2014, 57; emphasis in the original). he compellingly argues that “consciousness, will, agency, and subjectivity are emergent conditions”, especially highlighting that “the autonomy of the human” only emerges through relationality and “dynamics that cut across organic and non-organic actors, machines, and humans” (2014, 64). it is in this respect that nayar’s posthumanism bears resemblance to braidotti’s monistic vitality and the new materialist echoes of the twenty-first century critical posthumanisms. such a vitalist approach, apparently, formulates the basis for posthuman citizenship: vitalist theories have now been modified in the posthuman age with a new view of the body and life itself: that life is distributed, embedded in, and evolved from other life forms, genetic codes, and info-flows. bodies are not sovereign structures, bounded and coherent, but are congeries. transplants call upon the self to recognize not only how its original organs had become http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 başak ağın dönmez 114 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ foreign to it, but also how the transplanted organs transplanted give it a sense of the foreign added to it. thus, the interiority-exterior, original-prosthesis, self-other boundaries break down even as human-machine, organicinorganic boundaries blur. bodies are seen as becoming, whereby the socalled “other” is constitutive of the self, the other is incorporated into the self […]. this body is not just a metaphor or a figure (that is, not just an effect of discourse). in every case, this cyborged, hybrid body is embodied even as its hybridity (like its boundaries, once) is produced in the materialdiscursive realm. such a critical posthumanism, focused on the materiality of the body, is also alert to biological citizenship in which the material body is produced in and imbricated with technoscience and the capitalist processes of exploitation (bio-power). by rejecting the view of the autonomous subject and instead proposing a subject that is essentially intersubjective and intercorporeal, posthumanism refashions the very idea of the human. the human is a node, one that is dependent upon several other forms of life, flows of genetic and other information, for its existence and evolution. finally, it demonstrates that citizenship is embodied, but requires an interface with the info-flows of the environment. (2014, 76; emphasis in the original) as this lengthy quotation indicates, nayar’s approach to posthumanism does not sidestep the importance of critical animal studies, and therefore, the fourth chapter, “absolute monstrosities: the ‘question of the animal’”, is dedicated to the discussions of the animal and/or monstrous others. this chapter is based on the critical question of “what constitutes ‘life’ and ‘normal life’”, and nayar contends that “human life is what is traversed by and embedded in flows of life that cut across species, life forms, and inanimate things” (2014, 79). he notes that both monster studies and animal studies showcase how the definition of the human has been standardized, normalized, and universalized as opposed to the definitions of the disabled, the insane, or the differently embodied. as a constant other to the human, the overgeneralized category of the nonhuman enables the production of the human as a standardized figure. therefore, these fields of study suggest how environments, ecologies, and human life are networked and are linked through one another, calling for a relocation of human-nonhuman boundaries (2014, 79-80). in the fifth chapter, “life itself: the view from disability studies and bioethics”, nayar notes that “disability studies […] calls for a shift from purely biomedical notions of disability to a social constructionist view in which the impaired body and the environment and social order are in a dynamic relation” (2014, 101). therefore, nayar contends, posthumanism is strongly fed by disability studies since “the hierarchic ordering of the ‘normal’ body is seen as an unethical social construction that denies different bodies subjectivity and equal citizenship rights” (2014, 101). he also notes that bioethics is equally important for posthumanism http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 braidotti, “the posthuman“; herbrechter, “posthumanism”; nayar, “posthumanism” 115 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ because “in the age of increasingly networked bodies, xenotransplantation, cloning, and other new scientific and social conditions, [it] has become more complicated where the boundedness of the human, the ‘status’ of life, and living […] are all under dispute” (2014, 101). therefore, he discusses moral issues such as the status of vegetative life, personhood, and sentience. in the final chapter, “posthuman visions: towards companion species”, he approaches posthumanism from a multispecies identity perspective. he finds this approach apt for the moral requirements in posthumanism and ethics of care, specifically underlining the emergence of new life forms and matter without a species border (2014, 149). looking into braidotti’s, herbrechter’s, and nayar’s accounts of posthumanism, one can clearly observe that herbrechter follows a more poststructuralist pathway, while braidotti and nayar bring together various aspects of technology, hybridity, computation, and digitalization, as well as the body and materiality. the bridging of the gap between the linguistic and the material seems to have overcome a (mis)conceptualization in configuring posthumanism as a companion to pure rationality and technology, bringing back into the equation the bodily and/or animalistic aspects of the posthuman that had long remained unspoken of. references alaimo, stacy. 2010. bodily natures: science, environment, and the material self. bloomington: indiana university press. barad, karen. 2007. meeting the universe halfway: quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. durham: duke university press. braidotti, rosi. 2002. metamorphoses: towards a materialist theory of becoming. cambridge: polity press. 2006a. “posthuman: all too human: towards a new process ontology”. theory, culture and society 23(7-8): 197-208. 2006b. transpositions: on nomadic ethics. cambridge: polity press. 2013. the posthuman. cambridge: polity press. haraway, donna. 2006. interview. nicholas gane. “when we have never been human, what is to be done? interview with donna haraway”. theory, culture and society 23 (7-8): 135-58. hayles, katherine. 1999. how we became posthuman: virtual bodies in cybernetics, literature, and informatics. chicago: university of chicago press. herbrechter, stefan. 2013. posthumanism: a critical analysis. london: bloomsbury. moravec, hans. 1988. mind children: the future of the robot and human intelligence. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. nayar, pramod k. 2014. posthumanism. cambridge: polity press. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 from posthumanism to posthuman ecocriticim from posthumanism to posthuman ecocriticim 1 serpil oppermann professor of english, hacettepe university doi: 10.7358/rela-2016-001-oppe serpil.oppermann@gmail.com abstract this essay explores the impact of the posthuman turn on ecocriticism. it proposes that posthuman ecocriticism is a more engaged, more diffractive mode of reading the co-evolution of organisms and inorganic matter in their hybrid configurations. simply put, ecocriticism becomes post-human, post-natural, and post-green in critiquing the taxonomy of the human and the nonhuman. in doing so, posthuman ecocriticism expands and enhances material ecocritical visions and includes such material agencies as biophotons, nanoelements, and intelligent machines that are expressively agentic, story-filled, efficacious, and co-emergent with homo sapiens. it critically discerns the cultural implications of bio-nano-technologies and life sciences. how do we read, for example, the blurred boundaries between ichells (carbon-free inorganic chemicals) and cells (organic matter)? how do we interpret synthetic matter that responds to stimuli? what are the cultural implications of these technoscientific agencies that exhibit signs of spontaneous activity? how do we make sense of this new reality in its concrete character, and conceptualize the cultural and ecological layers of “creative becoming” encoded in material agencies? such questions are pertinent for the apprehension of posthuman ecocriticism that offers immersion in previously uncharted territories as a post-human structure within which to think about human/nonhuman/inhuman natures. the newly emerging strange natures that transfigure human ecologies will be part of my discussion, and there will be references to literary texts that are labeled posthuman novels. keywords: posthuman ecocriticism, ecological posthumanism, new materialisms, nonhuman agency, naturalcultural forces, postnatural environments, inorganic life, material ecocriticism, narrative agency, storied matter. 1 this is the re-written version of my chapter “from material to posthuman ecocriticism: hybridity, stories, natures” in handbook in ecocriticism and cultural theory, edited by hubert zapf. berlin: walter de gruyter, forthcoming. i am grateful to hubert zapf for granting me permission to publish this version in relations. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 serpil oppermann 24 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ with their intersecting stories and theories, posthumanism and ecocriticism have something in common: they introduce changes in the way materiality, agency, and nature are conceived. this essay rethinks the latest trend of environmental literary criticism – material ecocriticism – through the theoretical interconnections between posthumanist and ecocritical forms of engagement with matter and life, thus paving the way to a new form of analysis here called “posthuman ecocriticism”. after a brief conceptual outline of posthumanism, i introduce posthuman ecocriticism. this context is necessary to clarify how material ecocriticism transforms into posthuman ecocriticism and is needed for critical reflection on the emerging reconceptualizations of life and their scientific, literary and cultural interfaces. i wish to consider the theoretical frameworks of posthumanism that have changed the ecocritical understanding of what exactly is natural, environmental, and, most importantly, alive. 1. posthumanism: a conceptual outline in their “introduction” to the new materialisms diana coole and samantha frost argue that “the ways we understand and interact with nature are in need of a commensurate updating” (2010, 5). posthumanism seems to be the site of such updates where various theoretical threads of new materialisms – among them material feminisms, eco-materialism, agential realism, prismatic ecology, and material ecocriticism – converge to produce new epistemological configurations. these new materialist epistemic positions draw upon a broad field of studies, in particular quantum physics, biological sciences, bioethics, critical animal and plant studies, as well as advanced technologies that herald the beginning of a posthuman reality in which the figure of the human as we know it comes under scrutiny. stacy alaimo, for example, introduces “post-humanist new materialisms” (2011, 282) consonant with the intersections and alliances between these interrelated theoretical discourses. while alaimo presents “a new materialist and posthumanist sense of the human as perpetually interconnected with the flows of substances and the agencies of environments” (2014, 187), karen barad proposes a posthumanist ethics of mattering to describe “how values are integral to the nature of knowing and being” (2007, 37; italics in the original), and to emphasize the accountability of human activities and knowledge practices to the environments. human responsibility for the environmental relations figure centrally here as humans are integral parts of “agentially intra-acting components” of nature (barad 2007, 33). http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 from posthumanism to posthuman ecocriticim 25 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ conceived this way, the posthumanist approach induces an out-of-thebox-thinking which, in katherine hayles’s words, “evokes the exhilarating prospect of getting out of some of the old boxes and opening up new ways of thinking about what being human means” (1999, 285). like hayles, who inaugurated posthuman theorizing, cary wolfe suggests that we must “rethink the notion of the human tout court” (1998, 42). the conceptual frameworks within which we have defined the human are now being replaced by interlinked posthuman and new materialist viewpoints that not only delegitimize the central position of the human among other species by acknowledging the permeable boundaries of species in the naturalcultural continuum, but also recognize the profound interconnections between different forms of life in the composite world where previously we had seen separations. engaging with techno-scientific reconceptualizations of life, posthumanism also blurs the boundaries between humans and machines, as the other-than-human agency in the posthumanist vision is not a biological category only. in such posthumanist thinking which inquires into nonhuman life from animals to artificial intelligence, human exceptionalism inevitably gets eroded. pramod k. nayar, for instance, posits that human “uniqueness is a myth”, because “the human incorporates difference in the form of other dna, species and forms of life” (2014, 4). this understanding, however, has also engendered deep fears that we may be heading toward what david roden calls “a posthuman succession”, which he claims is “possible in principle even if the technological means for achieving it remain speculative” (2015, 5). although robot technologies, genetic engineering, cybernetic mechanisms, and biotechnological developments indicate a speedy move beyond the speculative in alarming ways toward a more literal disavowing of human control, the fundamental question framing posthumanism is not about superseding the human and establishing a robotic culture, but admitting the human as an interdependent part of the material configurations of the world “in its differential becomings” (barad 2007, 185). even if the advanced techno-scientific practices generate considerable anxiety, it must be noted that the posthuman “does not really mean the end of humanity” as katherine hayles also maintains: “it signals instead the end of a certain conception of the human” (1999, 286). we are joined together, hayles proclaims, “in a dynamic co-evolutionary spiral with intelligent machines as well as with the other biological species with whom we share the planet” (2006, 164). confronting the question of “humanness itself” (kirby 1997, 5) outside the human hubris, this formulation of posthumanism calls upon a relational ontology that announces itself in an affirmative fashion. posthumanism, in other words, is not an anti-humanism that dismisses http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 serpil oppermann 26 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ human existence to celebrate posthuman succession. instead, as expressed by francesca ferrando, “[t]he posthuman refusal of the ontological primacy of human existence, invites a review of practices such as uncritical omnivorism, overharvesting, and the unrestricted consumption of nonrenewable resources” (2012, 10). therefore, rather than worrying about the undermined status of human ontologies that glorify our species identity, we should read the new category human in terms of an evolutionary coemergence within a shared field of existence marked by the interdependency of life. posthumanism, as eileen joy and christine m. neufeld pertinently argue, may have “complicated how we conceptualize and enact our human identities”, and destabilized “the category ‘human’, in its biological, social, and political aspects” (2007, 171), yet it is this complication that has enabled a significant departure from predominantly anthropocentric discourses and practices in all aspects of social, cultural, political, biological, and ecological relations. rosi braidotti calls this strand of posthuman thought “contemporary critical posthumanism” (2013, 47), which incorporates “ecology and environmentalism” with a special emphasis placed on relating to all “earth-others” (48). “it produces”, braidotti writes, “a new way of combining self-interests with the well-being of an enlarged community, based on environmental inter-connections” (48). critical postumanism then maps what we can call ecological posthumanism that stresses the significance of complex environmental relations, perviousness of species boundaries, and social-ecological-scientific networks within which humans and nonhumans, knowledge practices, and material phenomena are deeply enmeshed. understood this way, posthumanism amplifies the new materialist endorsement of the complicity of nature and culture, or in better terms, the mutual involvement of discursive practices and the material world. serenella iovino’s words – “our world is pervious and fluid, and so must be the notions that help us to read and to describe its ecologies of ideas and bodies” (2016, 2) – illustrate best this material-discursive map of posthumanism in its onto-epistemological gravitation. as a generative category, “networked relations” in this layout seems well suited to elucidate posthuman meanings and experiences, and even contradictions and anxieties that also inform the current discussions. if humans and nonhumans are “networked with each other and with technologies, practices, and disciplines which may cluster and co-constitute them regardless of species designation” (wolfe 2013, 34-5), humans can no longer be defined in a separate ontological zone, but as “hybrids of nature and culture” (latour 1993, 11). in this hybridized world, while we can understandably remain skeptical of the possibility of our dissolution http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 from posthumanism to posthuman ecocriticim 27 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ into an utterly alien category, like disembodied intelligence entrenched in a digital medium, many of us would acknowledge the human indexed in processes of co-emergence with other beings. jane bennett’s identification of human agency as “an interfolding network of humanity and nonhumanity” (2010, 31) exemplifies this process as the key point in posthumanist accounts of new human ontologies. the posthuman contesting of human agency here is a critical recalibration of the human sphere aimed at dissolving the desire to exploit the coexisting sphere of the nonhuman. this is, in brief, a contesting of the notion of “anthropocentric humanism” (herbrechter 2013, 78) grounded in human solipsistic supremacy and its interrelated hegemonic traditions and discourses. posthumanism thus understood makes us more aware of the biological fact that “[w]e are crisscrossed and cohabited by stranger beings, intimate visitors who affect our behavior, appreciate our warmth, and are in no rush to leave”, as dorion sagan reminds us (2013, 21-2). therefore, we are, in a way, what nayar calls humanimal(s) (5), because our environmental relations are always characterized by networks of complex crossings and interchanges with other beings and material forces. when these networks are ostensibly disrupted by anthropogenic factors, the posthuman condition becomes an entanglement in many antagonistic forces with formidable efficacy and humans are not immune to their material effects. matter’s effectivity in these networks becomes much more pronounced when interfered with anthropogenic factors. acting like “the mirror of our energies”, as gaston bachelard has claimed (2002, 17), material forces can never be contained in boundary-specific practices. consider the effects of carbon emissions, hydraulic fracturing 2, the great pacific garbage patch, electronic waste discarded in landfills, radioactive debris, invasive species, mutating viruses, and other environmental complexities inseparable from environmental and socio-economic relations. in jane bennett’s incisive words, we live at a time “when interactions between human, viral, animal, and technological bodies are becoming more and more intense” (2010, 108). on a larger scale, this connection is also manifest in dramatic earth changes – from earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tornadoes, tsunamis, to deterioration of ocean ecologies, and extreme weather conditions, which deeply affect bodies, daily lives, economy, health, and politics. the striking image ted hughes sketches in his poem wadsworth moor epitomizes the consequences of such earth changes: “earth bleeds her raw true darkness / a land naked now as 2 also known as “fracking”, this is the process of drilling and injecting fluid, filled with carcinogens and toxins, into the ground at a high pressure in order to fracture shale rocks to release natural gas inside. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 serpil oppermann 28 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ a wound / that the sun swabs and dabs” (1993, 53). as indicated in this poem, the agentic power of matter becomes alarmingly disquieting when it interacts recursively with the human-induced toxic environments. this is what, as eileen joy puts it, encourages “critical examinations of the aliveness and agency of animals, objects, environments, and other nonhuman forces and propensities, all enmeshed with humans” (2014, n.p.). chris jordan’s feature film midway that lays bare the tragic story of the laysan albatross on midway island in the north pacific ocean epitomizes such a problematic human-nonhuman enmeshment and poignantly demonstrates the dire consequences of the social and the natural interpenetrating each other. worse than t.s. eliot’s river that sweats oil and tar, the landscape here sweats unfortunate birds engulfed in plastic inducing deadly effect on their bodies. is it any wonder that plastic permeates biological organisms, their flesh, their blood stream, and their bodily mechanisms, practically interfering with the evolutionary cycles of life by its very indestructible nature? midway reveals this fact as a “ghastly tale” by zooming into the plastic-filled stomachs of dead birds. “do we have the courage to face the realities of our time?” asks jordan inviting the audience to a journey “across an ocean of grief”. marked by an explosion of material vitality literally colored by the countless plastic objects, and by a shocking recognition, the images of the dead albatross confront the challenge of dissolution when the agency of manufactured substances dominate the ecosystems. in this film, the “ocean of grief” is caused by “petroleum-species”, which are manufactured by greedy human petro-cultures. as such, it mirrors a posthuman environmentalism of “the incalculability of other than human forces we typically fail to acknowledge, yet which haunt all considerations of environmental change” (hird 2010, 54). when “the natural life forms” and “cultural forms of life” (helmreich 2009, xi) are so deeply entangled across the spheres of human and other biotic forces and material agencies, what ensues are posthuman choreographies linking the biosphere with the technosphere. this posthuman condition is captured quite arrestingly, and of course ironically, in the famous opening of charles dickens’s a tale of two cities. ironic as it may sound, this is the best delineation of the present posthuman reality: “it was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness” (1939, 1). it is worth noting that living in the best and the worst of times can also occasion a gulliver syndrome. like gulliver, we are forced to step into somewhat strange environments of beings and forces that are worlding 3 with us. 3 i use the term “worlding” in the sense of becoming and being-in-the world. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 from posthumanism to posthuman ecocriticim 29 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ this means to take account of the shared environments saturated with alien substances and metabolic forces, and of how naturalcultural forces, bodies, and material agencies bear witness to the viral condition within which the nonhuman (animal, vegetal, mineral) is as much enmeshed as the human. like the “acidic tomatoes” that can “power a small radio / or cause / phototoxic / burns on exposed skin” (2013, 57) in the canadian poet adam dickinson’s poem hand picked, this viral condition is visible in every aspect of life. indicated by dickinson’s poems, “the animating force of hydrocarbons and their crudely oiled futures” (100), or what he calls the “age of polymers” (100), thus become significant poetic substances in the contentious landscape of posthumanism. expressing some of the posthuman quandaries, dickinson ironically writes: “a human has the alien right to viruses in her genome, microbes in his gut, phthalates in her blood, pharmaceuticals in his brain, contacts in her eyes, and a battery against his heart” (100). although such poetic images imply that we have shot the albatross like coleridge’s ancient mariner, and are “now living on a qualitatively different planet”, we can reinvent our knowledge practices “from an entirely different angle” (ellsworth and kruse 2013, 8). this is necessary to understand the significance and depth of our interactions with the earth’s variously uncanny nonhuman players, and the complexity of the world’s posthuman co-shapers. then, perhaps workable solutions would follow. it is within this conceptual framework that i reflect upon the morphing of material ecocriticism into posthuman ecocriticism. 2. posthuman ecocriticism since material ecocriticism has progressively co-opted many of the critical posthuman visions, forging a post-naturalist environmental imagination in the making, it has already become part of the posthuman turn and can thus be called posthuman ecocriticism. the central argument of material ecocriticism – that matter is endowed with creative expressions, manifesting as storied matter, and that creative materiality is encoded everywhere 4 – is amplified in its new form with the inclusion of matter’s abiotic components that are transmitted through techno-scientific practices. posthuman ecocriticism investigates the literary, cultural, and philosophical implications of how these practices seek to graft the technological onto the biologi 4 see iovion and oppermann’s “introduction: stories come to matter” in material ecocriticism (2014). http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 serpil oppermann 30 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ cal – for example, inorganic nanodesigning of biophysical systems (parisi 2008, 294, 297) and the ecological consequences of such practices. matter today is storying itself not only through biological and material forms but also through these biophysical systems, the new biotech forms, and other techno-scientifically engineered entities, such as robots that are as story-filled as biological agencies, revealing “a posthuman performativity in its narrative disclosures” (iovino 2012, 58). in this ecocritical perspective, whether elemental, biological, geological, climactic, or technological, the world’s manifold agencies are always deeply interlaced with human mindscapes, reflexivity, and imagination. this is a re-alignment of material ecocriticism’s conceptual templates to critically discern the cultural implications of life sciences and new technologies. in this approach, the world’s dynamic self-articulation, or narrativity, is deemed to open a radical perspective – one that cannot be dismissed as the stuff of dreams though it strangely “alters the tenor of our reflections and the tonality of our dreams”, as david abram eloquently articulates (2010, 141). the voyage of the storied matter currently generates material narratives of what latour calls an “ecology of collectives consisting of humans and nonhumans” (2004, 61), with an expanded understanding of the nonhumans beyond the biological species. put differently, in the posthuman moment intelligent machines also story themselves to join the hybrid compounds of the earth. this is the juncture where material ecocriticism becomes post-human and post-natural, and also post-green in critiquing the taxonomy of the human, the nonhuman, and the machine. conserving the new materialist understanding of the nonhuman (biotic and abiotic) as already part of the human in the world’s becoming, posthuman ecocriticism seeks to maintain a sustainable ecological critique of the material interaction of bodies and natures in a highly technologized world and their conceptualizations in literary and cultural texts. the principal concepts of material ecocriticism – storied matter and narrative agency – that explain the agentic dimension of living matter in terms of its stories, are particularly suitable for exploring the emerging posthuman agencies, the technological posthuman forms 5. by re-working these concepts in the light of abiotic visions of materiality, posthuman ecocriticism becomes a way of reading the biosphere and technosphere transversally in the variations of matter, interpreting ecologically the ethical and social implications of existence beyond the carbon-based life embedded in agential intra-actions with 5 as luciana parisi explains, “technical machines are able to enter in direct relations with the biophysical layers of matter” (293). thus, posthuman forms are agentic and expressive. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 from posthumanism to posthuman ecocriticim 31 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the biotic forms. neither fully imaginary nor real, animal-machine hybrids, cyborgs, cloned animals, aliens, synthetic matter, and toxic bodies populate contemporary scientific and literary narratives, offering a critical prism for posthuman ecocriticism to scrutinize their stories’ corrosive as well as productive powers. the cataclysmic narratives of toxic accretion in the human body, for example, are also the stories of massively distributed pollution in the earth’s biosphere, showing the “extent to which all bodies are kin in the sense of inextricably enmeshed in a dense network of relations” (bennett 2010, 13). they may appear in scientifically convoluted literature not too accessible to the general public, but when these stories appear in visceral states of anguish in literary texts such as the scottish writer john burnside’s the glister (2008) – a highly disconcerting novel about how densely bodies and ecosystems are interrelated in ominous toxic kinship – they bring many resistant forms of nonhuman agency into sharper focus. the glister exposes the bodily and environmental effects of toxic chemicals in a gripping depiction of how toxic agencies induce a bodily crisis and also cause spiritual infection in the vicinity of a chemical plant. the runoff from the shut down plant that was built 30 years earlier by the consortium to manufacture chemicals has not only thoroughly poisoned the inhabitants of the innertown, but also irreversibly contaminated the entire environment. incurable diseases, “mysterious behavioral problems”, and mutant creatures haunt the innertown daily. the local constable john morrison says: “you could see evidence wherever you looked of the plant’s effects on the land: avenues of dead trees, black and skeletal along the old rail tracks and access roads; great piles of sulfurous rocks where pools of effluent had been left to evaporate in the sun” (chap. 1). the forest nearby is so contaminated that the people call it “the poison wood”, where the trees “were veined with a dark, poisoned sap” (chap. 1). leonard wilson, a pedantic teenager says, “this wood has poison running in its veins, in the sap of every tree, in every crumb of loam and every blade of grass” (chap. 7). in such a dismal environment where “the entire land under their feet is […] poisoned by years of runoff” (chap. 1), humans, living like latour’s collectives, suffer from “unexplained clusters of rare cancers”, “terrible diseases”, “untreatable illnesses”, “depression”, and “blossoming madness”, while animals develop “swollen, twisted bodies” (chap. 1). disclosing a posthuman condition not too remote from our reality, the glister sheds light on the fact that technology can no longer be disentangled from biology, inviting a complementary reading of naturalcultural dynamics of human-nonhuman existence. the lethal interchanges of bodies and xenobiotic substances that percolate through soil, air, and http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 serpil oppermann 32 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ water point to the hazy nature of boundaries between the social and the scientific, technology and morality in an illuminating way. the intimate entanglement between humans and effective toxic agencies running in and around them is also figured as a diagrammatic invocation for posthuman dystopias. instead of an imagined dystopian future, however, the glister presents quite a realistic scenario of humans dwelling in daunting material networks which invite us to examine the corporeal dimension of a poisoned nature and the intensities of its transformed vital forces. posthuman ecocriticism exposes the dynamics of this unfolding causality in humanity’s composite story with a special focus on the constitutive role of posthumanly intertwined agencies. we are all parts of the earth narratives engendered by entangled forces whose impact may range, to quote rob nixon, “from the cellular to the transnational” (2011, 47). the varieties of biotechnological relationship that emerge from within hybrid geographies as showcased by the glister, require distinct ecocritical attention, not in order to expose the toxic kinship only, but to analyze the currents of material narratives running through the social, the technological, and the political. in posthumanist ecocritical analyses we are confronted with how the human is submerged in inhuman loops, and how literature, biology, chemistry, technology, aesthetics, and politics become inseparable from the material networks, forming a naturalcultural space as an intermingling spillway of science and literature. posthuman ecocriticism is also concerned about the social, political, and ethical implications of hybrid life forms, and draws attention to the ambivalent ethical stakes of certain new developments; for example, designing new life with inorganic or synthetic matter as nanotechnologies today are already attempting to do. self-replicating ichells (carbon-free inorganic-chemical-cells) are the best examples here 6. ichells are queer constructions, hybrids of life and nonlife with a capacity to evolve 7. their story supports a profound conceptual shift in our understanding of evolution as it inscribes the artificial into the natural, and writes life into nonlife. apparently, it expressly closes the great divide between the natural and the artificial. such narratives are examined as viable expressions for a new understanding of life that has gone post in almost every sense. when natu 6 see deren quick at http://www.gizmag.com/bringing-life-to-inoganic-matter/19855. 7 another example is the invention of “the world’s first synthetic life form” by geneticist craig venter and his team in 2010. this is a single-celled organism, venter claims, that “heralds the dawn of a new era in which new life is made to benefit humanity, starting with bacteria that churn out biofuels, soak up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and even manufacture vaccines”. this invention venter also says, changed his “views of definitions of life and how life works”. see sample 2010. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 http://www.gizmag.com/bringing-life-to-inoganic-matter/19855 from posthumanism to posthuman ecocriticim 33 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ ral and technological actors transcend their radical divides, what happens is a shift from nature toward a posthuman life-text that tells the story of a messy vision of coexistence. this story that began with ecological postmodernism 8, got forged into new kinds of collective with material ecocriticism, is now pulling more of the unexpected into this hybrid formation with posthuman ecocriticism. it is, thus, no longer possible to rely on notions of green ecologies, such as cooperative, congenial coexistence in this new ecocritical framework. instead, posthuman ecocriticism entertains the intricacies of environmental anomalies caused by climate change, anaerobic environments, pesticides, invasive species, toxic bodies, hybrid natures, intelligent machines, and a motley of other strange agencies. embedded in this background are the intriguing maps of co-evolution of organisms, inorganic matter, perception and imagination in interesting hybrid life-worlds. taking this complex background into account, posthuman ecocriticism scrutinizes the intertwined experiences of emerging naturecultures to build novel forms of post-anthropocentric discourses. probing thus into the interfaces between biophysical, cultural, and technological environments, and by engaging strategically with a vast array of nonhumans that are not always biological, posthuman ecocriticism discloses the “topographies of the world’s hybridization” (iovino and oppermann 2013, 334) to capture a sense of “what we made and what we became co-evolved together” (hayles 2006, 164). the complexly bio-engineered and mechanically augmented hybrid forms in justina robson’s sci-fi novel natural history (2004) illustrates this shift in vision quite well, providing a palpable literary example. it focuses on a distant future, the third millennium, when the expansion of humanity through the solar system is made possible via many redesigned humans represented by hybrid beings, the forged. they “had originally been created for work of specific kinds” (85) for the earth-bound humans called the unevolved, or monkeys. being embodiments of human dna and animal genes coupled with metal and silicon, the forged come in all sizes and shapes: hives of bees, birds, beasts, spiders, armored machines, space combat vehicles, titanic gaiaforms (terra forming spaceships designed to rebuild planets), and other monstrous and protean forms that can travel between planets. realizing “the monkey wasn’t worth the effort any longer” (85) – because they find the human claims to superiority and governance false – the forged “want to make a new beginning and forget their origins” (86). as posthuman successors composed of multi-natures, the forged epitomize “the co-extensive mate 8 on this point, see oppermann, “from ecological postmodernism to material ecocriticism: creative materiality and narrative agency” in material ecocriticism (2014). http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 serpil oppermann 34 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ riality of humans and nonhumans” (alaimo and hekman 2008, 9), as in the case of the pigeon, a gigantic human-bird hybrid designed to carry passengers: what was the protocol for dealing with the entry into another’s bodily cavity? should she move the hatch membrane aside like a curtain? the pigeon put her out of misery by drawing aside the sheets of skin with a smooth flex of muscle and machinery in her hatch-rim. (82) with the forged representing “trans-species flows of becoming through interaction with multiple others” (braidotti 2013, 89), natural history poses fundamental questions about the nature of life, the future of evolution, and the possible coalitions of humans and nonhumans that spawn the posthumanist vision of “the differential constitution of the ‘human’” (barad 2008, 144). if fictional texts can project such imaginable pathways for a material-conceptual horizon of humanity, literature becomes a useful site to explore the unfolding implications of posthuman identities, bodies, and natures. all are essentially multiple within themselves, and identity as it is envisioned in natural history, as karen barad states, “is diffracted through itself” (2012, 32). for example, isol’s identity – the forged entity searching for earth-like planets – is at once in the skin of her hand, her organic cells, her engine, her reactor core, and her dreams. she also finds her “self” entangled with ocean creatures like the octopus, sharks, and whales. this is what makes her radically posthuman. isol is shaped by technological and biopolitical forces as effectively as evolutionary ones, and this is not an ultimately distant issue from our own posthuman reality with possibilities opened up by biology and technology. posthuman entities, not only as envisioned in such literary fictions but also produced in real life like the evolving sytnthetic cells, push life to its “conceptual limits spilling across scales and substrates, becoming other, even alien to itself” (helmreich 2009, 8). when borders between life and nonlife are so blurred, one feels compelled to ask the “question of what, exactly, is alive”, as molecular biologist lawrence e. hunter pertinently does in the processes of life (2009, 4). claiming that even “fundamentally ordinary materials can be alive in so many extraordinary ways” (1), hunter invites us to the study of life: while some materials (like dna and proteins) are found in nearly all living things, it is not a special kind of stuff that makes something alive. the mere presence of any particular material (including dna) doesn’t make something alive. the materials of life, it turns out, are just fairly ordinary chemicals, in particular combinations. what makes something alive is not what it is, but what it does. (2) http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 from posthumanism to posthuman ecocriticim 35 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ if “doing” is the life-principle, matter, organic or synthetically engineered, emerges as the enactment of its ongoing materialization. all forms of life in this vision – living organisms, forces of nature, a dna protein, or an inorganic chemical compound – are co-constituted. it means: “life in any form is part of life in every form” (llywelyn 1993, 281). put differently, not all material agencies are metabolically active, but they all represent different episodes of life’s alterity in posthuman reality. this is also a good way to understand why all agencies matter, and why we should be more attentive to their agentic role in today’s world, and be ecologically aware of the crisscrossing strands of their stories. once in the purviews of posthuman ecocriticism, the study of the episodes of such alterity, not only as they emerge from scientific research but also in their emulated fictional accounts, now traverses a range of disciplines as a seismic shift in the way life is imagined and experienced. references abram, david. 2010. becoming animal: an earthly cosmology. new york: pantheon books. alaimo, stacy. 2011. “new materialisms, old humanisms, or, following the submersible”. nora: nordic journal of feminist and gender research 19 (4): 280-4. 2014. “oceanic origins, plastic activism, and new materialism at sea”. in material ecocriticism, edited by serenella iovino and serpil oppermann, 186203. bloomington: indiana university press. alaimo, stacy, and susan hekman. 2008. “introduction: emerging models of materiality in feminist theory”. in material feminisms, edited by stacy alaimo and susan hekman, 1-19. bloomington: indiana university press. bachelard, gaston. 2002. earth and reveries of will: an essay on the imagination of matter, translated by kenneth haltman. dallas: the dallas institute publications. barad, karen. 2007. meeting the universe halfway: quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. durham london: duke university press. 2008. “posthumanist performativity: toward an understanding of how matter comes to matter”. in material feminisms, edited by stacy alaimo and susan hekman, 120-54. bloomington: indiana university press. 2012. “nature’s queer performativity” (authorized version). women, gender and research / kvinder, køn og forskning 1-2: 25-53. also in qui parle 2011, 19 (2): 121-58. bennett, jane. 2010. vibrant matter: a political ecology of things. durham: duke university press. braidotti, rosi. 2013. the posthuman. malden, ma: polity press. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 serpil oppermann 36 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ burnside, john. (2008) 2010. the glister. new york: anchor books. coole, diana, and samatha frost. 2010. “introducing the new materialisms”. in new materialisms: ontology, agency, and politics, edited by diana coole and samantha frost, 1-43. durham: duke university press. dickens, charles. 1939. a tale of two cities. new york: pocket books. dickinson, adam. 2013. the polymers. toronto: anansi press. ellsworth, elizabeth, and jamie kruse. 2013. “introduction: evidence: making a geologic turn in cultural awareness”. in making the geologic now: responses to material conditions of contemporary life, edited by elizabeth ellsworth and jamie kruse, 6-26. new york: punctum books. ferrando, francesca. 2012. “towards a posthumanist methodology. a statement”. frame: journal of literary studies 25 (1), special issue on narrating posthumanism: 9-18. hayles, n. katherine. 1999. how we became posthuman: virtual bodies in cybernetics, literature, and informatics. chicago: university of chicago press. 2006. “unfinished work: from cyborg to cognisphere”. theory, culture and society 23 (7-8): 159-66. helmreich, stefan. 2009. alien ocean: anthropological voyages in microbial seas. berkeley: university of california press. herbrechter, stefan. 2013. posthumanism: a critical analysis. london: bloomsbury. hird, myra j. 2010. “indifferent globality: gaia, symbiosis and ‘other worldliness’”. theory, culture and society 27 (2-3): 54-72. huges, ted. 1993. three books: remains of elmet, cave birds, river. london: faber and faber. hunter, lawrence e. 2009. the processes of life: an introduction to molecular biology. cambridge, ma: mit press. iovino, serenella. 2012. “material ecocriticism: matter, text, and posthuman ethics”. in literature, ecology, ethics: recent trends in ecocriticism, edited by timo müller and michael sauter, 51-68. heidelberg: universitätsverlag winter. 2016. ecocriticism and italy: ecology, resistance, and liberation. london new york: bloomsbury. iovino, serenella, and serpil oppermann. 2013. “after green ecologies: prismatic visions”. in prismatic ecology: ecotheory beyond the green, edited by jeffrey j. cohen, 328-36. minneapolis: university of minnesota press. iovino, serenella and serpil oppermann, eds. 2014. material ecocriticism. bloomington: indiana university press. joy, eileen. 2014. “living (playful) process: no, david graeber, you did not invent a new law of reality, and yes, barbara ehrenreich, that science does exist”. figure/ground. last modified march 1, 2014. http://figureground.org/livingplayful-process. joy, eileen, and christine m. neufeld. 2007. “a confession of faith: notes toward a new humanism”. journal of narrative theory 37 (2): 161-90. kirby, vicki. 1997. telling flesh: the substance of the corporeal. new york: routledge. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 http://figureground.org/living-playful-process http://figureground.org/living-playful-process from posthumanism to posthuman ecocriticim 37 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ latour, bruno. 1993. we have never been modern, translated by catherine porter. cambridge, ma: harvarduniversity press. 2004. politics of nature: how to bring the sciences into democracy, translated by catherine porter. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. llywelyn, morgan. 1993. the elementals. new york: tor. midway: message from the gyre. 2009. directed by chris jordan. nayar, pramod k. 2014. posthumanism. cambridge: polity press. nixon, rob. 2011. slow violence and the environmentalism of the poor. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. oppermann, serpil. 2014. “from ecological postmodernism to material ecocriticism: creative materiality and narrative agency”. in material ecocriticism, edited by serenella iovino and serpil oppermann, 21-36. bloomington: indiana university press. parisi, luciana. 2008. “the nanoengineering of desire”. in queering the non/ human, edited by noreen giffney and myra j. hird, 283-309. burlington, vt: ashgate press. quick, deren. 2011. “scientists make first step towards bringing life to inorganic matter”. gizmag.com. last modified september 15, 2011. http://www.gizmag. com/bringing-life-to-inoganic-matter/19855. robson, justina. 2004. natural history. london: pan books. roden, david. 2015. posthuman life: philosophy at the edge of the human. new york: routledge. sagan, dorion. 2013. cosmic apprentice: dispatches from the edges of science. minneapolis london: university of minnesota press. sample, ian. 2010. “craig venter creates synthetic life form”. guardian. last modified july 10, 2014. http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/may/20/craigventer-synthetic-life-form. wolfe, cary. 1998. critical environments: postmodern theory and the pragmatics of the “outside”. minneapolis london: university of minnesota press. 2013. before the law: humans and other animals in a biopolitical frame. chicago: university of chicago press. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 http://www.gizmag.com/bringing-life-to-inoganic-matter/19855 http://www.gizmag.com/bringing-life-to-inoganic-matter/19855 http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/may/20/craig-venter-synthetic-life-form http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/may/20/craig-venter-synthetic-life-form the posthuman that could have been: mary shelley’s creature the posthuman that could have been mary shelley’s creature margarita carretero-gonzález professor of english literature, universidad de granada grupo de investigación en ecocritica (gieco), instituto franklin uah, universidad de alcalá doi: 10.7358/rela-2016-001-carr carreter@ugr.es abstract at the very core of mary shelley’s frankenstein, the creature meets his maker, acquaints him  – and, consequently, the reader – with the narrative of his miserable life, and entreats him to make a female companion with whom he can share his life. although victor admits to having been moved by the creature’s eloquence and fine sensations, he reluctantly succumbs to his plea only to destroy the female before completing her, afraid that this new species might pose a threat to the survival of his own. in the encounter of these two species, however, only one seems to have truly “met” the other: the creature has indeed become with his maker in a way that victor fails. given that the dominant narrative point of view up until that moment had been victor’s, readers of the novel have the opportunity of having their ignorance enriched regarding the creature straight from the other’s mouth, this multiple narrative thus enabling them to take victor’s creation as far more than the monster he sees. indeed, i would argue that readers do “meet” the creature while his creator cannot. taking this central part of the novel as a starting point, this essay will explore the coexistence of transhuman and posthuman discourses in mary shelley’s frankenstein, working mainly with the 1818 text. in expressing his desire to create an improved species, rendering “man invulnerable to any but a violent death”, victor echoes the transhuman discourses of improvement of the human race, while remaining of this transitory stage, unable to make the transition to the posthuman phase which would grant humanness to his creature, irrespective of his appearance. in failing to do so, i will explore whether he is also preventing the creature to become truly posthuman. keywords: mary shelley, romantic prometheanism, transhumanism, monstrosity, emmanuel levinas, radical alterity, posthumanism, romantic vitalism, english romanticism and natural sciences. in the central pages of the book that brought him to life, away from the traditional accoutrements furnished by the film industry, victor frankenstein’s creature speaks to his maker, eloquently rendering the account http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 margarita carretero-gonzález 54 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ of his miserable life and demanding of him the creation of a female companion. this pivotal moment in the narrative is decisive for the turn and denouement of the plot; if victor gives in to the creature’s demands the novel might have had the happy ending of classical comedies, with the resolution of the conflict and the celebration of life symbolically marked by the type of union – usually a marriage – that brings the characters into a state of harmony. for a short while, indeed, the plot takes that direction, only to end as the tragedy we all know. in identifying the flaw in frankenstein that brings about the tragic ending, i refuse to read the novel following the insisted upon opinion that mary shelley was “warning against tampering with human nature” (weaver 2010, 3), which i find reduces the story to a morality tale. i choose, instead, to locate the hero’s harmartia not in his scientific zeal, but in his inability to “become with” his creature, in his obstinate refusal to locate his humanness, which blinds victor to any possibility of considering the creature worthy of ethical consideration. it is my contention that had the creature been more easily classified as belonging to the human species, frankenstein might not have any qualms in accepting him as an ethical subject. but the creature’s nature remains in a liminal state that leaves him outside the scope of levinas’s ethics of alterity. posthuman ethics are the way to expand levinas’s ethics beyond the posthuman and grant the creature the ethical status he deserves. 1. frankenstein’s dream of the posthuman popular culture has simplified the ethical issues explored in mary shelley’s frankenstein (1818) to such an extent that the story has often been reduced to “a mixture of gothic melodrama and black farce” (holmes 2008, 335), with victor frankenstein as the archetypical mad, evil scientist, and the creature as the robotic, zombie-like being whose strength and fury have to be kept under control, if not destroyed. yet, mary shelley’s characters are far from being conceived as flat, stock villains. the creature, indeed, is “the most articulate person in the whole novel” (holmes 2008, 328), while victor’s scientific endeavours are purportedly guided by a firm desire to benefit humanity, to “banish disease from the human frame, and render man invulnerable to any but a violent death” (shelley 1996, 22) 1. as a true son of his time, a rational humanist, victor trusts that science can play a decisive role in bringing about the perpetual progress of the human species, 1 from this moment onwards, when understood from the context, only the page numbers of the novel will be included in the parenthetical information. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 the posthuman that could have been 55 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ and given that he has had the advantage of receiving the education that enables him to contribute to that progress, he feels his duty, as a modern prometheus, to “pour a torrent of light in our dark world” (32). in the context of what richard holmes has called the age of wonder, that is, “the second scientific revolution, which swept through britain at the end of the eighteenth century, and produced a new vision which has rightly been called romantic science” (2008, xv), and considering that the conception and composition of frankenstein coincided with the vitalism debate of 1816-20, it is not difficult to appraise the novel as a “thought experiment” based on the works of scientists humphry davy, erasmus darwin, luigi galvani, and giovanni aldini (mellor 2003, 17-8). however, when reading the novel almost two hundred years later, it is practically impossible not to detect traces of the discourses that inform transhumanist (and posthumanist) theories. this does not mean that mary shelley was a transhumanist avant la lettre, but corroborates bostrom’s (2005, 2) and ferrando’s (2013, 27) shared opinion that the roots of transhumanism are to be found in the rational humanism of the enlightenment. mary shelley certainly shared with many of her contemporaries – including her father and her husband – an interest in the idea of the perpetual progress of humanity, exploring in the novel the possibilities of using technology to this end, a notion – that of human enhancement through technology– which is crucial to transhumanist reflection (ferrando 2013, 27). alongside isaac newton, thomas hobbes, john locke and immanuel kant, bostrom points at the marquis de condorcet as one influential figure in “form[ing] the basis for rational humanism” (bostrom 2005, 2). mary shelley’s journals provide evidence that she had read his biography on voltaire but leave no trace of her having read his most influential work: sketch for a historical picture of the progress of the human mind 2. yet, the similarities between condorcet’s and frankenstein’s wordings of their respective dreams are glaring: would it be absurd now to suppose that the improvement of the human race should be regarded as capable of unlimited progress? that a time will come when death would result only from extraordinary accidents or the more and more gradual wearing out of vitality, and that, finally, the duration of the average interval between birth and wearing out has itself no specific limit whatsoever? (qtd. in bostrom 2005, 3) 2 the scholarly website romantic circles offers a list of the books read by mary shelley between 1814 and 1844. the list, derived from the journals of mary shelley: 1814-1844, edited by paula r. feldman and diana scott-kilvert (oxford: clarendon press, 1987), can be accessed at https://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/frankenstein/mshelley/reading. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 https://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/frankenstein/mshelley/reading margarita carretero-gonzález 56 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ condorcet’s reflections on the idea of progress – incidentally, in total agreement with william godwin’s on human inventions as capable of perpetual improvement (godwin 1793, 43-50) – are those upon which victor acts: life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which i should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our dark world. a new species would bless me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me. no father could claim the gratitude of his child so completely as i should deserve their’s. pursuing these reflections, i thought, that if i could bestow animation upon lifeless matter, i might in process of time (although i now found it impossible) renew life where death had apparently devoted the body to corruption. (shelley 1996, 32) despite the similarities between the two extracts, i would argue that condorcet’s dream is that of a transhumanist, whereas frankenstein actually envisages the posthuman. while condorcet still keeps “the improvement of the human race” at the centre of his discourse (transhumanism being, according to wolfe [2010, xv], “an intensification of humanism”) frankenstein does so only initially. in his earlier aspiration to render man “invulnerable to anything but violent death”, victor was indeed contemplating just a technologically enhanced human being. however, the quotation above states very clearly that he is actually conceiving of “a new species” (emphasis added), one which would allegedly owe its happiness and excellence to him. the being that frankenstein succeeds in bringing to life is no longer a transitional one, but constitutes an evolutionary leap resulting from “an elaborate circumvention of normal heterosexual procreation” (homans 1986, 101), while condorcet’s visualises an enhanced homo sapiens, a category in which no character in the novel sees fit to include the creature, including the creature himself. the reader gets a first glimpse of frankenstein’s progeny in the framing narrative provided by robert walton. his liminal, hybrid nature is already hinted at when walton describes him as “a being which had the shape of a man, but apparently of gigantic structure” (13). the next morning, however, he seems to have concluded that what he had seen the previous day was indeed a man, given that he introduces victor as “a human being […] not, as the other traveller seemed to be, a savage inhabitant of some undiscovered island, but an european” (13), and that he confirms to frankenstein that he had seen “some dogs drawing a sledge, with a man in it, across the ice” (14). even before getting to know the characters, the reader is struck by the evident contrast between the pursuer and the pursued. victor frankenstein is barely alive when he is rescued – in fact, he does not make it to the end of the novel – but the creature had been seen effortlessly guiding the dogs that drew his sledge, all of them seemingly http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 the posthuman that could have been 57 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ in good health, while frankenstein’s had all but one perished. the creature, indeed, seems to thrive in the natural environment, irrespective of the temperature, almost as if he himself were a force of nature 3. his colossal strength, his agility, and his resilience reveal that he is physically superior to the average human being, a trait that he does not fail to observe: i was not even of the same nature as man. i was more agile than they, and could subsist upon coarser diet; i bore the extremes of heat and cold with less injury to my frame; my stature far exceeded their’s. when i looked around, i saw and heard of none like me. was i then a monster, a blot upon the earth, from which all men fled, and whom all men disowned? (80-1) the differences in their physical features leads the creature to see himself in terms of his alterity, as an other-than-human being, not just because of his appearance but also his constitution. his intelligence also seems to be superior, judging by the fact that he learnt to speak and read at a much faster speed than safie, the turkish woman who comes to live with the de laceys. if we set aside the fact that he has also become a murderer – a big “if”, i am aware – it can even be argued that he is morally superior, too, concerning his dietary choices, no doubt a salute to percy shelley’s views on vegetarianism, a diet which mary also adopted. the creature sees his preferred diet as yet another set of features which sets him apart from the human species: if you consent, neither you nor any other human being shall ever see us again: i will go to the vast wilds of south america. my food is not that of man; i do not destroy the lamb and the kid, to glut my appetite; acorns and berries afford me sufficient nourishment. my companion will be of the same nature as myself, and we will be content with the same fare. we shall make our bed of dried leaves; the sun will shine on us as on man, and will ripen our food. (99; emphasis added) the creature’s diet and the lifestyle he desires are those of adam and eve before the fall, an idyllic existence which he had come to long for while reading paradise lost. however, his is not the vegetarianism – veganism, actually – attached to an earlier state of innocence (or even an earlier stage in human evolution), but one that stems from a moral choice: not to cause gratuitous harm in order to satisfy a perfectly dispensable pleasure, as his choice of words evidences. 3 see mellor (1988, 127-40) for her superb discussion of the moral and aesthetic dimensions of mary shelley’s conception of nature, and her reading of the encounter with the creature in terms of the natural sublime. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 margarita carretero-gonzález 58 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ it becomes apparent that the progeny is physically, intellectually and, at least to a certain degree, morally superior to his maker, the difference between considering his nature transhuman or posthuman resides exclusively in the fact that he can be safely ascribed to a different species, one “whose basic capacities so radically exceed those of present humans as to no longer be unambiguously human by our current standards” (garreau, qtd. in wolfe 2010, xiii). had he been granted his wish of a female companion, he could very well have been not the only, but the first member of this new species. frankenstein’s language may be that of the transhumanist at the beginning, but he dreams of the posthuman, a dream which becomes a nightmare – a “catastrophe”, in victor’s own words (34) – when the creature comes to life. the face that should have appealed to responsibility fails to do so, not so much because it is not the face of a human, but because, having human features, it does not qualify as such. the face that wakes victor from his sleep is just a grotesque mockery of the ideal blazon he must have had in mind when he had “selected his features as beautiful” (34). the creature’s “lustrous, black, and flowing” hair and his “teeth of a pearly whiteness” lose their beauty when contrasted with his “yellow skin”, “watery eyes”, his “shrivelled complexion, and straight black lips” (34). this first face-to-face encounter fails to elicit any empathetic response from victor; the gaze controls his reaction and renders him literally and metaphorically deaf to the needs of his creation: i beheld the wretch – the miserable monster whom i had created. he held up the curtain of the bed; and his eyes, if eyes they may be called, were fixed on me. his jaws opened, and he muttered some inarticulate sounds, while a grin wrinkled his cheeks. he might have spoken, but i did not hear; one hand was stretched out, seemingly to detain me, but i escaped, and rushed down stairs. […] [n]o mortal could support the horror of that countenance. […] i had gazed on him while unfinished; he was ugly then; but when those muscles and joints were rendered capable of motion, it became a thing such as even dante could not have conceived. (35) this is the first of the innumerable occasions on which frankenstein refers to his creature as a “monster”, “a word intimately connected with beholding” (goldstein 2015, 80) and this initial response to the demands of the face irredeemably conditions their relationship. failing to recognise the face of the creature as a correlate other in this first encounter frees victor from feeling any ethical responsibility towards his progeny; after all, a “monster” does not qualify as an ethical subject. yet, the levinasian openness to the other is not only visual, but also “performatively enunciated through language (a ‘saying’ that is also a doing) that irrefutably exposes http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 the posthuman that could have been 59 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ one to the other” (bunch 2014, 43). “speaking”, levinas writes, “rather than ‘letting be,’ solicits the other. speech cuts across vision. […] the formal structure of language thereby announces the ethical inviolability of the other and, without any odor of the ‘numinous’, his ‘holiness’” (levinas 1979, 195). frankenstein is exposed to the other in such terms in the central part of the novel. unable to transcend the horrors of the exterior, frankenstein has taken for granted that the interior must be equally horrid, holding no doubts about the identity of william and justine’s killer even before the creature confesses to his murders. this second encounter and the confession simply add to his preconceived notions about the creature’s evil nature, a conviction he maintains even after listening to the entirety of his account. 2. the face of the creature, or the limits of levinasian ethics even though mary shelley might have been hinting at the impossibility of locating this new species within the accepted order of things when she chose not to give frankenstein’s creature a name, she did grant his tale the central position in this multiple narrative, framed by victor’s, which is, in its turn, framed by walton’s, thus effectively “de-centering the human from the primary focus of the discourse” (ferrando 2013, 32). the technique of using multiple narrators allows readers to get the same story from different points of view. it is, therefore, to be expected that a new image of the creature will emanate after reading his side of the story, one that, at least, shows him as something other than a “monster”. i must admit that i find it very difficult to imagine a reader that remains unmoved by the creature’s account. his tale is one of utter desolation, of hopes that are crushed the moment that they may appear to materialise, of an emotional pain far more excruciating than any physical ache. his life begins in literal and metaphorical darkness and does not get any better as light pours in; on the contrary, the more aware he becomes of how different he is from anyone he sees, the more he wishes he had never been born. the creature’s transformation into an articulate being follows to the letter the steps established in locke’s sensationalism, also elaborated upon by william godwin. it also agrees with godwin’s manifest belief that the moral character of a human being originates in his/her perceptions, as exposed in chapter three of his enquiry concerning political justice. in tune with his views on “perpetual improvement”, the creature’s evolution begins http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 margarita carretero-gonzález 60 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ with simple perception until it reaches abstraction, “one of the sublimest operations of mind” (1793, 45). he first starts responding to both external and internal stimuli, before moving onto the next step: “[…] that of comparison, or the coupling together of two ideas and the perception of their resemblances and differences. without comparison”, godwin adds, “there can be no preference, and without preference no action” (45). whenever the creature compares himself to his surroundings, he always finds himself wanting: if he tries to imitate the song of a bird, his voice comes out much hoarser, and when he catches sight of his reflection on the water he fails to see the perfect human form he admires. this is, in fact, the first moment of anagnorisis for the creature, one of literal recognition, in this case a visual one, in which he recognises himself as an other. given that his first reaction to his own reflection on the water is one of horror, he understands why he encounters rejection wherever he goes. like everyone else he meets, the creature is also deceived by his own face, whose deformity makes him wonder whether he is indeed a monster, momentarily oblivious to the fact that his secret acts of generosity towards the poor cottagers tell a different story. the second, more painful moment of anagnorisis, is found in chapter fifteen, when the creature, having now learnt to read, finally finds the answer to his questions about his origins in victor’s journal. he now understands that he is, indeed, the only member of his species, and is horrified at learning that all the expectations with which his maker had conceived him came to nothing just because of his physical appearance. the potential of the species victor heralded as a harbinger of a new era for humankind is unexplored, discarded, simply because it looks like a monster. similarly, the cottagers, who had referred to the invisible face of he who had helped them in their daily chores as that of a good spirit, failed to see it in the being that was imploring to their father, destroying with their beating any hope he may have had of being admitted into the human community. since his moral character has been shaped by his life and reading experiences – and given that he has read paradise lost and not the book of job – it is almost inevitable that, once he learns about his origins, he turns his anger towards his maker, whom he blames for his miserable existence, which he can only see as tolerable if he could share it with someone of his same species. the demand he places on frankenstein is the solution he envisions for the two species to live in peace, since coexistence is impossible. while the face had failed to move frankenstein, the creature’s eloquent speech seems to be more effective, as had also happened with blind de lacey: http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 the posthuman that could have been 61 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ his words had a strange effect upon him. i compassionated him, and sometimes felt a wish to console him, but when i looked upon him, when i saw the filthy man that moved and talked, my heart sickened, and my feelings were altered to those of horror and hatred. i tried to stifle these sensations; i thought, that as i could not sympathize with him, i had no right to withhold from him the small portion of happiness which was yet in my power to bestow. (99-100) although he admits to the impossibility of sympathising with his creation, this is the first – i would venture, but cannot confirm, the one and only – occasion on which frankenstein grants him the condition of “man” (even if it is a “filthy” one) 4. levinas seems to have been right in considering that speech cuts across vision, and the creature, like satan, like adam, is perfectly able to articulate his plea in terms that cannot render the addressee impassive. however, in the case of the novel that occupies us here, any hint at the possibility of victor recognising his progeny’s humanness is nothing but a momentary illusion. as the creature has painfully learnt, “the human senses are insurmountable barriers to our union” (98), and victor remains conditioned by the evil nature he insists on seeing behind the horrid face. what he said of his first face-to-face encounter with the creature (“he might have spoken, but i did not hear”) remains true after this second meeting: the creature does speak but frankenstein does not listen. accepting that the miserable existence of the creature is exclusively his own fault would have meant that he would also have had to acknowledge his share of blame in the deaths of those he loves, and that is something victor refuses to do. he chooses instead to believe that the creature is innately evil, that his monstrous appearance is the external expression of his corrupted being, and that this evil nature would be perpetuated and pose a threat to humanity if he accepted to grant him a female companion. imagining this evidently superior species as a “race of devils [who] would be propagated upon the earth, [and] might make the very existence of the species of man a condition precarious and full of terror” (114), he designates himself as, once again, saviour of humankind and destroys the female before it is animated, thus denying the creature any hope for happiness and bringing about his own demise. 4 the closer he comes to granting the creature any glimpse of humanness is to be found in his admission that he had created “a sensitive and rational animal” (147). “abhorred monster” is the preferred one among the many niceties (“wretch”, “devil”, “vile insect”, or “daemon”, to mention but a few) victor uses to refer to his progeny. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 margarita carretero-gonzález 62 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 3. the posthuman that could have been given that levinasian ethics “are situated in the human face-to-face encounter” (bunch 2014, 43), and having agreed that the face of the creature is not that of a human, it is evident that it is his face that prevents viewers to grant him ethical status, since those who cannot see it are less reluctant to do so. levinas coincides with victor in according priority to the human face, “an especially acute issue for environmentally minded critics” (perpich 2008, 170), which “raises questions about the subject (via the face) as the proper site for ethics” (bunch 2014, 43). nevertheless, bunch finds a way to “dislodge levinasian ethics from the limits of the human” (2014, 44) in levinas himself; more precisely, in his theorisation of his experience with bobby, the “ethical dog” of concentration camp stalag xib, where he was detained, who succeeded in granting the prisoners the human status that not only camp guards but also villagers had deprived them of. bunch’s use of deleuze and guattari’s concept of “becoming animal” to elaborate upon levinas’s ethics of alterity prove incredibly useful to discern the epistemological position required to grant the creature the ethical status it deserves. bunch works on deleuze and guattari’s estimation that “we are ethical only insofar as we move away from the assimilating ‘horrors’ of the face, which they tie to an aversion to difference” (bunch 2014, 45), which allows me to confirm the suspicion that the horrific face of the creature is indeed the impediment to his qualifying as an ethical subject. their consideration that racism “never detects the particles of the other; it propagates waves of sameness until those who resist identification have been wiped out (or those who only allow themselves to be identified at a given degree of divergence)” (deleuze and guattari 1987, 178) are equally applicable to the type of discrimination the creature suffers on account of his belonging to an unrecognisable species; a particular type of speciesism, since he looks grotesquely human. it is precisely here, that the concept of becoming animal comes in handy, because it “explicitly expands the field of ethical consideration beyond the human subject” (bunch 2014, 45). the concept of “becoming animal” is, indeed, a first step in this expansion but, taken literally, it may be limiting for the text that occupies us since, in the case of the creature, he does not seem to qualify for the ethical consideration victor would have possibly given an animal. one can try to “become animal” – since, indeed one is an animal – but how does one “become monster”? in the case of the creature, frankenstein has to take the position of the reader and do away with the face as a first step to stop seeing the world in perfectly structured, dualistic, hierarchical, anthropohttp://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 the posthuman that could have been 63 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ centric terms. only then can he can truly “become with” his creature. if we take the creature, as indeed we should all other-than-human natures, as members of the “bigger, queer family of companion species” (haraway 2003, 11) we will be looking at the world in true post-dualistic, post-hierarchical, post-human terms. mary shelley’s critique of romantic prometheanism anticipates several of the concerns expressed by some twentieth-century schools of thoughts – posthumanism among others – which have paid attention to the role played by “the fundamental dualisms identified by romanticism” in our current environmental problems (goodbody 2014, 64). since “posthumanism sees the problem originating in belief in human uniqueness and our exaggeratedly hierarchical relationship with other species” (2014, 64), it seems safe to infer that, had the ethical postulates coming from posthumanism informed frankenstein’s choices, had he been able to become animal, become otherthan-human, become post-human, the ending of the novel might have been a very different one. mary bunch’s question whether humanism can provide the cure for dehumanisation (34) can only be answered in the negative. if there is, indeed, a cure, it can only come from posthumanism. references bostrom, nick. 2005. “a history of transhumanist thought”. journal of evolution and technology 14 (1): 1-25. bunch, mary. 2014. “posthuman ethics and the becoming animal of emmanuel levinas”. culture, theory and critique 55 (1): 34-50. deleuze, gilles, and felix guattari. 1987. a thousand plateaus. capitalism and schizophrenia, translated by brian massumi. minneapolis london: university of minnesota press. ferrando, francesca. 2013. “posthumanism, transhumanism, antihumanism, metahumanism, and new materialisms. differences and relations”. existenz 8 (2): 26-32. godwin, william. 1793. an enquiry concerning political justice, and its influence on general virtue and happiness. london: g.g.j. and j. robinson. goldstein, david b. 2015. “facing ‘king lear’”. in shakespeare and the power of the face, edited by james a. knapp, 75-91. farnham: ashgate. goodbody, axel. 2014. “ecocritical theory: romantic roots and impulses from twentieth-century european thinkers”. in the cambridge companion to literature and the environment, edited by louise westling, 61-74. new york: cambridge university press. haraway, donna. 2003. the companion species manifesto: dogs, people, and significant otherness. chicago: prickly paradigm press. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 margarita carretero-gonzález 64 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ holmes, richard. 2008. the age of wonder. how the romantic generation discovered the beauty and terror of science. london: harper press. homans, margaret. 1986. bearing the word: language and the female experience in nineteenth-century women’s writing. chicago: university of chicago press. levinas, emmanuel. 1979. totality and infinity. an essay on exteriority, translated by alphonso lingis. the hague boston london: martinus nijhoff. “mary shelley’s readings”. 2009. romantic circles. last modified may, 2009. https:// www.rc.umd.edu/editions/frankenstein/mshelley/reading. mellor, anne k. 1988. mary shelley: her life, her fiction, her monsters. new york: methuen. 2003. “making a monster: an introduction to ‘frankenstein’”. in the cambridge companion to mary shelley, edited by esther schor, 9-25. cambridge: cambridge university press. perpich, diane. 2008. the ethics of emmanuel levinas. stanford, ca: stanford university press. shelley, mary. 1996. frankenstein. the 1818 text, edited by j. paul hunter. new york london: w.w. norton & company. weaver, john a. 2010. educating the posthuman. biosciences, fiction, and curriculum studies. rotterdam: sense. wolfe, cary. 2010. what is posthumanism? minneapolis london: university of minnesota press. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 https://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/frankenstein/mshelley/reading https://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/frankenstein/mshelley/reading the relationship between humans and other animals in european animal welfare legislation 33 relations – 1.i june 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the relationship between humans and other animals in european animal welfare legislation paola sobbrio affiliated to università cattolica del sacro cuore, piacenza, italy doi: 10.7358/rela-2013-001-sobb psobbrio@hotmail.com abstract beginning with the treaty of amsterdam and then later with the treaty of lisbon (tfeu), europe has more than once formally recognized nonhuman animals as sentient beings. this recognition spurred the creation of regulations that provide for the protection and promotion of animal welfare. however, this protection seems to contain many exceptions, particularly regarding the consideration from which these regulations stemmed: the recognition of animal sentience. in this paper, i argue that the regulations generated by this legislation, far from being aimed at improving the living conditions of nonhuman animals used by the human animals, are actually put in place in order to obtain additional benefits for humans. these benefits include, but are not limited to, the reduction of zoonotic diseases (in the case of nonhuman animals being used for breeding), and the improvement in predictability of animal models (in the case of nonhuman animals being used for experimental purposes). while the rhetoric of these laws seems to endorse the protection and welfare of animals as sentient beings, they actually allow for their enslavement and objectification. in the end, the credibility of europe’s acknowledgement of animal sentience is greatly hampered by the institutionalization of very cruel practices allowed by animal welfare regulations. keywords: animal welfare, legislation, nonhuman animal, human animal, sentient beings, food, research, quality, strategy, european union. 1. introduction the study of animal welfare is interdisciplinary. the concern for animal welfare (manifested in the creation of european standards on animal welfare) stems from concerns relating to animals being used in intensive farming. animal machines, written in 1964, was the first book to shed light upon the detention of animals on these farms (harrison 1964). the book’s http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ paola sobbrio 34 relations – 1.i june 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ title – a cartesian definition comparing nonhuman animals to machines – is a reaction to the treatment of animals not only on factory farms but also, more generally, in all cases in which human animals use nonhuman animals and do not consider them to be ‘sentient beings’. in this essay, i will often use the terms ‘human animal’ and ‘nonhuman animal’ to emphasize that we all belong to the same animal kingdom (despite the way in which the former animal may treat the latter). in some instances, for the sake of brevity, i will use the more conventional terms: ‘animal’ and ‘human’. 2. welfare of nonhuman animals in europe in 1960, the council of europe promoted international agreements intended to protect animal welfare. in 1976, the european convention for the protection of animals kept for farming purposes was created, followed by the european convention for the protection of animals during international transport in 1978. since 1980, the european union (eu) has issued a series of directives and regulations aimed at both horizontally and vertically protecting nonhuman animals used for a variety of purposes (food, fur, fun, pets, etc.). the eu has defined nonhuman animals as ‘sentient beings’ since the treaty of amsterdam, signed in 1997. however, defining animals as such appears to be a strategy aimed at protecting the human animal rather than the nonhuman animal. both the eu regulations on animal welfare and the numerous european legislative documents addressing this topic provide ample evidence that legislative considerations toward animal welfare are actually designed to assure human welfare – specifically in regard to the healthiness of human food and the protection of human health. the close relationship between animal welfare, animal health, and animal productivity is also among the most common reasons for the promotion of animal welfare. for example, the fao report explains that certain welfare-related measures are important for the prevention or reduction of animal injures and losses in order to improve meat quality, carcass quality, or production losses (fraser et al. 2009, 31). the above mentioned relationship has also been reaffirmed by the welfare quality® project. research conducted by this organization emphasizes the importance of animal welfare to european consumers, who readily correlate animal welfare with the quality of the food they eat. in an overview of the project’s mission, the welfare quality® project’s website confirms that its interest in animal welfare is greatly motivated by the desire to preserve human welfare, stating that “the fact that improving the animal’s welfare humans and other animals in european animal welfare legislation 35 relations – 1.i june 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ can positively affect product quality, pathology and disease resistance also has a direct bearing on food quality and safety” (welfare quality® 2009). even the european food safety authority (efsa) has dealt with animal welfare. its pamphlet, science protecting consumers from field to fork, highlights that the prevention of zoonotic diseases (about 75% of the new diseases that have affected humans since 2000 originated from animals or products of animal origin) can be achieved by adjusting the conditions and treatment of animals, in other words: through attention to animal welfare. for this reason, even the efsa “assesses the safety of animal feed, which is important for the health of animals, the environment and for the safety of foods of animal origin” (efsa 2012, 4). more recently, the communication from the commission to the european parliament, the council and the european economic and social committee on the european union strategy for the protection and welfare of animals 2012-2015 mentions in its introduction that “article 13 of the treaty on the functioning of the european union recognizes animals as sentient beings and requires full regard be given to the welfare requirements of animals while formulating and enforcing some eu policies” (european commission 2012, 2). the strategy has even adopted the new slogan “everyone is responsible”. this slogan is indicative of the different multilevel initiatives that the strategy has adopted. these initiatives include an improvement upon the training of animal caretakers and the creation of a new method of farm inspection that focuses on the animals themselves instead of the environment in which they live. unfortunately, even in this document, there is evidence that the attention given to animal welfare is based in a desire to improve human welfare. article 13 contains a contradiction in regard to the acknowledgement of animal sentience: in formulating and implementing the union’s agriculture, fisheries, transport, internal market, research and technological development and space policies, the union and the member states shall, since animals are sentient beings, pay full regard to the welfare requirements of animals, while respecting the legislative or administrative provisions and customs of the member states relating in particular to religious rites, cultural traditions and regional heritage. (council of the european union 2010) this article asserts that nonhuman animals are living and sentient beings, but also explicitly allows for the disregard of their sentience in the case of religious rites, cultural traditions and regional heritage. the reason for this contradiction is greatly economic. in fact, the above mentioned communication also allows for the ignoring of animal sentience, not only for the aforementioned reasons, but also to support the livestock industry and to support both basic and pharmaceutical research. systematic and institutionalized paola sobbrio 36 relations – 1.i june 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ exploitation of nonhuman animals is promoted and supported by european policies and therefore directly undermines the statement that nonhuman animals are living and sentient beings able to experience feelings and emotions such as fear, hunger, cold, discomfort, pain, etc. according to the brambell report (1965), the minimum conditions to ensure welfare for a nonhuman animal living in detention are represented by the five freedoms. 1. freedom from hunger and thirst – by ready access to fresh water and a diet to maintain full health and vigour. 2. freedom from discomfort – by providing an appropriate environment including shelter and a comfortable resting area. 3. freedom from pain, injury or disease – by prevention or rapid diagnosis and treatment. 4. freedom to express normal behaviour – by providing sufficient space, proper facilities and company of the animal’s own kind. 5. freedom from fear and distress – by ensuring conditions and treatment which avoid mental suffering. (farm animal welfare committee 2011) considering only these five freedoms and not yet taking into account any other factors, how many nonhuman animals could we say enjoy and benefit from these five freedoms when they are subjected by humans to conditions of detention for the purpose of breeding, transportation or experimentation? it is difficult to believe that nonhuman animals held in animal enclosures or forced to live on farms are free from fear and psychological suffering, or that they have the freedom to express the typical behavior of their species. 3. welfare assessment welfare assessments contain physiological, behavioral, emotional, health related, and production related elements. there is no unequivocal definition of these assessments (duncan 1993). according to broom, an individual’s welfare is its state of being as it attempts to cope with its environment (1986). this definition claims that an individual’s welfare can be scientifically measured and that it cannot be influenced by moral considerations (broom 1991). welfare can be measured according to well-defined indicators showing how the nonhuman animal copes with its environment and therefore whether or not it benefits from good or bad conditions. the world organization for animal health (oie) adopted this definition of animal welfare: animal welfare means how an animal is coping with the conditions in which it lives. an animal is in a good state of welfare if (as indicated by scientific evihumans and other animals in european animal welfare legislation 37 relations – 1.i june 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ dence) it is healthy, comfortable, well nourished, safe, able to express innate behavior, and if it is not suffering from unpleasant states such as pain, fear, and distress. good animal welfare requires disease prevention and veterinary treatment, appropriate shelter, management, nutrition, humane handling and humane slaughter or killing. animal welfare refers to the state of the animal; the treatment that an animal receives is covered by other terms such as animal care, animal husbandry, and humane treatment. (world organisation for animal health [1968] 2012, 299) scientific assessments of welfare have also shown that a healthy animal will provide a healthy product – but can a sentient being be considered a product? the communication from the commission to the european parliament, the council and the european economic and social committee on the european union strategy for the protection and welfare of animals 2012-2015 states that “livestock farming in the eu represents an annual value of 149 billion euros and the use of experimental animals is estimated to have an annual value of 930 million euros” (european commission 2012, 3). the european union directly supports actions aimed at improving animal welfare through annual grants worth 70 million euros. it does so because the use of animals is economically important in terms of european market competitiveness. as far back as 2002, the commission has highlighted that a lack of synchronization in animal treatment regulations between third countries and member states could create economic disadvantages for countries that adopt higher welfare standards (european commission 2002). this concern over competitive disadvantages has continued to hinder legislative progress for animal welfare. even in recent years, no decisive steps have been taken towards a real improvement of animal welfare – even though it has been made clear that consumers prefer to consume a ‘product’ that comes from an animal reared in accordance with high welfare standards, as it results in a healthier ‘product’. consumers are concerned about animal welfare. especially after the bse epidemic, consumers place great importance on the relationship between the quality of life of a farmed animal and the healthiness of the product it produces. therefore, far from worrying about the conditions in which nonhuman animals live, consumers desire the best welfare standards for animals in order to ensure that the product that they consume will be both healthy and of good quality (welfare quality® 2009). this approach to animal welfare can be confirmed by analyzing the horizontal legislation concerning farmed animals, i.e. general rules concerning the protection of farmed animals, irrespective of their species. paola sobbrio 38 relations – 1.i june 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the council directive 98/58/ec of 20 july 1998: concerning the protection of animals kept for farming purposes states that “there is therefore a need to establish common minimum standards for the protection of animals kept for farming purposes in order to ensure rational development of production and to facilitate the organization of the market in animals; whereas to that end it is appropriate to take account of animal welfare provisions already laid down in community rules” (council directive 98/58/ec). it further states that “whereas a comparative examination of animal welfare provisions applicable in the community and in certain non-member countries together with an appraisal thereof should be undertaken with a view to determining the nature of future community initiatives aimed at eliminating distortions of competition” (council directive 98/58/ec). this directive does not define welfare but it does indicate that there should be certain protective standards for animals. article 3 provides that member states must ensure that those who are responsible for animals do not cause them “unnecessary” pain, suffering, or injuries (council directive 98/58/ec). but no subsequent legislative act specifies what is meant by the term ‘unnecessary’. 4. welfare and sentience unlike broom, duncan and petherick claim that: animal welfare is dependent solely on the mental, psychological, and cognitive needs of the animals concerned. in general, if these mental needs are met, they will cover the physical needs. […] we would argue that as long as the animal’s mental state is protected (i.e. as long as the animal ‘feels’ all right) then its welfare will be all right. now, of course, usually when an animal is ill, it will also feel ill, so that taking care of its mental state (i.e. how it feels) will automatically take care of its physical health. (duncan and petherick 1991, 5017-8) this definition of welfare takes into account feelings and needs – not only physical needs but also, and above all, mental needs. by this definition, article 13 of tfeu (council of the european union 2010) continues to contradict itself. while it asserts that animals are sentient beings whose ‘welfare requirements’ must be taken into account by humans, it lacks any mention of their needs or feelings. the term ‘requirements’ is well suited to european legislation which does not take into account the needs, feelings, or emotions of nonhuman animals and that considers only the physical space and the environment in which animals are located. humans and other animals in european animal welfare legislation 39 relations – 1.i june 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ underlying article 13 and all other animal welfare legislation is a reference to ethological assessments. in the council directive 98/58/ec of july 20, 1998, it is stated in the annex that “no animal shall be kept for farming purposes unless it can reasonably be expected, on the basis of its genotype or phenotype, that it can be kept without detrimental effect on its health or welfare” (council directive 98/58/ec). according to this part of the 1998 directive, no nonhuman animal could, therefore, be confined on a farm. the council directive 2008/120/ec of december 18, 2008 sets minimum standards for the protection of pigs and is slightly more realistic: it explains that “a balance should be kept between the various aspects to be taken into consideration, as regarding welfare including health, economic and social considerations, and also environmental impact” (council directive 2008/120/ec). similar considerations are also given to hens in the council directive 1999/74/ec of july 19, 1999, which sets minimum standards for the protection of laying hens (council directive 1999/74/ec). for the same reason, the aforementioned directive provides in annex i, chapter ii that: all procedures intended as an intervention carried out for other than therapeutic or diagnostic purposes or for the identification of the pigs in accordance with relevant legislation and resulting in damage to or the loss of a sensitive part of the body or the alteration of bone structure shall be prohibited with the following exceptions: a uniform reduction of corner teeth of piglets by grinding or clipping not later than the seventh day of life of the piglets leaving an intact smooth surface; boars’ tusks may be reduced in length where necessary to prevent injuries to other animals or for safety reasons, docking of a part of the tail, castration of male pigs by other means than tearing of tissues, nose-ringing only when the animals are kept in outdoor husbandry systems and in compliance with national legislation. (council directive 2001/93/ec) listed above are the ‘necessary’ measures put in place to avoid any economic losses that could result from the frequent aggression displayed by pigs in reaction to conditions of overcrowding, characteristic of intensive farming. 5. welfare in the directive 2010/63/eu of the european parliament and the council on the protection of animals used for scientific purposes on september 8, 2010, the european parliament approved a long time coming revision of the text of directive 86/609 (council directive 2010/63/ eu). the revision implemented improvements in the welfare conditions paola sobbrio 40 relations – 1.i june 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ of farmed animals. it focused particularly on the promotion of alternative farming methods both because of progress that had been made in this area and also because experimentation on nonhuman animals had become increasingly ethically controversial. despite this revision, these advancements have been extensively disregarded by the directive – to such an extent that a european initiative has arisen, requesting their abrogation (stop vivisection 2012). on the european commission website it is also written that the directive is characterized by its flexibility of use: it requires that member states reap results, but it allows those states ample freedom to choose the way in which they arrive at those results. the directive in question, however, is not the only directive which provides for the use of animals for scientific purposes; the reach directive, which addresses the use of animals in toxicity testing of chemicals, also contains this allowance – regulation (ec) no. 1907/2006 of the european parliament and of the council. it is estimated that 90,000 vertebrate animals will be used annually to introduce new chemicals in the environment (68,000) (rovida and hartung 2009). the european commission calculates that in ten years, between eight and 13 million animals may be used for research – this, of course, is in addition to the 12 million animals already allowed for in the directive 63/2010 (european commission 2010). article 5 of the directive provides for the use of animals in research for: (a) basic research; (b) translational or applied research with any of the following aims: (i) the avoidance, prevention, diagnosis or treatment of disease, illhealth or other abnormality or their effects in human beings, animals or plants; (ii) the assessment, detection, regulation or modification of physiological conditions in human beings, animals or plants; or (iii) the welfare of animals and the improvement of the production conditions for animals reared for agricultural purposes; (c) for any of the aims in point (b) in the development, manufacture or testing of the quality, effectiveness and safety of drugs, foodstuffs and feedstuffs and other substances or products; (d) protection of the natural environment in the interests of the health or welfare of human beings or animals; (e) research aimed at preservation of the species; (f) higher education, or training for the acquisition, maintenance or improvement of vocational skills; (g) forensic inquiries. (council directive 2010/63/eu) this almost all-inclusive list does not exclude the use of animals for educational purposes – an issue that, given the above assumptions, likely would have been prohibited by the new directive. humans and other animals in european animal welfare legislation 41 relations – 1.i june 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ the directive does not add to or improve upon the 3r principle (refine, replace, and reduce the number of animals used in experimentation), which had been introduced in the 1986 directive. these objectives had been abundantly emphasized in the previous directive, so much so that it led to the creation of ecvam, a centre for the validation of alternative methods of animal testing (council directive 86/609/eec). the 2010 directive, contrary to what one might expect, does not prohibit the use of great apes but instead gives each member state the power to prohibit specific uses as it sees fit. examples of possible uses include: prophylaxis, prevention, diagnosis or treatment of disease, poor health condition or other abnormality as they effect humans, animals or plants; as part of the development, production or quality tests of effectiveness and safety of drugs, food, and other substances or products; research aimed at preservation of the species (council directive 2010/63/eu). in addition to this list, the directive also allows nonhuman primates to be used for basic research. this directive, which constitutes the most afflictive legislation for nonhuman animals, does not neglect to address – at least rhetorically – animal welfare. the directive discusses the importance given to the socialization of animals and the enrichment of the spaces intended for animals (specifically in regard to cage size). the directive also made provisions for retrospective assessments of animal welfare projects in order to evaluate their usefulness, level of success in achieving predetermined objectives, transparency when publishing data; and to confirm the creation of an animal-welfare authority. in this case, an animal-welfare authority, provided for by article 26, would consist of the person or persons responsible for the welfare and care of the animals and, in certain cases, of one scientific member. a veterinarian appointed by an expert described in article 25 would also contribute to the animal-welfare authority (council directive 2010/63/eu). the directive does not clearly specify who these figures would be, who would appoint them, or by whom they would be paid. furthermore, under this legislation, it is unclear whether or not it would still be possible for the owner of the animal establishment to choose and reimburse the veterinarian responsible for verifying animal welfare. the terms, ‘ethical treatment of animals’, ‘humane treatment’, and ‘animal welfare’ are used only rhetorically in this directive. annex viii, entitled severity classifications, divides animal procedures into three categories based on severity. the first one is mild: “procedures on animals as a result of which the animals are likely to experience short-term mild pain, suffering or distress, as well as procedures with no significant impairment of the well-being or general condition of the animals” (council directive paola sobbrio 42 relations – 1.i june 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 2010/63/eu). the second is moderate, “procedures on animals as a result of which the animals are likely to experience short-term moderate pain, suffering or distress, or long-lasting mild pain, suffering or distress as well as procedures that are likely to cause moderate impairment of the wellbeing or general condition of the animals” (council directive 2010/63/ eu). the last one is severe, “procedures on animals as a result of which the animals are likely to experience severe pain, suffering or distress, or long-lasting moderate pain, suffering or distress as well as procedures, that are likely to cause severe impairment of the well-being or general condition of the animals” (council directive 2010/63/eu). in section iii on annex viii, examples of ‘mild’ procedures include, among others: (g) induction of tumors, or spontaneous tumors, that cause no detectable clinical adverse effects (e.g. small, subcutaneous, non-invasive nodules); (h) breeding of genetically altered animals, which is expected to result in a phenotype with mild effects; (i) feeding of modified diets, that do not meet all of the animals’ nutritional needs and are expected to cause mild clinical abnormality within the time-scale of the study; (j) short-term (< 24h) restraint in metabolic cages; (k) studies involving short-term deprivation of social partners, short-term solitary caging of adult rats or mice of sociable strains. (council directive 2010/63/eu) examples of ‘moderate’ procedures found in the same part of the directive include: (c) surgery under general anesthesia and appropriate analgesia, associated with post surgical pain, suffering or impairment of general condition; examples include: thoracotomy, craniotomy, laparotomy, orchidectomy, lymphadenectomy, thyroidectomy, orthopedic surgery with effective stabilization and wound management, organ transplantation with effective management of rejection, surgical implantation of catheters, or biomedical devices (e.g. telemetry transmitters, minipumps etc.); (d) models of induction of tumors, or spontaneous tumors, that are expected to cause moderate pain or distress or moderate interference with normal behavior; (e) irradiation or chemotherapy with a sublethal dose, or with an otherwise lethal dose but with reconstitution of the immune system; adverse effects would be expected to be mild or moderate and would be shortlived (< 5 days); (f) breeding of genetically altered animals which are expected to result in a phenotype with moderate effects; (g) creation of genetically altered animals through surgical procedures; humans and other animals in european animal welfare legislation 43 relations – 1.i june 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ (h) use of metabolic cages involving moderate restriction of movement over a prolonged period (up to 5 days); (i) studies with modified diets that do not meet all of the animals’ nutritional needs and are expected to cause moderate clinical abnormality within the time-scale of the study; (j) withdrawal of food for 48 hours in adult rats; (k) evoking escape and avoidance reactions where the animal is unable to escape or avoid the stimulus, and are expected to result in moderate distress. (council directive 2010/63/eu) finally, despite the rhetorical consideration given to “animals welfare” and “ethological needs” of animals, section iii of the directive indicates the following as examples of severe procedures: (a) toxicity testing where death is the end-point, or fatalities are to be expected and severe pathophysiological states are induced; for example, single dose acute toxicity testing (see oecd testing guidelines); (b) testing of device where failure may cause severe pain, distress or death of the animal (e.g. cardiac assist devices); (c) vaccine potency testing characterized by persistent impairment of the animal’s condition, progressive disease leading to death, associated with long-lasting moderate pain, distress or suffering; (d) irradiation or chemotherapy with a lethal dose without reconstitution of the immune system, or reconstitution with production of graft versus host disease; (e) models with induction of tumors, or with spontaneous tumors, that are expected to cause progressive lethal disease associated with longlasting moderate pain, distress or suffering, for example tumors causing cachexia, invasive bone tumors, tumors resulting in metastatic spread, and tumors that are allowed to ulcerate; (f) surgical and other interventions in animals under general anesthesia which are expected to result in severe or persistent moderate postoperative pain, suffering or distress or severe and persistent impairment of the general condition of the animals; production of unstable fractures, thoracotomy without adequate analgesia, or trauma to produce multiple organ failure; (g) organ transplantation where organ rejection is likely to lead to severe distress or impairment of the general condition of the animals (e.g. xenotransplantation); (h) breeding animals with genetic disorders that are expected to experience severe and persistent impairment of general condition, for example huntington’s disease, muscular dystrophy, chronic relapsing neuritis models; (i) use of metabolic cages involving severe restriction of movement over a prolonged period; (j) inescapable electric shock (e.g. to produce learned helplessness); paola sobbrio 44 relations – 1.i june 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ (k) complete isolation for prolonged periods of social species e.g. dogs and non-human primates; (l) immobilization stress to induce gastric ulcers or cardiac failure in rats; (m) forced swim or exercise tests with exhaustion as the end-point. (council directive 2010/63/eu) 6. conclusion in european legislation, the term ‘animal welfare’ has become a buzzword used to draw a connection between the improvement in living conditions for nonhuman animals and the improvement in that of human welfare. after examining legislative rules and documents, it is clear that, while nonhuman animals are formally considered sentient beings, they are treated as insentient and considered to be objects of consumption, commodities, products, and means of production. the nonhuman animal, whether it is intended to produce meat, milk, eggs, medicine, or a new therapy, is a means by which europe bases its economic growth and its ability to compete in the world market. every year, billions of nonhuman animals (fish included) are bred, housed, butchered and slaughtered to satisfy the european economic market. faced with this axiomatic evidence, it can be concluded that the welfare considerations on which animal regulations are based – not to mention, the (obvious) assertion that nonhuman animals are sentient beings – constitutes only a rhetorical narrative hiding one single concern: the desire to safeguard the welfare of other animals. human animals. references brambell, rogers f.w. (chairman). 1965. report of the technical committee to enquire into the welfare of animals kept under intensive livestock systems. london: her majesty’s stationery office. broom, donald m. 1986. “indicators of poor welfare”. british veterinary journal 142 (6): 524-6. doi: 10.1016/0007-1935(86)90109-0. 1991. “animal welfare: concepts and measurement”. journal of animal science 69 (10): 4167-75. council directive. 1986. “approximation of laws, regulations and administrative provisions of the member states regarding the protection of animals used for experimental and other scientific purposes. council directive 86/609/ eec of 24 november 1986”. official journal of the european union l 358 (18/12/1986): 1-28. 1998. “concerning the protection of animals kept for farming purposes. council directive 98/58/ec of 20 july 1998”. official journal of the european communities l 221 (08/08/1998): 23-7. humans and other animals in european animal welfare legislation 45 relations – 1.i june 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 1999. “laying down minimum standards for the protection of laying hens”. official journal of the european communities l 203 (03/08/1999): 53-7. 2001. “amending directive 91/630/eec laying down minimum standards for the protection of pigs. council directive 2001/93/ec of 9 november 2001”. official journal of the european communities l 316 (01/12/2001): 36-8. 2009. “laying down minimum standards for the protection of pigs. council directive 2008/120/ec”. official journal of the european union l 47 (18/02/2009): 5-13. 2010. “on the protection of animals used for scientific purposes. council directive 2010/63/eu of 22 september 2010”. official journal of the european union l 276 (20/10/2010): 33-79. council of the european union. 2010. “consolidated versions of the treaty on european union and the treaty on the functioning of the european union”. official journal of the european union c 83 (30/03/2010). duncan, ian j.h. 1993. “welfare is to do with what animals feel”. journal of agricultural and environmental ethics 6, supplement 2: 8-14. duncan, ian j.h., and carol j. petherick. 1991. “the implications of cognitive processes for animal welfare”. journal of animal science 69 (12): 5017-22. efsa. 2012. science protecting consumers from field to fork. accessed december 6, 2012. http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/corporate/doc/efsacorporatebrochure.pdf. european commission. 2010. “sixth report on the statistics on the number of animals used for experimental and other scientific purposes in the member states of the european union sec(2010) 1107”. official website of the european union. accessed december 6, 2012. http://eur-lex.europa.eu/ lexuriserv/lexuriserv.do?uri=com:2010:0511:rev1:en:pdf. 2012. “communication from the commission to the council and the european parliament on animal welfare legislation on farmed animals in third countries and the implications for the eu”. official website of the european union. accessed december 6, 2012. http://ec.europa.eu/food/animal/ welfare/references/2002_0626_en.pdf. 2012. “communication from the commission to the european parliament, the council and the european economic and social committee on the european union strategy for the protection and welfare of animals 2012-2015”. official website of the european union. accessed december 6, 2012. http://ec.europa. eu/food/animal/welfare/actionplan/docs/aw_strategy_19012012_en.pdf. european parliament, and council. 2006. “concerning the registration, evaluation, authorisation and restriction of chemicals (reach), establishing a european chemicals agency, amending directive 1999/45/ec and repealing council regulation (eec) no. 793/93 and commission regulation (ec) no. 1488/94 as well as council directive 76/769/eec and commission directives 91/155/eec, 93/67/eec, 93/105/ec and 2000/21/ec. regulation (ec) no. 1907/2006 of the european parliament and council of 18 december 2006”. official journal of the european union l 396 (20/12/2006). farm animal welfare committee. 2011. “five freedoms”. fawc. accessed december 6, 2012. http://www.defra.gov.uk/fawc/about/five-freedoms. paola sobbrio 46 relations – 1.i june 2013 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ fraser, david, et al. 2009. capacity building to implement good animal welfare practices report of the fao expert meeting – fao headquarters (rome) 30 september 3 october 2008. rome: food and agriculture organization of the united nations. harrison, ruth. 1964. animal machines. london: stuart. rovida, costanza, and thomas hartung. 2009. “re-evaluation of animal numbers and costs for in vivo tests to accomplish reach legislation requirements for chemicals – a report by the transatlantic think tank for toxicology (t4)”. altex 26 (3): 187-208. stop vivisection. 2012. what is stop vivisection. accessed december 6, 2012. http://www.stopvivisection.eu/en/content/what-stop-vivisection. welfare quality®. 2009. project overview. accessed december 6, 2012. http://www. welfarequality.net/everyone/26536/5/0/22. world organisation for animal health. (1968) 2012. terrestrial animal health code. volume i. paris: office international epizooties. posthuman spaces of relation: literary responses to the species boundary in primate literature posthuman spaces of relation literary responses to the species boundary in primate literature diana villanueva romero lecturer of english, universidad de extremadura, cáceres grupo de investigación en ecocritica (gieco), instituto franklin uah, university of alcalá doi: 10.7358/rela-2016-001-vill dvillanv@unex.es this article aims at showing how contemporary literary responses to human-nonhuman primate relationships can be as valid a form of thinking about the animal as the philosophical and scientific roots of movements such as the great ape project. traditionally the ape has been the source of stories that question the definition of the human. since the beginning of the modern animal liberation movement in the 1970s and thanks to the development of scientific fields such as cognitive ethology, primatology, and trans-species psychology, some fiction writers have produced works that develop alternative ways of thinking about the nonhuman primate. in order to understand the transformative power of the literary imagination this article first offers a short reflection on the connections between the posthuman turn and the development of literary animal studies. secondly, after commenting on the main narratives that have nourished our relationship with nonhuman apes since the eighteenth century, it presents an overview of the main ape motifs that populate anglophone literatures. and finally, it argues that literature compels us to transcend the category “human” and enter into a posthuman age that philosophers such as cary wolfe or rosi braidotti acknowledge as more in tune with the reality of who we are as a species: multiply hybridized in our constant interactions with nonhuman beings. keywords: primate literature, literary animal studies, posthumanism, posthuman humanities, cyborg posthumanism, animot posthumanism, animal ethics, species boundary, animal liberation, ecocriticism. the history of the animal liberation movement in the western world reached a significant point with the foundation in 1994 of the great ape project (gap), an initiative aimed at obtaining the recognition of three basic rights for great apes: the right to life, protection of individual liberty, and prohibition of torture. although this international movement finally led to failed http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 diana villanueva romero 82 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ attempts in new zealand and spain to gain legal rights for great apes, it also stirred heated debate on the nature of human-animal relationships indicating a horizon of possibilities for bridging the distance between the human and the nonhuman animal, and so creating a posthuman space of relation. traditionally, in the sphere of fiction writing, the ape has been since antiquity the source of stories that played with the definition of the human in an attempt to establish the ground for a differentiation that would save face for the homo sapiens. interestingly, since the beginning of the modern animal liberation movement in the 1970s and thanks to the development of scientific fields such as cognitive ethology, primatology, and trans-species psychology, some fiction writers have produced works that develop new ways of thinking about the nonhuman primate. some of them show the potential of literature to suggest alternative forms of dealing with the species boundary. this essay aims at showing how contemporary literary responses to human-nonhuman primate relationships can be as valid a form of thinking about the animal as the philosophical and scientific roots of movements such as the gap. in order to do so, firstly, a short reflection on the connections between the posthuman turn and the development of literary animal studies will be given. secondly, after commenting on the main narratives that have nourished our relationship with nonhuman apes since the eighteenth century, an overview of the main ape motifs that populate anglophone literatures will be presented. and finally, it will be argued that literature compels us to transcend the category “human” and enter into a posthuman age that philosophers such as cary wolfe or rosi braidotti acknowledge as more in tune with the reality of who we are as a species: multiply hybridized in our constant interactions with nonhuman beings. 1. animal ethics and the posthuman turn the history of the modern animal rights movement begins at the university of oxford in the early 1970s. it was there that a group of philosophy students planted the seed of what norm phelps denominates “the golden age of animal rights” which extends from 1975 until the early 1990s (2007, 222). such was articulated mainly through the coinage by richard ryder in 1970 of the term “speciesism”, discrimination on account of species, and the publication in 1971 of a collection of articles on animal ethics titled animals, men and morals: an enquiry into the maltreatment of nonhumans, edited by roslind and stanley godlovitch, and john harris. these two landmarks of animal activism led peter singer, then connected http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 posthuman spaces of relation 83 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ to the seminal oxford group, to write animal liberation (1975), the bible of the twentieth-century animal liberation movement. the question of the animal was hence reaching the realm of applied ethics in the anglo-american tradition and leading as well to an interesting response in society towards the acknowledgement of a species continuum, which implied the blurring of the species boundary. this is one of the main ideas that lie at the root of the gap, a project led by paola cavalieri and peter singer in an attempt at claiming the granting of basic rights to great apes. interestingly, soon after its formulation, some authors like animal ethologist marc bekoff, after noticing gap’s primatecentrism, began formulating alternatives that seemed more inclusive of the species diversity there is on the planet. hence, for instance, bekoff, in deep ethology, animal rights, and the great ape/animal project: resisting speciesism and expanding the community of equals (1998), defended an all species “project” that does not privilege those closer to the homo sapiens. either way, what is highly interesting is that from the 1970s onwards the questioning of the species boundary has led to attempts to formulate a new space of interspecies relationship. such shift towards redefining human-nonhuman interactions acquires a stronger potential if situated in the context of the posthuman turn that according to wolfe and braidotti is affecting the humanities today (wolfe 2009, 572; braidotti 2013a, 1). this is why in this article it will be argued that animal literature is a necessary step in the evolution of the humanities into a new paradigm that can be described as the posthuman humanities promoted by a movement from language to matter, from words to bodies. actually, in order to survive, the humanities need to become posthuman in the sense of taking into consideration the more-than-human world (braidotti 2013b, 149). several are the schools of thought that have approached animal studies, and more specifically literary animal studies, since its origin in the 1980s. one of the most relevant ones has been posthumanism. cary wolfe, for example, has connected the issue of the posthuman to the study of literature in works such as animal rites: american culture, the discourse of species, and the posthumanist theory (2003), zoontologies: the question of the animal (2003), or human, all too human: “animal studies” and the humanities (2009). he warns the reader about the dangers of anthropocentrism in practices with provocative names such as animal studies since, even though the animal is there literally as the subject of study, it is difficult, as literary critics, to use a lens capable of seeing the nonhuman animal free from the layers of anthropocentric thinking in which it has remained captive throughout centuries of looking at it from a position of ontological superiority built around the figure of man. but since man, according to michel foucault, http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 diana villanueva romero 84 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ is already dead, thinkers like wolfe, with a sustained interest in literary studies and the animal question, have started wondering about the ways in which the field of literary studies should change in order to approach the animal from a nonanthropocentric point of view. in fact, when in 2005 kenneth j. shapiro and marion w. copeland established the issues on which the zoocritic should concentrate nothing was said really about adopting a nonanthropocentric lens. a different approach seemed to emerge later on thanks to the development of postcolonial ecocriticism which actually made the practice of zoocriticism one of its core tenets. this should not provoke any surprise given the fact that the animal, as tiffin declares, had already been declared the ultimate other and the connection between the postcolonial subject and the animal was made evident frequently in many literary texts (2001, 33). furthermore, on hindsight, even before zoocriticism was made central to the ecocritical practice from a postcolonial point of view, feminist ecocriticism had already explored the subject of the nonhuman animal. given the traditional identification between women and nature, patrick d. murphy became in the 1995 the first to highlight the power of fiction to unearth the voice of naturalized beings. in his work he turned bakhtin’s dialogics into a nonanthropocentric tool. it is in this direction that louise westling’s article literature, the environment, and the question of the posthuman (2006) moves, too. westling connects the work of french phenomenologist maurice merleau-ponty and his call to reawaken the world around us with the literary opus of virginia woolf. at the beginning of her article she ponders on the possibilities offered by posthumanism to debunk the myth of the superiority of anthropos and sees it ontologically divided in two branches: techno or cyborg posthumanism and animot posthumanism (2006, 29). the first one, whose flagships have been works such as donna haraway’s a cyborg manifesto and n. katherine hayles’s how we became posthuman: virtual bodies in cybernetics, literature, and informatics, concentrates on “[suggesting] a cyborg vision of the posthuman, opening the prospect of escape from bodily limitations and environmental constraint through computerized virtual reality, nanotechnology, genetic engineering, and biotic mechanization” (2006, 29). this leaves westling somehow disenchanted with the many possibilities she foresees in the movement: such a posthuman vision does nothing to address the dilemmas posed by a threatened environment, but instead implies that we can escape involvement in the rhythms of growth and decay in the biosphere. the techno posthuman does not seem to offer much to ecocriticism. (2006, 29-30) however, a different thing happens when she reflects on the second type of posthumanism she describes, animot posthumanism, which she thinks http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 posthuman spaces of relation 85 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ “[can help] to define human place within the ecosystem by interrogating or erasing the boundary that has been assumed to set our species apart from the rest of the living community” (2006, 30). all this theoretical baggage kindles a necessary curiosity about the literary implications of the posthuman turn for the analysis of animal literature. as will be shown, primate literature has become an ideal site for exploring the possibilities offered by literature to posthumanism as a way of redefining the role of homo sapiens. biotechnology, which braidotti defines as one of “the four horsemen of the posthuman apocalypse” (2013b, 59), features significantly in much of recent primate literature dealing with human-animal bodily exchanges. such context serves to create a new space of relation between the human and nonhuman primate thanks to the rediscovered “vibrancy” of matter by new materialist thinking. 2. primate literature and the new posthuman space of relation in the metaphysics of apes: negotiating the animal-human boundary (2005) raymond corbey distinguishes three main “master narratives” affecting the relationship between human and nonhuman primates since the eighteenth century (88). the first one situates humans as a privileged category by god’s design. such vision was typical of the eighteenth century and informed linnaeus’s classification of species in his tenth edition of systema naturae (1735). due, among other things, to their similarities with humans, nonhuman apes were seen as closer to a primitive state of harmony with nature. the second one, which presided the entire nineteenth century and the early part of the twentieth century, defends the progression of humans from a state of bestiality to one of civilization and reason. this narrative describes nonhuman apes as monsters, otherized beings from which separation was necessary, and compares them with the indigenous people of colonized lands. lastly, the third narrative explains human evolution “in terms of strictly contingent blind variation and selective retention” (corbey 2005, 88). this means that the destiny of humans is determined by their genes. this vision ruled a great part of the twentieth century until attention was paid to the relationships between humans and nonhumans in the framework of the new primatology developed in the 1970s. this led to a return to a more eighteenth-century vision of apes which gave way in the twenty-first century to attempts at including all nonhuman primates in the community of moral beings. http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 diana villanueva romero 86 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ literature in its different expressions has also served as testimony of these changes. in the process, a series of recurrent themes or ape motifs have been shaped which sometimes function on their own and sometimes are permeated by one another. the first theme can be described as “encounters with the other”. such encounters happen, for example, in shakespeare’s the tempest (1611) where caliban, the native of the island where prospero and miranda have been stranded for twelve years, is described as a “monster”, a creature of indeterminate nature difficult to define. caliban has indeed come to epitomize the other as slave, noble savage, primitive man, and, tellingly, as missing link between humans and apes in the nineteenth century (rundle 2007, 52). in the 1950s such visions of caliban were substituted by a widely accepted postcolonial interpretation of the play where caliban is the “cannibal”, the colonized that questions and threatens the colonizer. however, since the 1990s a new turn has led shakespeare’s character to become the metaphor for the situation of liminality where great apes live in our world. to this effect, in visions of caliban (1993), dale peterson and jane goodall use the metaphor of caliban to tackle serious issues that affect the lives of chimpanzees today: being consumed as bushmeat, used in sign language experiments and in the entertainment industry are just but a few. this identification is so apt that a few years later trans-species psychologist gay a. bradshaw referred to the species boundary as “caliban’s line” (2011, n.p.). a second common standard of representation of great apes takes the form of the “ape as mirror of humans”, more specifically of its flaws and absurdities as it happens in the eighteenth-century ape-land stories where authors use an ape civilization in some remote area to satirize european society. there is a hint of this satiric ape in book iv of jonathan swift’s gulliver’s travels (1735) where the protagonist finds two civilizations in stark contrast: the houynhnhnms and the yahoos. while the houynhnhnms, in appearance similar to horses, are presented as civilized and capable of exercising virtues that distinguish them as admirable creatures, the yahoos, who resemble apes, are described in beastly terms. interestingly, gulliver struggles to define himself against the humanoid brutes and in the attempt he redefines himself becoming a fool in the eyes of his neighbors. more contemporary examples are the film planet of the apes (1968), based on pierre boulle’s la planète des singes (1963), which has generated a series of sequels, each adapted to its own times, dealing with the substitution of humans by nonhuman apes as the dominating species on earth. linked to this satirical technique where animals feature as superior morally to humans is also the ape fable where apes are characterized as having a wiser understanding of what constitutes living in a morally sane http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 posthuman spaces of relation 87 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ way. such is the case of franz kafka’s a report to an academy (1917) where red peter narrates to an academy his process of transformation into a human and the fact that he can no longer reverse to his state as ape. this story serves to reflect on the human/animal boundary and has a talking ape at its center. much in the same way daniel quinn uses a telepathic gorilla as teacher in his book ishmael: an adventure of the mind and the spirit (1992). a fourth trope, “the feral ape”, has to do with the impact darwin’s theory of evolution had on european society in the nineteenth century. already in 1817 thomas l. peacock published melincourt or sir oran haut-ton, a satire directed against lord monboddo’s theories concerning the human status of the orangutan. this book announced the critical reception darwin’s revolutionary ideas would have later on. precisely, in order to establish a wider separation between humans and apes, some nineteenth-century narratives tended to accentuate traits that defined apes as ferocious and brutish creatures. such was the case of edgar allan poe’s orangutan murderer in the murders in the rue morgue (1841). however, early twentieth-century narratives were not exempt of a certain ambiguity when it came to dealing with the human-ape boundary. in this sense edgar rice burroughs’s tarzan of the apes (1912) can actually be read as an experiment in boundary crossing and homage to the ideals of prelapsarian life. the protagonist, lord greystoke, becomes an ape by adoption after the death of his parents in the jungle, and although he ends ups returning to civilization, his appreciation of the purity of life amongst apes will make him opt for this kind of life in the end. the association of apes with indigenous peoples, then conceptualized as primitive, became also part of stories that portrayed maladapted working class protagonists. the american playwright eugene o’neill used this image of ape as primitive but noble brute in the hairy ape (1922) where the male protagonist, yank, is a worker who finds peace in the connection he establishes with a captive gorilla he visits at the zoo after being rejected by the woman he loves. he frees the animal and commits suicide in what can be read as a play that deals with working class identification with animals. a fifth theme is that of “ape as lover”. such motif comes from different traditions. european fairy tales are one, as well as seventeenth-century travel literature. regarding the former, in his work the uses of enchantment: the meaning and importance of fairy tales (1976) bruno bettelheim classifies fairy tales into different cycles. one of the most prominent is that where the groom or bride is an animal. he signals the myth of “cupid and psyche” as the first of this kind in the western tradition. although the topic of repressed sex is present in both the “animal groom” and the “animal http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 diana villanueva romero 88 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ bride” stories, bettelheim establishes a distinction between the two. the cycles dominated by the figure of the lover as male animal characterize sex as animal-like, instinctual and repulsive, while those where the animal is female usually opt for animal forms that are delicate against more aggressive types (bettelheim [1975] 1976, loc. 5881). some of these elements were also fused into a kind of literature that had nothing to do with the children’s world. seventeenth-century travel literature became a frequent site for stories that portrayed male apes kidnapping african women to satisfy their desires (brown 2003, 236). following horst w. janson, laura brown mentions the story told in francesco maria guazzo’s compendium maleficarum ([1608] 2003, 238-9). in this story a woman is abducted and left on a desert island where an ape, the leader of his tribe, keeps her as his wife and has two children with her. the story ends in a tragic way when, after the woman is rescued from the ape and taken away by ship, the ape throws the children and then himself into the sea. when a female ape is the protagonist the story turns satirical. this is the case of gulliver’s travels where swift reverses the traditional “aperape” story (janson 1952, 208) to come full circle in his satire of humans and travel books. thus, in book iv, a female yahoo assaults gulliver because she cannot repress her desire at the sight of his naked body. equally interesting is john collier’s his monkey wife or married to a chimpanzee (1930) where a schoolmaster in africa, alfred, befriends a female chimpanzee, emily, who by constantly listening to him talking learns to speak and also falls madly in love with him. however, he is already engaged and his return to england poses a hard dilemma because circumstances lead him to having to choose between his fiancée, amy, or his chimpanzee companion. the novel, as david b.d. asker explains, serves to criticize the modern woman who is not capable of loving alfred as unconditionally as the chimpanzee does (1996, 177). in the end the chimpanzee emily rescues her beloved from a life of hypocrisy and returns with him to africa where they finally consummate their love. this theme of “ape as lover” has been reworked after the 1960s into stories more in accordance with animal rights concerns and with the blurring of the human/animal boundary. in general these new versions of the theme follow a traditional tale of the animal groom cycle, that of the beauty and the beast. the essence of this story, in the eighteenth-century version gathered by madame leprince de beaumont, is the transformative power of love (bettelheim [1975] 1976, loc. 6271). a series of terrible circumstances make beauty live with beast. this character is not given any specific description that can help identify him with any particular animal, he just has an animal-like appearance. with time and without any imposition on his part, http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 posthuman spaces of relation 89 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ beauty realizes she is in love with beast who, thanks to the force of beauty’s love, is transformed into a magnificent prince. in the modern renderings of this story where nonhuman apes play the role of beast and humans – either male or female – that of beauty, the animal stays the same and it is the human who experiences a moral transformation that pushes him or her to confront the taboo of interspecies sex and consummate her or his love for the ape. such consummation is the physical expression of the blurring of the species boundary. in texts such as peter goldsworthy’s wish (1995), the humans come to the realization of the ape’s moral superiority while, at the same time, embrace their own animality both literally and figuratively by acknowledging the power of the other in their lives. finally, these retellings of the beauty and the beast story fulfill also another function, that of redeeming apes from their traditional representation as lustful creatures since often it is the human the one to take the first step in the seduction process. another possible theme is that of “apes as a cause”. in these narratives apes are portrayed as endangered species or as victims of human practices such as medical experiments or their use in entertainment. a good example is sara gruen’s novel ape house (2010) inspired by the author’s own experiences watching lexigram speaking bonobos at the great ape trust in des moines, iowa. it tells the story of scientist isabel duncan and the lengths she has to go to rescue the group of bonobos she used to work with from a tv channel that produces a 24-hours live show about the daily lives of the apes in a house. also in connection with the different uses to which apes are subject in today’s society is a seventh theme that has been generated in recent decades due to biomedical techniques that make possible to think of using animal organs to replace those no longer functioning in humans. this can be referred to as the “xenotransplantation theme” and it always involves the bodily interdependence of animal and human by means of a surgical procedure that makes possible this codependency. such corporeal connections or fusions happen in peter dickinson’s eva (1988) and brenda peterson’s animal heart (2004) and, although they either belong or verge on the speculative, they offer an occasion to reflect on the artificiality of the human/animal boundary given the double standard science uses when dealing with the ethical consideration of primates for research. a last theme can be described as that of the “ecological ape”. in the 1990s the risks of environmental catastrophe, especially once the perils of climate change were assessed at the 1992 rio conference, led to renewed interest in stories that focus on human-ape relationships. here apes are described in a rousseaunesque style as moral creatures who can be singled out as individuals with their own unique characteristics. often such stories http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 diana villanueva romero 90 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ are titled after the name of the ape protagonist, but told from the point of view of the humans so as to avoid the risk of anthropocentrism. they can be described as memoirs of transformation where humans, once affected by their relationships with apes, become aware of the artificiality of the human/animal distinction. they also serve as a denunciation of human practices that are described as cruel and unfair to the animal. besides, the animal is often portrayed as a spokesperson for his kin and for planet earth responding to the ecological anxieties of today’s world. the 1990s trend has also worked its way in popular culture in the 2000s. the classic of ape literature and filmography, planet of the apes, was revisited in 2011 with the release of rupertt wyatt’s rise of the planet of the apes, a prequel to the 1968’s classic. the film was a critical and commercial success that questioned anthropocentrism and animal experimentation. 3. literary studies in the posthuman age the definition of these motifs of primate literature show a progression from a stage where the truths of darwinism derived into a phase of denial or zoophobia to one where the bodies of human and nonhuman primates become interchangeable, as it happens in the abovementioned stories of zoophilic love and those of xenotransplantation. these are by far the types of narratives that situate primate literature in a posthuman age thanks to their exploration of the kind of issues that constitute the marrow of this day and age. hence, for instance, the protagonist of goldsworthy’s wish (1995) is a female gorilla whose intelligence is biotechnologically enhanced thus engrossing the list of the thousands of animals that yearly are the victims of biotechnology. a very similar thing happens with the two protagonists of dickinson’s eva (1988). in this novel a teenage girl, whose body has been seriously injured in a car accident, becomes the subject of an experimental procedure in which her “neuron memory” is transferred to the body of a female chimpanzee who is sacrificed to secure the life of the human. furthermore, both novels interrogate the borders of the human and the nonhuman bodies and so enter into dialogue with the new understanding of matter as intentional. this is clearly seen in another novel of xenotranplantation, peterson’s animal heart (2004), where a human is saved thanks to the transplant of a baboon heart that establishes a transformative form of communication with its human recipient. in all these novels, the body becomes the site of realization of the posthuman subject and reason, the traditional defining attribute of man, http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 posthuman spaces of relation 91 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ is questioned together with the empire of logos. the female protagonist in wish is a female gorilla who learns how to use sign to communicate in effective and creative manners, the hybrid girl-chimp in eva finds dreams and sensory experience a better form of communication than the voice box she carries with her, and in animal heart a death baboon manages to communicate through his transplanted heart. in her article posthumanist performativity: toward an understanding of how matter comes to matter (2003) karen barad develops the idea of performativity. being critical of the excessive power attributed to words to define reality, she opposes performativity with its focus on practices/doings/ actions to representationalism and its emphasis in the correspondences between descriptions and reality (barad 2003, loc. 2195). she proposes a posthumanist notion of performativity where the boundaries between the human and the nonhuman are called into question and the important thing is to analyze the practices through which the species boundary is stabilized and destabilized (barad 2003, loc. 2283-309). after bringing to mind donna haraway’s primate visions (1989) as an example of such “posthumanist account”, she emphasizes the importance discourse has on the materialization of bodies. discourse is understood by barad not as a synonym for language, but as “specific material (re)configurings of the world through which local determinations of boundaries, properties, and meanings are differentially enacted” (2003, loc. 2505). as part of her theory of agential realism, barad further explains these discursive practices as: […] ongoing agential intra-actions of the world through which local determinacy is enacted within the phenomena produced. […] meaning is not a property of individual words or groups of words but an ongoing performance of the world in its differential intelligibility. in its causal intra-activity, “part” of the world becomes determinately bounded and propertied in its emergent intelligibility to another “part” of the world. (2003, loc. 2505-31) the universe is agential intra-activity in its becoming, barad concludes. hence it is necessary to pay attention to phenomena for they constitute reality. “the world”, according to barad, “is an ongoing open process of mattering through which ‘mattering’ itself acquires meaning and form in the realization of different agential possibilities” (2003, loc. 2451-74). this perspective when applied to human-animal relationships can shed some light on the human-animal encounters described in some of the novels abovementioned. in order to see this contention more clearly, lynda birke, mette bryld and nina lykke’s approach might be also useful. they apply barad’s notion of performativity to clarify how human-animal relationships are co-constructed generating a “choreography” of meaning (birke, bryld, and lykke http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/relations/issue/view/72 diana villanueva romero 92 relations – 4.1 june 2016 http://www.ledonline.it/relations/ 2004, 170). what the animal does determines the behavior of the human and vice versa. nothing is predetermined but it is created the moment the human and the nonhuman initiate the process of intra-action, “specific causal material enactments that may or may not involve ‘humans’” and through which “the differential boundaries between ‘humans’ and ‘nonhumans’, ‘culture’ and ‘nature’, the ‘social’ and the ‘scientific’ are constituted” (barad 2003, loc. 2451). consequently, it could be said that the literature that deals with animals is partially their creation since from the moment of its inception they, with their material being, affect the lives of the writer who literally types the story the animal cannot put on paper. through barad’s destabilizing lens the real animals behind those stories become cocreators in the literary process of imagining. they enact a transition from the creature written upon to the writing creature and, in doing so, contribute to the creation of a posthuman space of relation between the human and the nonhuman that responds creatively to the kind of configuration of the humanities that is needed in a time of both environmental crisis and questioning of the field that traditionally has been the realm of the human. references asker, david b.d. 1996. the modern bestiary: animals in english fiction, 1880-1945. new york: edwin mellen press. barad, karen. 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