For "reading week," please read pages 15-91 in JM Coetzee's The Lives of Animals; this includes Coetzee's original "lecture" as well as responses by the literary critic Marjorie Garber and the philosopher Peter Singer. In addition, please read the Singer and Regan handouts distributed last week. The latter selections are available via .pdf on the UASonline website if you've misplaced your copies. The book is readily available via online book sellers or, potentially, via loan from your peers. Per the usual routine, post your questions and meditations in the comment section below. Happy reading,
kevin m
Jack
ReplyDelete“And God said: Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you,” his mother quotes. “It’s convenient. God told us it was OK.”
With some effort and a lot of review, I felt fairly confident that I was finally able to find the links of the writings and ideas of the first half of the course as part of the first essay assignment. J.M. Coetzee seemed to do all the hard work for me in ‘The Lives of Animals’. Before the end of the assignment I felt that I had reviewed and had a better understanding of the ideas presented in the second half of class, as well as a fairly thorough refresher of much of the first half (minus the Malamud - Treadwell teddy bear issues). In addition, Coetzee created in Elizabeth Costello a character that I eventually found myself admiring despite our differences and her use of Malamud-like offensive comparisons such as Auschwitz to create her arguments (I was glad to see that the character ‘Abraham Stern’ did take offense to her story and wrote her a stern note about why he was absent from dinner).
The story began to really capture my attention when Mrs. Costello added depth to the arguments of Berger and Malamud through her discussion of the ape ‘Sultan’, and what she believed might have been his real response to many of the studies that were performed on him. Sultan is able to figure out how to get access to food in every instance, however while we might expect each success to bring a feeling of reward to Sultan, she suggests that it only creates disappointment, frustration, and hunger. “At every turn Sultan is driven to think the less interesting thought.” I find myself agreeing with this logic and disappointed in not wondering about it sooner. I guess I too was looking through the wrong lens. Despite all the possible outcomes, it seems Sultan was just as objectified as any other zoo animal. But like the zoo, Sultan did not fail to disappoint either – as Berger would say. Mrs. Costello perhaps says it better though when she tells us what is ultimately on Sultans mind……….”The question that truly occupies him, as it occupies the rat and the cat and every other animal trapped in the hell of the laboratory or the zoo, is: Where is home, and how do I get there?”
March 21, 2009
ReplyDeleteJohn S. Sonin
Eng. 418—Blog 9
The relationships between entities in a reality imagined by Dennett’s “belief-order” derivatives (once the reciprocity of language has been acquired in communication techniques, that is) simply devolves to the renovation of old stories with an overlay on the pre-made patterns, historically created, with new ones. This adherence to tradition is a perception that, though may correctly articulate the current prevailing ideology with a change of events and characters, is actually sequestered by culture to rehash again and again the same dilemma.
Eons of human development correlated in Judeao-Christian cultures’ by the American Standard or St. James versions’ of the Bible, can qualify this unchanging pattern. The resolution of the stories, the point or thesis of them (that there is irresolvable conflict) has been made—the story has been told—but the story-line continues to be altered by the juxtaposition of different scenarios in the form of new characters in unique circumstances, that do not change the resolution, they only offer different twists to essentially the same plot: The dramas have either the good or bad scenarios succeed. Modern drama mostly seems to have the lesser of two evils prevail, no-longer does there appear to be a clear good, but the pattern remains. Nowhere is this “overlaying” on the same pattern more obvious than in the theatrical or cinematographic trend to imagine modern characters in ancient or historical (already dramatized) stories—a form of what Garber calls metafiction. There is a genre of cinematography more specific to my idea that I’m unable to recall, wherein a viewer steps into a film being viewed.
In these scenarios, all characters involved have a pre-described, pre-set strategy to achieve their pre-determined conditions. The one ‘stepping into’ the already written story wants to insure the story gets, and is, resolved the way it has already been laid out, a story they already know how is to end; the way it’s supposed to be resolved as the author intended. Obviously the character’s have no choice to intend anything but what the creator/author had proscribed, but the fantasy now, is what the contemporary interloper—or something like a “radical interpreter”—is now able to inject in the story; but even this “radical” conducts a strategy to have the story end the way it’s “supposed to”—that is until this overlaid version gets clichéd much as orders of intention are themselves couched. Yet, regardless of how this “radical element” impacts the story—and though it may be entertaining to us the real audience—the story still concludes in a pre-determined manner. What I’m saying is that, even the initial story, is built on a worn-out, never to be resolved, clichéd pattern.
But now we have another story on top of an historical story that can change the story-line but not the plot and thesis. This sounds conspicuously like Dennett’s Intentional System for substantiating the evolutionary benefits of a reciprocal language over that of simple single-minded vocalizations. It’s certainly a reality having no imaginative enlightenment.
If a communicator’s ultimate belief or intention is of the egocentric, selfish self-interest among selfish fallible humans (evil) kind, the strategy for communicating is deceit. But if the ultimate belief or intention is considered compassion and everyone is doing their best (good) kind, the strategy is symbiotic synergism. Every drama revolving around conflict anticipates one or the other consequence, dependent on the intending perspective of the author’s characters always caught in this pre-determined, pre-written inescapable tragedy.
Coetzee’s story of Costello’s lectures is patterned on this strategy with Costello’s son waging this battle internally, weighing the arguments of his vegetarian mother and those of his skeptical wife; is animal consciousness subject, something not to be wasted, or should mainstream humanity continue to disregard animal relevance as subject? A dilemma clearly resolved in my mind and anyone else who doesn’t allow the self’s will to weigh judgment.
In the analysis of Garber or Singer, this conflictive agenda still wages. Doniger and Smuts have moved forward (with me) to the creation of new patterns of engagement with Nature (capitalized to suggest “everything”).
Along the same lines as Jack, I felt that the greatest benefit of the Coetzee reading was the insights it provided about the arguments that we have been discussing in class thus far. It has left me wondering, however, if there isn’t a perspective that we might be missing. I’ve been wondering for some time now, how exactly the cross-disciplinary aspects of the class would play out – thus far it’s just been a philosophy class – and I think that the conflicts in the Coetzee article truly bring to life the need to have both the English and Philosophy disciplines represented in our discussions on animals. Not only are the viewpoints of Aristotle and Nagel and Dennett (who I take it Norma is a representation of) represented in this piece, but so are those of Kafka and Swift and Rilke.
ReplyDeleteIt is the latter viewpoints that I am concerned about. I realize that we have only just begun the English portion of our class, but I would like to caution that the readings that we have done so far do not lend us the perspective that I think other readings in the English tradition might. What I mean to say is that although the piece we just read was written by a Nobel Laureate in Literature, we are approaching it more from a philosophical perspective than an English one.
The most moving passage in the piece, I thought, was Elizabeth’s (we’re on a first name basis) discussion of poets and animals. The kind of poetry that she discusses is “poetry that does not try to find an idea in the animal, that is not about the animal, but is instead a record of an engagement with him.” This seems to be where Elizabeth gains her perspective from after renouncing reason.
I guess that my concern is that we will take this piece by Coetzee and discuss it today in class in our usual way – discussing what Elizabeth said and applying reason to it to see whether or not she was ‘right’. But I think that by doing so, we would be ignoring one of the greatest lessons in the piece – sometimes preaching about something isn’t enough. She tries to preach a viewpoint and nobody listens. Her own viewpoint, however, is developed because she was shown insights by an author.
For Elizabeth, Rilke seems to provide a way around the Nagel problem that philosophers cannot. And, despite Dennett’s scathing reactions to Nagel, I find it difficult to oppose Nagel on the grounds of reason. I am not sure whether or not I could on the grounds of Rilke, but how would I know without reading Rilke? Obviously, as a writer, Elizabeth has a different perspective than the philosophers represented in the lecture, but I don’t think that a discussion on her thoughts versus theirs fulfills the English component of our class.
Anthony Burgess writes “It is not the novelist’s job to preach; it is his duty to show.” If this class has truly turned its focus to English and not Philosophy, I think that it would only be appropriate to read something that shows me an interaction with animals, rather than preaching to me about what those interactions are or are not – that is not to say that one is better than the other, but only that they have been unequally represented thus far.
Good read, though over-dramatic in parts. I took particular interest to the section that included E. Costello's (imaginary, I'm assuming) speech. Specifically when she's talking about Nagel's theory on our lack of what Costello called our 'sympathetic imagination' (Coetzee, 35). Since we've talked so much about Nagel's "What is it like to be a bat?", I'll avoid talking about it too much for fear of relentlessly beating the metaphorical dead horse. But I'd like to talk about this sympathetic imagination a bit.
ReplyDeleteFist off, we can assume that Coetzee's Costello is not a physicalist, not only because intuition will slap this fact in your face, but also because from a physicalist perspective it would be impossible for a human to know what it is like to be a structurally very different being. But what exactly does she believe to be the role of consciousness and the soul? She tersely touches on her views of the soul and they seem contradictory to her views on our capacities of sympathetic imagination.
Before her remark on the abilities of humans to sympathetically imagine their way into just about any biological experience, she talks about animals' and humans' lack of a non-temporal existence: "An animal is no more than the mechanism that constitutes it; if it has a soul, it has one in the same way that a machine has a battery, to give it the spark that gets it going..." (Coetzee, 33). So I argue that Costello is arguing a paradoxical
point: she states very clearly that "An animal is no more than the mechanism that constitutes it", which is a physicalist view; Then she goes on to flatter the sympathetic imagination of humans, "...there is no limit to the extent to which we can think ourselves into the being of another. There are no bounds to the sympathetic imagination." (Coetzee, 35).
Physicalism does not allow for a sympathetic imagination. If I have my definitions correct, then physicalism adheres to the belief that a creature's physical constitution dictates its experience. Hence, the paradox.But even if Costello acknowledges her paradoxical belief system, there could potentially be a way around its destruction of the validity of her beliefs. That is, if consciousness were transcendental to physicality (I know, a reoccurring theme in my posts). But if that were true, yet physicalism also accurate, then only some bizarre, unknown phenomena could account for it.
So I guess this post has gotten me nowhere, I've come full-circle back to the question, "What is consciousness and how did it arise?". Awesome.
In Singer's "All Animals are Equal" I kept finding myself looking for arguments against absolutely equal animal rights. Singer argues this point as well, however, that animal don't have equal rights because this wouldn't make sense: they don't need equal rights, but they do share rights that we grant ourselves.
ReplyDeleteTwo of Singer's biggest arguments in favor of this are the capacity to suffer that animals possess and the blatant "specieism" by people in favor of themselves.
As far a suffering is discussed, it seems like Singer overlooks people's concern for the suffering that we inflict on other people as not being matched by the concern we have for the suffering inflicted on animals. If we were to hold equal rights for animals and people, people who advocate animal rights should do so considering both the degree of suffering of animals and equal consideration of the degree of suffering of humans.
It just seems like there is no correct way to approach the protection of animal rights and take into equal importance the protection of human rights at the same time. One must always be given more attention that the other.
Also, the arguments against specieism don't really convince me that it is as equal an evil as that of sexism or racism. Like suffering, placing a higher value on our species is also evolutionary. It seems like there needs to be a point where people should avoid inflicting unnecessary harm on others of any species, but also remaining concerned for the well being of our own species without being considered morally wrong.
In Coetzee's lecture, his character Elizabeth Costello focuses on the question of why people value the lives of animals less than they value the lives of other humans. I find myself, somewhat hesitantly, asking the opposite: why do we value human lives so highly?
ReplyDeleteOne of E, Costello's most interesting ways of addressing her views was in her last few lines, wherein she commented on how everyone was “participating in a crime of stupefying proportions” (69) and used the example of going over to a friend's house where she was expected to admire a lamp made of human skin and soap made of human fat.
I, in a way that I confess probably should disturb me greatly, cannot truly see the horror in that. I don't honestly recognize that great of a difference between humans and animals. As Singer expressed so throughly, in his “All Animals Are Equal....” we both feel pain, and therefore must have interests. So if I am more or less not horrified by the death of an animal, or at least the mundane kind of horror that accompanies an act that I view as necessary like the slaughter of livestock, why should I feel more for the death of a human?
In the Singer lecture we read in “The Lives of Animals,” he offers an explanation for why human life has more value: that we have the ability to think ahead. To plan ahead in the long-term. So Singer is saying that human's ability to plan and reason is what raises us above beasts. So, conversely, it is animals increased reliance on felling, or instinct, that both distinguishes them and devalues them from humans. Keep in mind that these traits would not exist separated by some giant imaginary line, but more accurately along a continuum, with instinct/feeling on one end, and reason on the other.
But when Singer later addresses the question of who he would save in a fire, his daughter or the family dog, he responds that of course he would save his daughter because she was “his little girl” (87). This doesn't seem like an action based in reason. Singer isn't sitting down, looking at his dog, and then his daughter, and concluding that one or the other has more capacity for long term thought. He is reacting instinctually to save his offspring, to preserve his traits in his daughter so it can be passed on to future generations. To me, this says that in important situations humans rely on instinct and feeling to guide them, putting them squarely with the animals, and to me, showing very little practical difference between them. So, if we are more or less the same, why should I feel any different about a persons death than an animals?
I suppose, ultimately, I agree most with the Henry Sedgewick's view quoted on page 6 of Singer's “All Animals Are Equal...” when he says that “the good of any one individual is of no more importance, from the point of view (if I may say so) of the universe, than the good of any other.” Perhaps this is simply the naïve view of someone relatively young who has had relatively little to do with suffering and death, but the point remains that I do not see or feel much of a difference, regardless of what that may mean.
Also, I don't think this was very coherent. Oh well. Time to post.
I had trouble at first seeing any similarities between Elizabeth Costello and Red Peter. I didn’t really understand the comparison until the very end, when John, holding his mother and smelling her ‘old flesh’ says to her, “There, there. It will soon be over” (69). Kafka’s Red Peter learns to imitate the men around him to find a way out of his cage. In his own words, he is presenting to the Academy “an account of the life I formerly led as an ape.” He has long since found a way out of his cage and his account at first concerns itself with describing his former life. In the last paragraph, though, when describing his current life, he mentions the chimpanzee he lives with. “By day I cannot bear to see her; for she has the insane look of the bewildered half-broken animal in her eye; no one else sees it, but I do, and I cannot bear it.” Red Peter learns to think, write, speak, and act like a man and before this he has no recollection of his life, it is in confinement, and in struggle, that his memory begins. His actions are dictated only by an overwhelming desire for a way out: “only a way out; right or left, or in any direction.” His learning separates him from the apes he once communed with and his ape body marks him as forever distinct from the humans he lives among. In the chimpanzee he lives with, he finds someone in a similar condition and cannot stand to even look at her during the day. In “A Report to an Academy: Two Fragments”, a reporter’s account of meeting with Red Peter, Red Peter is silent at first, and when asked to explain the cause of his silence, he responds “Sometimes I’m overcome with such an aversion to human beings that I can barely refrain from retching.” He then clarifies that it’s not this but the mingling of his contracted human smell with the ape smell that repulses him. The story ends with him recalling his life in captivity, and suggesting a desire to return to his former life, though the reader recognizes that such a return would now be impossible: “Where do you want to go? Beyond the boards the forest begins…” For Red Peter, who seeks only a way out a way out a way out, escape can only come in the form of death. For Elizabeth Costello, who finds the world unbearably surreal, John suggests that relief will come when she dies.
ReplyDeleteOne question this reading brings up for me is how “A Report to an Academy” can be related to the other readings we’ve done this semester. In particular, it seems relevant to our discussion of the separation between men and animals. Red Peter acknowledges Darwin’s contribution to our understanding of human origins when, addressing the Academy, he mentions “your life as apes, gentlemen, insofar as something of that kind lies behind you.” Though I’m not sure I would argue for this, the story of Red Peter can be read as the story of evolution. We Red Peters, having acquired reason, are distinct from animals but too imperfect to be much like God. Reason has allowed us to recognize our confinement, and this is the peculiar predicament we find ourselves in, very much alone. I don’t really agree with that at all, I guess I just wanted to consider this idea of loneliness, so ignore that last part. Red Peter is half-man/half-ape and completely alone. Berger writes that the crowds at zoos, as a result of a dominant relationship with animals, have lost their ability to both look at and be looked at by animals, and are alone. Malamud would likely agree that his deviant zoo patron intently watching the grazing giraffes is equally alone in his position of power and dominance. For Chomsky, we are alone because of generative grammar and for Descartes, we are alone because of our ability to respond to a variety of circumstances. Are we alone? Is this a bad condition to find ourselves in? Elizabeth Costello says that she objects to the ‘therefore’ but do most of our therefores necessarily follow from what comes before them? It seems like she is suggesting that the jump to ethical implications is often the result of intellectual imperialism or our preference for our own species over others.
-Katie
David Leggitt
ReplyDeleteI think the Singer reading was most valuable for me as a concise and very clearly articulated argument for the belief that animals can feel pain in a way that is meaningful. His explanation of animal and human nervous systems and how that form of nervous system evolved from before the evolution of humans was very insightful and offered a lot in the argument toward a belief in animal sentience (that word being used in the same way that he used it).
This coupled with the refutation of language and self-consciousness as a gauge for suffering was enough to pull me over to his side of the line.
It also seems that his equal rights to animals based on the capacity to feel pain was pretty clear logic and it is hard to find a hole in it. That we do not give animals equal rights is no more that an example of our species all pervading selfishness, which is the nature of all other beings, total selfishness.
But the fact that we can understand it seems to force us to deal with it. I am not saying that it is not possible for a mountain lion to understand the selfishness of it’s own actions. And even if it were those actions of selfishness are not out of vanity or mal-intent, but out of necessity. I think even Singer would have a hard time objecting to subsistence hunting, so long as it was done in a humane manner.
So I guess my question is, according to Singer, when is it ok to kill an animal?
I think when it is going to cause pain or suffering on the part of a human.
So I guess my real question is, according to Singer, when is it ok to be selfish?
When you life is on the line. But does this mean that we can only eat plants if that is reasonable in the environment we are in? And what if we find out if plants have the capacity to suffer?
Over the course of reading The Lives of Animals, I came to understand how important it is to have read most of the works we’ve been assigned in class before entering the arena of animal ethics debate. I was glad to be privy to most of Elizabeth Costello’s references and felt that the book thoroughly examined both sides of issues we’ve been discussing since the first class. Because of this, Lives of Animals would be a great starting point for someone wanting to learn more about the important subject of animal rights.
ReplyDeleteHowever, as the book drew to a close, I found myself wondering “Why did Coetzee never take a stance”? Being an avid animal rights activist and strict vegetarian in real life, it is interesting that Coetzee would present what I assume are his own thoughts on the issue of animal rights through the vessel of a character like Costello, who struck me as confused, scattered, and unstable. Her arguments are weak (relating anything to the Holocaust immediately turns me off) and her first lecture is described as “strange... ill gauged and ill argued.” If Coetzee is trying to make a point, trying to tip the scale, then why include weak points? And if he knows the arguments are weak, why does he write the book? The only possibility I can think of is that Coetzee himself feels exactly like Costello: He knows what he thinks, but he cannot understand why he thinks it. The counter arguments must make as much sense to him as his own, yet they still do not justify the crime he sees before him. To a man of reason, solid arguments hold a lot of sway, so it must be confusing to hear a point that you agree with, yet your heart will not let you act upon it. Hence the internal struggle in Elizabeth Costello.
Ok, so obviously this post is late but I figure what the hell. I thought that the Cotzee reading was a good one. I found that it was a little awkward figuring out exactly how to respond or to comment becaues it had such a heavy basis in fiction but I figure that it doesn't really matter and that the content as the important bit. I found that there was an interesting difference between the way that I percieved the text and the way that the rest of the class did. While I was reading I went under the assumption that i was supposed to be following the husband/son point of view and not, in fact, the mother or the wife. It seemed in class that most people thought it to be the mother that we should be focusing on and that the wife was just a ----- character and the husband/sone a recluctant mediator. One of the things that we seemed to have a lot of confusion over, and I admit to having it while reading, was what exactly Cotzee's stance or argument was. It deffinetly seemed that it was supposed to be the mother's but I found my sef wondering if it really was. While reading it it was interesting to see both sides of the arguments in play and that got mew thinking about whether or not we weren't supposed to get and examine both sides. While reading it felt as if "The Lives of Animals" was intended to show bothe side and the evolution of those sides. The reason that I think we are supposed to see throught the eyes of the son is because, while reading it, it seemed as if we were going through a mirroeing of our class. Coming into the class my opinions were extremely biased and one sided to the belief that animals are capable of thought and deserved equal treatment and rights. In reguard to right my belifs are still the same but for the ability to think? Now it is more like, they can think but not to the same degree. Anyway, the readng left similar to the evolution that my own thought have gone through. It seemed that the son was a vessle of sorts for all the information that was being thrown around on both sides of the field. On the one side was his mother who thinks like Singer or Nagel and on his other was his wife who thought more like Descartes. And he is required to listen to both sides as well as to give both sides equal consideration. It felt as though to me the reason we did not get the most descisive of arguments was because Cotzee was showicertainty that goes with the arguments. It does seem that even though the posistion is not entirly set in one that it does lean more in favor of the mother but either way I also believe that the uncertainty was put in there on purpose to make the reader stop and consider what they know and believe as I am sure the author and everyone alse has had to do at some point over the course of the class.
ReplyDelete