THE HUMAN-ANIMAL BOUNDARY
Time: November 27-28, 2015
Venue: University of Macau
E21-3118
Organizers:
Mario Wenning (Macau) Nandita Batra (Mayaguez)
Contact Email: [email protected]
Keynote Speaker: Eduardo Mendieta (Penn State)
Time: November 27-28, 2015
Venue: University of Macau
E21-3118
Organizers:
Mario Wenning (Macau) Nandita Batra (Mayaguez)
Contact Email: [email protected]
Keynote Speaker: Eduardo Mendieta (Penn State)
The boundary between humans and non-human animals has been an integral part of philosophical discourse since antiquity. Attempts to draw a boundary between human and nonhuman life has involved the literary imagination as well as philosophical reflection. Throughout the centuries philosophers and poets alike have defended an essential difference – rather than a porous transition – between what counts as human and what as animal. The attempts to assign essential properties to humans (e.g. a capacity for language use, reason and morality) often reflected ulterior aims to defend a privileged position for humans with regard to animals (which were, in turn, interpreted as speechless, irrational and amoral). While this form of humanism has come under attack through animal rights initiatives in recent decades, alternative ways of engaging the human-animal relationship from a philosophical and poetic perspective are rare. The conference thus aims to shift the traditional anthropocentric focus of philosophy and literature by combining the question "what is human?" with the question "what is animal?" to explore productive ways of thinking with and beyond the human-animal boundary.