{"id":1510,"date":"2013-09-29T20:52:08","date_gmt":"2013-09-29T20:52:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/simorgh.de\/niceswine\/?p=1510"},"modified":"2013-09-29T20:52:33","modified_gmt":"2013-09-29T20:52:33","slug":"animal-thealogy-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/simorgh.de\/niceswine\/animal-thealogy-1","title":{"rendered":"Animal Thealogy: Man-Machine? Animal Reason! (Part 1)"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Vulnerable by Farangis Yegane<\/em><\/p>\n

Animal Thealogy:<\/p>\n

Man-Machine? Animal Reason! (Part 1)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Palang LY<\/p>\n

The basic question about the categorical division into (nonhuman) \u201canimals\u201d and \u201chumans\u201d (Homo sapiens), brings up probably before the question of its moral implications, the question about what exactly hides beneath both these big generalized identities.<\/p>\n

Why has the view about that what-animals-are<\/em> and that what-humans-are<\/em> finally lead to us only viewing animals under biological terms today?<\/p>\n

Is it enough to attribute only an instinctual behaviour to nonhuman animals?<\/p>\n

Is it thus the \u2018fault\u2019 of animals that humans won\u2019t relate to them in any further way than how they are relating to them today?<\/p>\n

What other options are there?<\/p>\n

Animal = instinctual? Human = reasoning? Attributed identities in a human-centered narrative<\/strong><\/p>\n

If we don\u2019t accept the view that nonhuman animals are those who have to stand below humans, within a frame given by e.g. a biological, philosophical or even divine hierarchy-of-being, then such a claim doesn\u2019t have to be solely morally motivated. It can also mean that we question the way in which both identities (\u201eanimal\u201c and \u201ehuman\u201c) are understood, that we question the separation and qualifications of these identities, even before the questions of our wrongdoings enter the floor of debate.<\/p>\n

We can ask if the interpretation of the characteristics that are considered to make up the marking dividers within a human-animal hierarchy, are in reality a negation of the autonomous value of otherness in nonhuman animals.<\/p>\n

We know that the single criterion that serves as our standard, is the human parameter, i.e. the human model counts as the ideal<\/em>, as the standard<\/em>, for creating norms.<\/p>\n

So what happens if we put this standard of measurement into doubt?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a question of perspective!<\/strong><\/p>\n

Conclusions deduced in the fields of biology and psychology, with those being the main academic sectors that deal with the explicability of animal identity, nail the perspectives:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. on relevant characteristics<\/li>\n
  2. on how animal characteristics (in either, the case of humans or nonhuman animals) have to a.) express themselves and b.) in which exact correlation they have to become \u201emeasurable\u201c, in order to reach a certain relevance or meaningfulness from a human point of perspective.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    So the problem lies in the question why humans won\u2019t accept nonhuman animal autonomy when it can\u2019t be made fathomable through the perception of a value-defined<\/em> comparison.<\/p>\n

    Why are own animal criterions<\/em> and why is their independent meaningfulness (for the sake of themselves and for their situation within their natural and social inter- and co-specific contexts) rendered irrelevant, when they cross our perspectivical glance, and when these animal criteria could also be understood and accepted to fully lay outside of our hierarchical-framework?<\/p>\n

    Animal individuality<\/strong><\/p>\n

    To be willing to accept an autonomous meaningfulness of nonhuman animals, means to question the deindividualization, that our views and explanations about nonhuman animals purport.<\/p>\n

    Those are the views that allow us to set nonhuman animals in comparison<\/em> to us, as \u2018the human group\u2019 of identity, instead of seeing otherness in itself as a full value. And those are also the views that seek to sort out how the existential \u2018meaning\u2019 of nonhuman animals might relate to anything that matters to us \u201chumans\u201d as a closed group of identity.<\/p>\n

    The deindividualized view of nonhuman animals almost automatically goes along with the subtraction of value in terms of attributed meaningfulness, and so we land at the moral question now, as the question of identities, individual existence and deinidivdualisation pose some ethical conflicts.<\/p>\n

    Nonhuman animals, and the attributed identities in the fields of \u201canimal\u201d and \u201chuman\u201d social<\/em> contexts<\/strong><\/p>\n

    If we can view nonhuman animals, apart from their localization in the realm of biology, for example also in a sociological context, then we could ask the question: \u201eHow do people act towards nonhumans animals?\u201c<\/p>\n

    Can we explain the behaviour of humans towards nonhuman animals solely by referring to the common notion that one can\u2019t really behave in any particular way towards nonhuman animals because they are supposedly \u2018instinctively set\u2019 and \u2018communicatively restricted\u2019 compared to us, and that thus our behaviour towards them can\u2019t contain an own quality of a social dynamic?<\/p>\n

    Can we legitimate our typically human social misbehaviour towards nonhuman animals by referring to the \u201estupidity\u201c that we interpret into nonhuman animal behaviour?<\/p>\n

    (Such questions would of course only feed themselves on stereotypes of animal identity, no matter from where they stem.)<\/p>\n

    However we probably can\u2019t ask any of such questions a sociologist, though it could fall into their scope to analyse these relationships. Sociologists likely would prefer to deal with the Animal Rights movement and not deal with the interaction<\/em> between humans and nonhuman animals, since everyone seems to be with the fact that a natural science, biology, has already determined what the identity of nonhuman animals \u201cfactually\u201d is. And it must be said that even the Animal Rights movement seems the place moral question somewhere almost out of reach by accepting the explanation of the identity of animals as something more or less strictly biological<\/em>.<\/p>\n

    End of part 1<\/em><\/p>\n

    Reaching far?\u00a0Animal Thealogy \u2013 female animal deities, female human deities, on the terms of such angles.<\/em><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Vulnerable by Farangis Yegane Animal Thealogy: Man-Machine? Animal Reason! (Part 1) Palang LY The basic question about the categorical division into (nonhuman) \u201canimals\u201d and \u201chumans\u201d (Homo sapiens), brings up probably before the question of its moral implications, the question about what exactly hides beneath both these big generalized identities. Why has the view about that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10,95,29,58,35,6,37],"tags":[47,24,9,30,32,14],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/simorgh.de\/niceswine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1510"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/simorgh.de\/niceswine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/simorgh.de\/niceswine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/simorgh.de\/niceswine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/simorgh.de\/niceswine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1510"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/simorgh.de\/niceswine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1510\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1515,"href":"https:\/\/simorgh.de\/niceswine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1510\/revisions\/1515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/simorgh.de\/niceswine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/simorgh.de\/niceswine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/simorgh.de\/niceswine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}