Animal Soul Research Articles

Tierseele und tierethische Argumentationen in der deutschen philosophischen Literatur des 18. Jahrhunderts

The existence of an animal soul and problems of animal ethics are often discussed in the German philosophical literature of the 18th century, especially in response to the cartesian theory of the beast machine. The following paper presents firstly a view into the early discussions and doctrines about animal souls (e.g., Winkler, Meier). It unfolds secondly some strategies for the legitimation of the death of animals, including contemporary concepts of soul, mainly under the influence of Leibniz. The third part examines some fundamental concepts of obligations to animals within the discussion of natural rights (e.g., Thomasius, Kant). Finally, examples for the early considerations about animal rights (Dietler, Smith) are presented.

The Noh Theater: Mirror, Mask, and Madness

The Noh Theater: Mirror, Mask, and Madness Mikiko Ishii Noh is often misunderstood as a frozen theatrical tradition only, a relic of antiquity, or a suitable subject for a scholarly study of medieval culture in Japan. However, ever since it was first developed and refined as an independent dramatic form it has never ceased to be performed. Unlike the English mystery plays that have been revived in modem productions which have struggled to re-create lost traditions, Noh is a living art, and it also is a representative of those Japanese art forms that have been seen as introducing Japanese culture in a wider sense. Originating in dance and music performed at sacred rituals and festivals , Noh grew out of the Japanese soul's yearning "for a concrete epiphany of the Divine: . . . lightning-like incarnation of the gods, god-men, spirits, souls of the dead, souls of animals."' It was thus indeed bom in the days when men felt the gods as living beings in close proximity to them. Even when brought to maturity and refinement by the two great dramaturgists Kan-ami Kiyotsugu (1333-84) and his son Ze-ami Motokiyo (1363-1443), the gods and the spiritual realm which they represented were still close to the people. However, all that was very long ago, and times and beliefs have changed. But how can we explain the fact that there are at present no fewer than eight major Noh theaters (Nohgakudo) in Tokyo alone—and that the number of performances and the size of the audiences are both increasing? Almost every day, somewhere in Tokyo, a Noh play is being staged by one of the principal Noh theaters. The National Noh Theater, founded in 1982, has become the center for the study of Noh and Kyogen, and in 1993 presented sixty performances of plays in this genre. The other major theaters such as the Kanze Nogakudo, the Hosho Nogakudo, and the Yarai Nogakudo give several performances each month, and there are also many experimental productions 43 44The Noh Theater by amateur groups. Noh in fact thrives today as never before and enjoys a tremendous prestige, attracting even the younger generation accustomed to the pace of films and television—persons who might never have been expected to endure the extremely slow pace and high level of sophistication of Noh. Clearly the continuing popularity of Noh does not depend merely on a scholarly interest in tradition. The Noh stage of today has a history of more than six hundred years in the course of which it has, of course, gone through many stages of development . Yet the memory of its origins still lingers, and within the world of the Noh stage the passions associated with the struggles of human relationships are presented through the symbolic language and gestures of the drama. The Origins of Noh Theater: Sarugaku and Dengaku. The word Noh originally designated a kind of drama with a plot which incorporated music and dancing. Sarugaku-Noh and Dengaku -Noh, both important for our discussion, had different origins and qualities. Sarugaku (a corruption of Sangaku) is thought to have been a folk art imported from China. Saru means "monkey ," and hence Sarugaku initially designated an entertainment— farce or acrobatics—using trained monkeys. But in the course of the Muromachi period in the mid-fourteenth century Sarugaku came to be performed at shrines or temples on ceremonial or ritual occasions to expelí evil spirits or to bring good fortune—or simply to celebrate the prosperity of the place and the people. The change which took place in Sarugaku is explained by Masaru Sekine: In the Nanbokuchô, a brief phase which fell between the Kamakura (1192-1333] and the Muromachi [1333-1573] periods. Sarugaku actors began to use a different Chinese character to denote Sarugaku. Originally it was represented by two Chinese characters, one meaning a monkey, the other meaning music. The monkey character was changed to a part of one denoting a god, so the meaning became divine music. . . . While the monkey form was used the art of Sarugaku was crude; but by the time the god form was employed the art had become much more refined and was either musical...

Leibniz on Apperception and Animal Souls

InLeibniz: Perception, Apperception, and Thought, Robert McRae alleges a flat “contradiction” (McRae 1976, p. 30) at the heart of Leibniz's doctrine of three grades of monads: bare entelechies characterized by perception; animal souls capable both of perception and of sensation; and rational souls, minds or spirits endowed not only with capacities for perception and sensation but also with consciousness of self or what Leibniz calls (introducing a new term of art into the vocabulary of philosophy) “apperception.” Apperception is a necessary condition of those distinctively human mental processes associated with understanding and with reason. Insofar as it is also a sufficient condition of rationality, it is not ascribable to animals. But apperception is a necessary condition of sensation or feeling as well; and animals are capable of sensation, according to Leibniz, who decisively rejected the Cartesian doctrine that beasts are nothing but material automata. “On the one hand,” writes McRae, “what distinguishes animals from lower forms of life is sensation or feeling, but on the other hand apperception is a necessary condition of sensation, and apperception distinguishes human beings from animals” (McRae 1976, p. 30). “We are thus left with an unresolved inconsistency in Leibniz's account of sensation, so far as sensation is attributable both to men and animals” (ibid., p. 34).

Deux modèles du rapport entre l'homme et l'animal dans les systèmes de représentations

Two Models of the Man-Animal Relationship in Systems of Representation The widespread absence in Aboriginal Australia of beliefs in animal souls, of spirits masters of hunting, of the idea of a man-animal contract, and of ceremonies for winning the favor of animals, means that the conceptions of man-animal relationships are very different from those prevalent in America or Siberia. An examination of myths about the theft of fire leads to the same conclusion, as does a re-examination of totemism.

A Study of the Metaphysics of Spinoza (review)

408 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY future, and act for an end. Machines can move according to design, mere animals can act spontaneously, but only man can act reflectively. Pardies did not convince all his readers that he was offering a serious alternative to the Cartesian view that animals are machines. Many thought that to prefer a material principle or soul to support sensible knowledge was no more than to admit that animals are machines . However, Pardies stresses that sense organs are there to provide sensory information , and that the responses of animals to this information is knowledgeable, even if it is not intellectual (reflective) knowledge. It is the question of the difference between animate and inanimate objects, between the actions of living organisms and those of mechanisms like a watch. Despite all the inventions and speculations since Pardies' time, we have not proceeded very far beyond his statement that we know that living animals have an operative principle that is more than mechanical (or chemical, or electrical), and that humans have a kind of self-consciousness that we have not yet confirmed as being present in any other animal but we do not really know very much about what these distinguishing principles are. Pardies' analyses and expositions of these problems are very clean. Finally, Pardies presents the Cartesian position that it is absurd to chastize morally those who slaughter animals, or to feel pity for wounded animals, for their cries are no different from the squeal of wheels on an ungreased axel. Of course one deplores the destruction of such fine machines. Professor Rosenfield has shown that these attitudes helped advance the sciences of medicine and physiology. Pardies himself practiced vivisection on insects and dogs, so it might be said that his Peripatetic view of a material animal soul is another hypothesis that advanced these sciences. If animals have sensible knowledge, but do not reflect and so do not know themselves, then again it is not cruel to cut them up. The trouble, Pardies recognized, was that the affinities between men and beasts are so many and so close, that even if the line from beast machine to man machine is cut off, there are those who would argue that if animals have only a material soul, then man has no need of a spiritual soul. It may be---as ecological moralists are suggesting today--that the only way to save the humanity of man is to extend humanity to animals and even to the land itself. Pardies was a thoroughly modern thinker. The Discours is well worth reading today, and is a volume that is an essential part of any library of seventeenth-century literature and philosophy. We are fortunate that the volume was published with Professor Rosenfield 's introduction just before the big machine that bought the Johnson Reprint Corporation killed the lively little Texts in Early Modern Philosophy series. RICHARD A. WATSON Washington University A Study of the Metaphysics of Spinoza. By Sanat Kumar Sen. (Santiniketan, India: Centre of Advanced Study in Philosophy, Visva-Bharati, 1966) The best defense of any philosopher is a clear and accurate exposition. This is perhaps particularly so in the case of Spinoza, whose economy encourages prolix commentary while rendering summary impossible. Sanat Kumar Sen conceives his task in the work under consideration as that of offering a "simple and coherent account of the salient features of Spinoza's theory, confining criticisms to the minimum" (p. xviii). With admirable modesty he proceeds to lay before us the great themes of Part I of the Ethics: substance, attribute, mode, infinity, eternity. That he succeeds so well witnesses not only to his command of Spinoza, but likewise to this discipline of intention, and in addition, to a remarkably lucid English style. Although there is no new interpretation here, the author is plainly indebted to the basic BOOK REVIEWS 409 positions of H. F. Hallett. We have incidentally, then, a guide to Hallett's reading, a useful bonus, given the occasional murkiness of that great Spinozist. He takes adequate account as well of other recent commentators, although the book was written before Gu6roult's magisterial study. Less adequate attention is paid, however, to Spinoza's contemporaries...

From Beast-Machine to Man-Machine. Animal Soul in French Letters from Descartes to La Mettrie. Leonora Cohen Rosenfield

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsFrom Beast-Machine to Man-Machine. Animal Soul in French Letters from Descartes to La Mettrie. Leonora Cohen Rosenfield William ColemanWilliam Coleman Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Isis Volume 64, Number 1Mar., 1973 Publication of the History of Science Society Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/351068 Views: 5Total views on this site Copyright 1973 History of Science Society, Inc.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

From Beast-Machine to Man-Machine: Animal Soul in French Letters from Descartes to La Mettrie (review)

From Beast-Machine to Man-Machine: Animal Soul in French Letters from Descartes to La Mettrie (review)

Immediate Animation and Delayed Hominization

IN THE DISCUSSIONS which have recently flared up again about the morality of induced abortion, one of the most important questions is that of the time of animation. The main, though not the only, reason why abortion is condemned by Catholic moralists is that it amounts to the killing of an innocent human being. This supposes that from the moment of conception the embryo is a human person. Nowadays the great majority of Catholic thinkers take for granted that it is, that from the start the fertilized ovum possesses a spiritual soul (theory of animation). This opinion has not always been the majority opinion in the Church. Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, and many of the great Scholastic thinkers held that the human soul was not infused at the moment of conception, but at some time between conception and birth (theory of animation). This theory has always had defenders in the Church, from Aquinas to Alphonsus Liguori, from Cardinal Zigliara to Cardinal Mercier. It might well be due for a revival, and I would like to examine some of the reasons which induce me to expect this. The terminology used in the present discussions is rather unfortunate: the two terms immediate animation and delayed animation are misleading. Animation means that an organism is animated, has a soul (anima), is alive. Thus the term delayed animation seems to imply that the partisans of this theory hold that the embryo is not alive immediately after conception. Such is not their position. They claim that the embryo is alive, that it is animated from the very start, but the soul which animates it is not yet a human soul, is a vegetative or animal soul; the human soul comes later. Animation is immediate, is delayed. Hence it would be better to speak of immediate hominization versus delayed hominization. In the following pages I shall generally use this terminology.

From Beast-Machine to Man-Machine, Animal Soul in French Letters from Descartes to La Mettrie

From Beast-Machine to Man-Machine, Animal Soul in French Letters from Descartes to La Mettrie

From Beast-Machine to Man-Machine. Animal Soul in French Letters from Descartes to La Mettrie.

From Beast-Machine to Man-Machine. Animal Soul in French Letters from Descartes to La Mettrie.

From Beast-Machine to Man-Machine. Animal Soul in French Letters from Descartes to La Mettrie

From Beast-Machine to Man-Machine. Animal Soul in French Letters from Descartes to La Mettrie

From Beast-Machine to Man-Machine: Animal Soul in French Letters from Descartes to La Mettrie

From Beast-Machine to Man-Machine: Animal Soul in French Letters from Descartes to La Mettrie

From Beast-Machine to Man-Machine. Animal Soul in French Letters from Descartes to La Mettrie.

From Beast-Machine to Man-Machine. Animal Soul in French Letters from Descartes to La Mettrie.

Reviews

Book reviewed in this article:Cuatro Comedias, edited with notes and vocabulary by John M. Hill and Mabel Margaret Harlan. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1941.Benavente, Jacinto, La Malquerida. Edited with introduction, notes and vocabulary by Paul T. Manchester. New York: F. S. Crofts & Company, 1941.Closs, A. and Mainland, W. F., German Lyrics of the Seventeenth Century. London: Gerald Duckworth and Company, 1940.Balzac, Honoré de, Ferragus. Edited by Walter S. Hastings and Jared Wenger. New York: D. C. Heath and Company, 1940.Leslie, John Kenneth, Ventura De La Vega and the Spanish Theatre, 1820–1865. Princeton, 1940.Sánchez Galarrage, Gustavo, El Héroe, edited by Virgil A. Warren and James O. Swain. New York: Oxford University Press, 1941.Dumas, Alexandre. Les Trois Mousquetaires. Adapted and edited by Henriette Roumiguière Kollewijn and Algernon Coleman. Boston: D. C. Heath and Company, 1941.Lacey, Alexander, Basic Written French. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1941.Eddy, Helen M., Struble, Marguerette, Cochran, Grace, and Williams, Florence B., Basic French. Heath's Modern Language Series. Boston: D. C. Heath and Company, 1940.De Vries, Louis (with the collaboration of the members of the graduate Faculty of Iowa State College), French‐English Science Dictionary for Students in Agricultural, Biological and Physical Sciences. New York: McGraw‐Hill Book Company, 1940.Lang, André, L'Affaire Plantin. Edited by Jeanne Guiet and Marcel Vigheras. New York: The Dryden Press, Inc., 1941.Dubrule, Noelia and Dunlap, Edna C., Beginning French. New York, Charles Scribner's Sons. Cloth.Moody, George, Anthologie de contes français. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1940.Hendrix, William S. and Meiden, Walter E., Beginning French: A Cultural Approach. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1940.Haden, Ernest F. and Trotter, R. C, Science Française, Readings in General Science. Boston: D. C. Heath and Company, 1940.Rosenfield, Leonora Cohen, From Beast‐machine to Man‐machine. (Animal soul in French Letters from Descartes to La Mettrie.) New York: Oxford University Press, 1941.Kany, E. and Dondo, Mathurin, Elementary French Conversation, Intermediate French Conversation, and Advanced French Conversation. New York: D. C. Heath and Company.Cooper, N., A First Anthology of French Poetry. Oxford University Press. Linen cover. Price, $35.Segur, La Comtesse de, L'Auberge de l'Ange Gardien. Edited by Charlotte Moffett. New York, N. Y.: Globe Book Company, 1940.Lever de Rideau, Six One Act Modern Comedies, edited by Stanley Schwartz. New York: The Dryden Press, 1940.Miller, Minnie M. and Nielson, J. R., Outlines and Tests on French Civilization. New York: F. S. Crofts and Company, 1940.Micks, Wilson and Longi, Olga, Fundamental French. New York: Oxford University Press, 1940.Remarque, Erich, Drei Kameraden. Edited with foreword, notes, and vocabulary by Waldo C. Peebles. American Book Company, 1941.

From Beast-Machine to Man-Machine. Animal Soul in French Letters from Descartes to La Mettrie

Other| June 01 1941 From Beast-Machine to Man-Machine. Animal Soul in French Letters from Descartes to La Mettrie Leonora Cohen Rosenfield. New York: Oxford University Press. 1941. Pp. 353 + xxvii. $3.50. Melvin Rader Melvin Rader Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Modern Language Quarterly (1941) 2 (2): 341–342. https://doi.org/10.1215/00267929-2-2-341 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Melvin Rader; From Beast-Machine to Man-Machine. Animal Soul in French Letters from Descartes to La Mettrie. Modern Language Quarterly 1 June 1941; 2 (2): 341–342. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00267929-2-2-341 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search Books & JournalsAll JournalsModern Language Quarterly Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright © 1941 by Duke University Press1941 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

From Beast-Machine to Man-Machine: Animal Soul in French Letters from Descartes to La Mettrie.

From Beast-Machine to Man-Machine: Animal Soul in French Letters from Descartes to La Mettrie.

From beast-machine to man-machine: animal soul in French letters from Descartes to La Mettrie.

From beast-machine to man-machine: animal soul in French letters from Descartes to La Mettrie.

Problems of Nature Researches and Discoveries of Gustav Jaeger, MD Selected from his published Writings

THIS small volume has been formed by collecting together a number of Jaeger's brief essays on various important subjects. They are classified under three headings as Zoological, Anthropological, and Varia. The essays are highly ambitious, and lay down the law upon matters of the deepest difficulty with commendable brevity. Thus the fourteen zoological essays range from “The Origin and Development of the First Organisms” and “The Origin of Species” to “Inheritance,” “The Animal Soul,” and “The Development of the Vertebrate Type,” and altogether occupy eighty-three pages. The essays classed as anthropological deal chiefly with the author's pronounced views on physiological processes, infection, immunity, constitutional strength, &c. Problems of Nature. Researches and Discoveries of Gustav Jaeger, M.D. Selected from his published Writings. Edited and translated by Henry G. Schlichter Pp. ii + 261. (London: Williams and Norgate, 1897.)

The Souls of Plants and Animals

The Souls of Plants and Animals