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Eduardo Mendieta Philosophy Department Stony Brook SUNY October 28, 2005 Friday, 4:00pm-6:00pm Nursing, Room 127 The beast is more than animal, capable of the same calculated brutality a human can inflict, and surely less than the human, who can reflect on his/her brutality. The trope of the beast, or rather, the philosopheme of the more than human and animal, the beast, has been central to the Western philosophical canon. We encounter this "monster" in the work of Aristotle, Plato, Plutarch, Montaigne, Hegel, Kant, Hobbes, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Derrida, Agamben, and Haraway. We also find it in the theological-philosophical tradition, in the Old Testament, the New Testament, Talmudic commentaries, and more recently, in the theology of nature, or eco-theology; in short, from Genesis, or Moses' Books, to Mary Daly and Jörgen Moltmann. Do beasts lack logos, when logos (reason) is defined by the limits and excesses of violence? Do they also lack nomos (law), when lawfulness is so evident in the order of the pack, whether they are Wolves or Elephants? And most important, is not their polemos (war/debate) not unlike that of humans, one for living space, if we consider that our "war" is with other species and our own? We will approach the question of the beast by way of Carl Schmitt, Derrida, and Agamben. And we shall be roguish — the philosophical beast is always a rogue!  |
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Last updated 4/8/08 10:32 PM
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