Eduardo Mendieta on "The Philosophical Animal"

The Philosophical Animal: On Zoopoetics and Interspecies Cosmopolitanism

by Eduardo Mendieta

(State University of New York Press, 2024)

266 pages 

[Open access]

Description

Humans are animals who fictionalize other animals to asse their "humanness." We are philosophical animals who philosophize about our humanity by projecting images onto a mirror about other animals. Spanning literature, philosophy, and ethics, the thread uniting The Philosophical Animal is the bestiary and how it continues to inform our imaginings. Beginning with an exploration of animals and women in the literary work of Coetzee, famous for his book on The Lives of Animals, Eduardo Mendieta then dives into the genre of bestiaries in order to investigate the relation between humanity and animality. From there he approaches the works of Derrida and Habermas from the standpoint of genetic engineering and animal studies. While we have intensely modified many species genetically, we have not done this to ourselves. Why? Finally, Mendieta deals with the political and ethical implications suggested by this question before ending on an autobiographical note about growing up around so-called animals, and in particular horses.

Contents [Open access]

Introduction: The Poetic Species 

I. Ceasing to Be Animal

1: Zoopoetics: Coetzee’s Animals and Philosophy

2: Political Bestiary: On the Uses of Violence

3: Heidegger’s Bestiary: The Speechless and  Unhistorical Animal

II. Not Yet Human

4: Habermas on Human Cloning: The Debate on the  Future of the Species

5: Communicative Freedom and Genetic Engineering 

6: We Have Never Been Human, or How We Lost  Our Humanity

III. Toward a Companion Species Ethics

7: Animal Is to Kantianism As Jew Is to Fascism:  Adorno’s Bestiary 

8: Interspecies Cosmopolitanism

9: Bestiaries of Extinction: Anthropodicy or Anthropohippology

Addendum to “Auch eine Geschichte der Philosophie”

Jürgen Habermas made numerous corrections and revisions in the second edition of his Auch eine Geschichte der Philosophie (2019/2022).

On HabermasForum, I have uploaded a list of the corrections and revisions I have identified:

Addendum to Auch eine Geschichte der Philosophie.

Axel Honneth on moral progress (video)

On December 16, Axel Honneth held the Jan Patočka Memorial Lecture 2024 in Vienna: 

The Standpoint of Moral Progress. A Defence in Kantian Spirit (video)  

0:07: Lecture

1:02: Q&As

Abstract: "Today, the idea that there has been moral progress in human history is highly controversial and contested. Many intellectuals from various camps consider it impossible, if not immoral, to claim that there has been anything in the historical past that can be called an improvement in moral attitudes and the application of moral principles. The reasons for this strong rejection of the idea of moral progress are either empirical or normative: either it is claimed that the historical facts strongly contradict such progress, or that there is no sufficiently impartial perspective from which to judge such progress. This lecture aimed to show that both objections can be refuted if one has a proper understanding of the perspective from which to claim a past process of moral progress; this perspective must not only be constantly self-critical, but must also construct the history to be told about the moral past very differently from all previous such narratives."

New book: Nancy Fraser and Politics

Nancy Fraser and Politics

by Marjan Ivković & Zona Zarić

(Edinburgh University Press, 2024)

248 pages

Description

"Nancy Fraser and Politics" is a systematic reconstruction of the work of Nancy Fraser, a key contemporary figure of critical theory and socialist feminism. It argues that Fraser's critical theory is a powerful and sophisticated analytical prism for diagnosing the breadth of empirical variety and depth of structural causality of injustice and domination in the ‘actually existing’ capitalist democracies of today, and for informing and inspiring numerous political movements struggling for societal emancipation.

Ivković and Zarić demonstrate that a key aspect of Fraser’s critical theory - her structural approach to domination which traces the manifold empirical injustices to a common root cause - is a thread that runs through her entire opus.

Contents [preview]

Introduction: Nancy Fraser as a Critical Theorist [pdf]

1. The Theoretical and Political Coordinates of Fraser’s Perspective

2. Fraser’s Theory of Capitalism

3. The Complexity of Liberation: Fraser’s Feminism

4. The Normative Weight of Politics: Fraser’s Theory of the Public Sphere

5. Fraser on Emancipation as a Political Process and Institutional Form

Conclusion

Ingeborg Maus (1937-2024)

Obituaries for Ingeborg Maus:

* Peter Niesen - "Zum Tod von Ingeborg Maus – Rousseau und Kant als Kronzeugen" (Frankfurter Rundschau, 16-12-2024)

* Oliver Eberl - "Den Motorradhelm stets im Büro" (taz, 16-12-2024)

* Rainer Forst - "Volkssouveränität radikal gedacht" (Goethe Universität Frankfurt am Main, 17-12-2024) = "Was leistet eine Justiz als gesellschaftliches Über-Ich?" (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 18-12-2024)

* David Fischer - "Verteidigung der Rechtsform" (Junge Welt, 19-12-2024)

Philip Pettit on Rainer Forst

Philip Pettit has uploaded a paper on Rainer Forst:

"On Rainer Forst's Kantian Republicanism" [pdf]

Originally published in German in Mahmoud Bassiouni et al. (eds.), Die Macht der Rechtfertigung. Perspektiven einer kritischen Theorie der Gerechtigkeit (Suhrkamp Verlag, 2024), pp. 517-530.