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The Journal of Speculative Philosophy 14.3 (2000) 232-235



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Book Review

Animal Others: On Ethics, Ontology, and Animal Life


Animal Others: On Ethics, Ontology, and Animal Life. Ed. H. Peter Steeves. SUNY Series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy. Albany: State U of New York P, 1999. Pp. xiii + 294. $54.50 h.c. 0-7914-4309-4; $17.95 pbk. 0-7914-4310-8.

Animal Others begins with a foreword by Tom Regan, who places the collection in a lineage with the seminal Animals, Men, and Morals (1971), the first anthology to deal in a serious philosophical manner with the moral status of animals. The earlier work reflected the Anglo-American ("Oxbridge") analytic training of its contributors, and Animal Others follows its lead with a parallel discussion of the moral status of animals from a continental philosophical perspective. Each of the essays contained in the volume was specifically written for it, and perhaps the plethora of voices from the perspective of Husserlian and post-Husserlian phenomenology reflects the research interests of the editor, H. Peter Steeves. Nevertheless, the book is a multidimensional inquiry into an important, heretofore little discussed, topic within the field of continental philosophy, and as such its publication is to be heralded.

The essays in the volume might be roughly divided into (1) commentary and interpretation of philosophical arguments that either directly or implicitly contain references to the status of the animal, (2) applications or expansions of philosophical theories to the realm of nonhuman animal being, and (3) generally philosophical reflections on human relations with animals. The volume begins with an essay of the first type by David Wood, who charges Jacques Derrida with a disingenuous appeal to a deeply hidden humanism within his discussion of the treatment of the animal, and in particular within his critique of Martin Heidegger for the same clandestine humanistic presuppositions. Wood claims that the failure of Western philosophy to think animality critically is symptomatic of a wider failure in the philosophical project, namely, the human being's self-definition with respect to its perceived Other, whether that other, historically, be divine, non-Western, feminine, [End Page 232] or nonhuman (28-29). Although Derrida does address the issue of our relationship to animality that Wood holds to be so crucial to philosophy's self-critical function, Wood argues that Derrida's position maintains a humanist bias by virtue of its characterization of metaphysics as inevitable incorporation or sacrifice. Derrida ends his long discussion with Jean-Luc Nancy, entitled "Eating Well," by conceding that "we can no more step out of carnophallogocentrism to some peaceable kingdom than we can step out of metaphysics" (1991, 115). Derrida appeals, instead, to an openness or hospitality that precedes any determination of the Other, a refusal to gain "good conscience" by allowing responsibility to have any calculable basis, including an ethics of vegetarianism. Wood objects to what he sees as a conflation of symbolic and actual sacrifice on Derrida's part, and to what he sees as a too-easy relinquishing of the power of resistance against carnophallogocentrisim with a notion of ethical relationality that remains "human" in bias, namely, hospitality.

It struck me that had William McNeill's careful (and lengthy!) articulation of Heidegger's discussion of the animal in his 1929/30 course, which comes much later in the volume, preceded Wood's essay, it would have provided a very helpful introduction to Wood's essay for those readers unfamiliar with the basis for Derrida's critique of Heidegger. McNeill is concerned with giving Heidegger the fairest and most comprehensive reading in response to critiques of his discussion of animals in works such as David Farrell Krell's Daimon Life (1992) and Derrida's Of Spirit (1989). Derrida's "Eating Well," to which Wood refers all too briefly, convincingly demonstrates that Heidegger's project, even as defended by McNeill, cannot completely escape the bounds of humanism, indeed, of the metaphysics of subjectivity. For this reason McNeill's, Wood's, and Derrida's articles are most rewardingly read in conjunction with each other.

Subjectivity...

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