RELI 226-601 Midterm
Lecture 4: Animal-Human Ethics
Lecture 9: Animality and Blackness
Lecture 13: Animals in Judaism
Lecture 7: Animals, Gender, and Sexuality
Lecture 5: Animal Humans: Ancient Origins
Lecture 12: Animals in Judaism
Lecture 6: The Descent of the Human Animal
Lecture 8: Animals, Colonialism, and Race
Lecture 3: Animal Studies and Religion
Lecture 11: Animals in Hebrew Scriptures
Lecture 10: Philosophies of the Human/Animal
Lecture 14: Animals in Christian Scriptures
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King
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Singer
Schaefer
Nussbaum
Name of Authors and Readings
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"All Animals Are Equal"
"Animal Others and Animal Studies"
Cavelieri, The Animal Debate: A Reexamination
Aristotle, History of Animals
Hebrew Bible: Genesis, Ch. 1-9: https://net.bible.org/#!bible/Genesis+1 (Focus on 1:20-1:30; 6:9-9:17)
• Stone, “Introduction,” Reading the Hebrew Bible with Animal Studies, p. 1-9
“Beyond ‘Compassion and Humanity’: Justice for Nonhuman Animals,” in Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions,
"Introduction"
Lecture 2: Animal Studies & Religion
Patton
Darwin, Comparison of the Mental Powers of Man and the Lower Animals
Vint, "The Female is Somewhat Duller': Gender and Animals," in Animal Alterity: Science Fiction and the Question of the Animal
"In Defense Of Animals: The Second Wave"
Dawkins, Scientific Basis for Assessing Suffering in Animals
Le Guin, “She Unnames Them,” The New Yorker
"Seeing Spirituality in Chimpanzees"
Adams, "The sexual politics of meat"
"Introduction: Species, Religious Studies, and the Affective Turn"
We should rethink religion alongside animals to prevent them from being an "absent presence"
Animals in Religion, Science, and Ethics
Important Takeaways: :
In Genesis: References animals multiple times
- Discusses relationship between God, Man, and All other living creatures who move
- Man is given “dominion” over animals, but this can translate to different things such as stewardship and responsibility
-permission for humans to eat animals after Noah’s ark, but comes with limitations and conditions to make animals “fit for consumption” - emphasizes compassion for animals and the least amount of suffering, even placing higher value on helping a sick/hurt animal on the Sabbath than practicing it
Violations to the ethical treatment of animals parallels those of humans
Human/animal binary
Natural hierarchy in which humans dominate over animals
Linzey
This piece discussed that humans are not the only species that exhibit spiritual/religious behavior and rituals, suggesting that animals have a sense of spirituality.
Body vs. soul
Animals are body without soul and are naturally lower than humans
Hermeneutics
Key concepts: Feminism and vegetarianism are connected, we rename animals to help us cope with their death, there is an overlap between violence with animals and violence with women
"Jesus and Animals: A Different Perspective"
"critical lens like that offered by race of feminist theory"
Gilhus
"The new Testament and the Lamb of God"
Male over female
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Thesis: Difference in mind is in degree of abilities, not the kind
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Three ways animals become absent referents: literally, definitionally, and metaphorically.
Key Concepts: Western cultural construction of gender binaries, the control of animal sexuality: neutering, spaying, breeding, exploitation of animals and women
Jane Goodall: studied the chimpanzees "rain dances", explained this was their way of expressing their spirituality.
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Kalechofsky
"remains unstable, disputed, and negotiated"
religion is neither exclusively cognitive nor exclusively human
Cooper
Key Takeaways or themes: Power, an ecofeminist approach, everchanging reality.
Stone throwing = sacred activity or ritual
Male: human, rational, head..... Female: animal, emotional, body
Humans descended from "lower animals"
"...one cannot explore religious traditions adequately, nor really understand them well, without coming to terms with the diverse roles played out in their idea about animals
- Australian moral philosopher
- He argued for animal rights and against boundaries between humans and animals in ethical theory
- Popularizes Speciesism
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Writing Humanimals: Critical Animal Studies and Jewish Studies
waterfall dance from chimpanzees is liked to religious rituals
Contrast to Cartesian ideas of animals being simply bodies
Patriarchal culture treats women and animals through objectification, fragmentation, and consumption.
Attention, reason, imagination, etc. are not solely human abilities
Descartes's ideas are being challenged now, animals have agency
Rene Descartes - Vivisection and the "beast-machine" theory - argues for Cartesian dualism in order to preform experiments on amimals
Cohn-Sherbok
Thesis: Le Guin uses the names of animals to portray the deception of association with an animal. In the reading, Eve feels close with an animal because of its existence rather than its name.
"Hope for the Animal Kingdom: A Jewish Vision"
Thinking about Aristotle's hierarchies and how they became so influential, author argues that they don't have to exist
humanitarian concerns are written in the Hebrew bible, animals are respected and treated kindly
scripture implies stewardship, not dominion
some parts of the scripture imply that animals are of equal standing with humans in relation to the divine
Traditional Views of
Animals in Religion
- Principle of equal consideration of interests (suffering)
- Philosophers typically do not take in to account other animal species as individual beings.
Suffering identified in animals mainly by physical health, physiological signs, and behavior
- Bentham promotes utilitarianism
- Decartes Claimed that animals "do not suffer"
"Asking the animals" by letting them choose options that are more desirable through moving towards or away from an environment or through a use of conditioning; shows problem with anthropomorphic understandings of suffering
Thesis
“‘Animality makes anthropocentrism visible by pointing to “the constructedness of species difference and to the violence done to other species and to some human beings by that construction.’ Animality can be linked to ‘a human exceptionalism that privileges not only human beings over other species but also some human beings over other ones,’ and animality thus forces us to pay attention to ‘the ideological deployment of species difference’”
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Multiple voices within Judaism
Takeaways
- animal is there in absence (in meat)
- reveals "taste" as being privileged over animal rights
- Based on the assumption that all people have equal access to non-animal protein sources Not True
In the Hebrew bible, animals do not have a human voice except for two exceptions
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define themselves, their own characteristics, their values, their
laws, their immediate world and even their gods in terms of these
species that are so other –
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We find throughout world religions a tendency for humans to
In Stone’s reading: Discusses biblical interpretation of the Hebrew Bible and how many of the texts, especially Genesis, refer to animals in a compassionate way and emphasizes their importance - Discusses ideas taken from the text and the implications it has on human perception of our relationship with animals -
the serpent
the donkey
Anthropomorphism: The attribution of human characteristics or behavior to a god, animal, or object.
man is against others... especially animals
Quote: "animals are made absent through language that rename dead bodies before consumers participate in eating them" (pg. 72)
The universe was created for God, not for humanity
God loves all creation
Since God cares for all creation so much, human beings should care for all creation too
Human beings should care for animals, because they are part of God's creation
Doing wrong to an animal is wronging God by violating his right to have the whole of his creation respected.
Kosher eating is important to some people practicing Judaism
Creation exists for God, not for humanity
Kosher involves: not eating meat and dairy at the same time, Kosher slaughter, and only eating certain animals
"a liberation movement means being prepared to rethink fundamental attitudes"
"equal consideration for different beings may lead to different treatment/rights"
"equality is a moral idea, not a simple assertion of fact"
Key Terms
Key Concepts:
- animals playing a prominent role in texts
- interpretations of the Hebrew Bible can vary
-clean vs. unclean animal
-value of animal concerns in relation to human concerns - using relationships with animals and animals themselves as symbols to understand ourselves as humans and our relationships to others and God
-modern interpretations of the Bible which justify the contribution of suffering on a mass scale
Certain animals are viewed as "unclean," you don't eat them because it would separate you further from the divine (make you more "unclean" like the animal)
Quote: Animals become part of human discourses of gender through language in the prevalent use of animal names as sexual appellations for women (fox, chick,bird) and also in the way domesticated animals are often differentiated by specific terms for the male versus the female of the species (bull/cow, dog/bitch, stallion/mare).
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motivation = to make conscious, holy decisions and to achieve holiness
Derrida, The Animal That Therefore I am
sexualized names for women: chick, fox, bird
Deconstruction: critical analysis that emphasizes the internal workings of language and conceptual systems
Talmud: records wide ranging debates between different rabbis about Jewish law and practice
Kosher: satisfying the requirements of Jewish law; prepare (food) according to the requirements of Jewish law
Midrush: term in Hebrew for searching through the text
Anthropocentrism: regarding humankind as the central or most important element of existence, especially as opposed to God or animals
Suffering is subjective, animals do not have the same experience as humans just as humans do not have the same experience as others
- radical approach to stop hunting of animals
- Ethics - agreement that if I do not harm you, you do not harm me. Animals cannot reciprocate this, but neither can small children
Quote : "None were left now to uname, and yet how close I felt to them when I saw one of them swim or fly or trot or crawl across my way or over my skin, or stalk me in the night, or go along beside me for a while in the day."
terms
Nothing of essence that justifies animality as different from humanity
animals as entities and not just symbols or allegories
Language can perpetuate divisions between the animal and human
VERY VERY SELFISH
Canon Vs Apocryphal text
We can see this through Disney movies and many stuffed animals. It had started to become popular in the Genre of Children's literature, making it seem like this action itself results in the devaluing and mockery of the object being anthropomorphized
God put himself into creation, and died for it on the Cross
Maneesha Deckha, "Postcolonial"
Boisseron, "Is the Animal the New Black?"
Speciesism: the idea that it is justifiable to give preferences on beings simply on the grounds that they are members of our own species
- argue there are morally relevant differences between human beings and other animals that entitle us to give more weight on them
Key concepts: binaries, veganism, Cartesian dualisms
"je suis" - means both I am and to follow so Derrida means that in saying “the animal that therefore I am” is the same thing as saying “the animal that therefore I follow”
Quote:
"ani-mot" - emphasize the individuality of the animal
Literary approaches can engage real-world ethical issues
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Representation of race and culture are deeply mediated by constructs of animality and species.
Critical animal studies interrogates how the human/animal binary has been constructed alongside other hierarchical and damaging boundaries such as male/female, civilized/primitive, body/mind”
Issues with logocentrism
the way we perceive ourselves depends on other animals, and often times othering the animal
binary opposition: a pair of related terms or concepts that are categorized as opposites
- beings entitled to dignified existence
- Kantian contractarianism: indirect duties, duties of compassion
emphasis on rationality and capacity for moral choice - choose principles for themselves
problems with modern veganism: ignores rich history of plant based diets and makes it into a Western phenomenon.
Calls for an intersectional approach to address the way forms of oppression combine and interact to cause specific struggles
male vs female, subject vs object, active vs passive, living vs dead, power vs powerless, human vs machine, domesticated vs wild, civilized, noncivilized
challenge the unilateral view that Christianity has always been and is always bad for animals
The Mule that Jesus Healed
Challenges us to question how animal representations influences other binaries
Discusses issues with comparative approaches, cannot separate animal and racial conversations or use one as a means for an end of the other
THESIS: Animals were present in the New Testament, not for their own sake, but either directly or metaphorically for human purposes; there is a lack of focus on real animals and they are seen as slaves to the humans
Raven vs raven: one is seen as a trickster and another is a predator
Lamb of God: symbol pointing to the divine, not an actual animal
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State of momentum v. state of completion
Types of dignity and flourishing:
- extending capabilities approach
"there is a waste and tragedy when a living creature had the innate or basic capabilities for some function - but never gets the opportunity to perform those functions"
"Postcolonial"
Question: Should we think of veganism as a from of Western culture or of imperialism?
Consider individuals, not ideas in the abstract/absent referents
Animals play a diverse role in religion, so conversations about religion shouldn't be had without animals
ecofeminism addresses the various ways that sexism, heteronormativity, racism, colonialism, and ableism are informed by and
support speciesism and how analyzing the ways these forces
intersect can produce less violent, more just practices’
The Created Order and Jesus Birth
Avoid trivializing suffering of various oppressed groups
communication should not be limited to linguistic ability (actions speak louder than words anyways)
binaries: align with demarcation between animal and human
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Communion of subjects: animals should be seen as their own beings not as objects for use
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