Stanford University Press Blog

On the Separation of Human and Animal

From Aristotle to Agamben: how philosophy is changing its tune on animal life.

by MATTHEW CALARCO

A grapevine snail. Photo by Jürgen Schoner. CC-BY-SA 3.0 via Wikipedia.

One of the defining characteristics of our age is the radical breakdown of the human/animal distinction. In both the popular media and in scholarly scientific literature, we are shown almost weekly new pieces of evidence suggesting that the barriers separating humans from animals are not as impermeable as we once thought them to be. Behaviors and capacities widely believed to be unique among human beings are increasingly being discovered in varying forms and to varying degrees among a wide number of animal species. 

The fundamental breakdown in the effort to delimit sharply human beings from animals has been an important intellectual and scientific development for philosophers and theorists, ranging from Aristotle to Agamben.

While philosophy’s historical reputation for being a leading voice of critical thought is often wholly deserved, on the issue of the distinction between humans and animals and the ethical worth of animals, it has unfortunately and frequently failed to live up to its more admirable ideals. In fact, in many ways, philosophy in the Western tradition has been one of the chief architects in constructing the traditional philosophical and ethical dogmas we have inherited concerning animals.

A Tale of Two Cities

Why did San Francisco surge forward and LA fall so far behind?

by MICHAEL STORPER, THOMAS KEMENY, NAJI MAKAREM,
& TANER OSMAN

 

Cities and regions have very different fortunes over time, and it is hard to predict them. The ups and downs of big metropolitan areas make a huge difference to the people who live in them, creating and destroying opportunity. They drive people in and drive people away. The ups lead to flourishing public facilities, while the downs lead to deterioration of the urban environment.

It is one thing to observe the conditions that, on average, separate successful or rising regions from less successful ones. But the averages only get us so far. Underneath them are chains of events; pathways that are defined and can become self-reinforcing. Consider Greater Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area, two urban centers that have diverged sharply in recent decades. In 1970 they had about equal per capita incomes, but today incomes of people in the Bay Area are one-third higher than in Southern California. The Bay Area is in a group of metropolitan areas that took the “high road” in terms of incomes, including New York, Chicago, Boston Washington DC and Philadelphia. Greater Los Angeles’s income growth is more like that of Detroit.

 

Evolution of Per Capita Personal Income, 1970-2012

The evolution of per capita personal incomes in large metropolitan areas, 1970-2012. Source: Authors' calculations using Bureau of Economic Affairs Regional Economic Accounts data.

Our Images, Our Selves

"Public image laws" in the U.S. belie an image-obsessed cultural sensibility.

by SAMANTHA BARBAS

"Land of the Tabloids." Photo by Daniel Novta. CC-BY-2.0 via Flickr.

After receiving calls from her neighbors, a woman found that her daughter’s picture had been used in an ad for a local ice cream store, without the daughter’s or the mother’s consent. Her daughter had simply “liked” the ice cream store on Facebook. The woman was outraged and embarrassed. People across the country whose photographs had been similarly exploited under Facebook’s Sponsored Stories advertising program sued Facebook.

In the past hundred years, in increasing numbers, Americans have turned to the law to help them defend and control their public images.

In 1948, the Saturday Evening Post ran a critique of cabdrivers in Washington, D.C., that accused them of cheating their customers. A photograph appeared with the article that depicted a woman cabdriver, Muriel Peay, talking to the article’s author on the street. The caption did not name her, and the article did not refer to her. Although the woman had consented to be photographed, she did not know that the picture would be used in an article on cheating cabbies. She was humiliated, and she sued the magazine.

In the early 1940s, Zelma Cason, who was the inspiration for a character in a book by a famous writer, sued the author. The portrayal of Cason was highly complimentary, although in one part of the book the author described her as an “ageless spinster resembling an angry and efficient canary” and noted that she used profanity. Cason was upset, and she sought damages of one hundred thousand dollars.

Angry and insulted, these people could have done any number of things. On seeing her picture in the Saturday Evening Post, Muriel Peay could have gone home and cried. Perhaps she did. The unwilling subjects of the Sponsored Stories program could have boycotted Facebook—perhaps they did, too. But these individuals also chose to sue. In the past hundred years, in increasing numbers, Americans have turned to the law to help them defend and control their public images. The twentieth century saw the creation of a law of public image, and the phenomenon of personal image litigation.

Our Fall Catalog (As Told By A Personality Quiz)

Which book from our Fall catalog are you?—An inquisitive guide to our 2015 offerings.

Something autumnal this way comes. It’s our 2015 Fall catalog, featuring an ethnographic novel of Iran; a memoir from nuclear security crusader, William J. Perry; treatises on plant theory and animal studies; a new volume of The Zohar; Agamben Foucault, Kafka, Amichai, and more! To match you with the most compatible title from this season’s list, we have crafted a carefully calibrated personality quiz, designed to direct you toward the book most likely to capture your interest based on our probing analysis of your answers to these ten questions. While the results are highly scientific, you should also feel free to do your own catalog reconnaissance here.

 

Also see

Stanford University Press blog

Our Spring Catalog (As Told By A Matrix)

 

Stanford University Press blog

Our Fall Catalog (As Told By A Flowchart)

The Merits of Track Two Diplomacy

Unofficial dialogues can open up new approaches to intractable conflicts.

by PETER JONES

Track Two Diplomacy is a method of bringing together influential people from different sides of a conflict, on an unofficial basis, to talk and try to jointly develop new ideas as to how the conflict may be better managed or resolved. There are those who regard Track Two with suspicion. Proponents of Track Two believe that it can help to break through the barriers that official diplomacy can sometimes place on talks. This often means entering the grey area between what governments will talk about (and who they will talk to), and what they often know must be discussed if a problem is to be addressed.

Track Two diplomacy often demonstrates that new ways of approaching problems are possible.

One example, is the question of talking with those designated as terrorists. Many governments have firm policies against such talks. This view was summed up by then British Prime Minister John Major in a response to a question in the House as to whether he would talk with the IRA while fighting was still underway; “If the implication of his remarks is that we should sit down and talk to Mr. Adams and the Provisional IRA, I can say only that it would turn my stomach, and those of most Hon. Members; we will not do it. . . . I will not talk to people who murder indiscriminately.”

The Barbarism of the Migrant

Mexican immigrants to the U.S. face a stigma that stretches back to ancient civilization.

by THOMAS NAIL

The "barbarian" raids of Rome were carried out by Germanic tribes.

Significant portions of the population of the United States believe that immigrants are naturally inferior. The attitude is not new. In fact, the idea of a natural political inferiority was invented in the ancient world, though it has repeated itself again and again throughout history—hence the persistence of the term “barbarian.” Originally used to classify those beyond the pale of ancient Greek and Roman society, “barbarian” has since been redeployed throughout all of history to designate one’s cultural and political enemies as “naturally inferior.” From the nineteenth-century French bourgeoisie who called the migrant peasants in Paris “savage barbarians” to Nazi propaganda that described migrant Jews as “uncivilized oriental barbarians,” the perceived inferiority of migrant groups relative to the prevailing political centers has proven to be an enduring source of antagonism. 

In the United States, and in the ancient empires, large military-style walls were built and guarded to control the movement of undesirable foreigners into the community.